Missile Defense

The Hoover Institution's Dr. Kiron Skinner argues that developing a missile defense system should be a top priority for the United States.

Tavis: Give me three good reasons why, right now, we should spend any of our time, effort, energy and, to your point, make it a priority, to have a missile defense system. Number one is what?

Dr. Kiron Skinner: One, because this report has a very optimistic story. That given the proliferation of ballistic missiles, technology components, with rogue actors, and what we see going on with Hezbollah right now, highly mechanized, weaponized use of long-range missiles, something that we didn't see 20 years ago with the Hezbollah of that period, we need greater defense.

Our eastern shore, for example, of the United States, is completely defenseless against a SCUD attack. You could go a hundred or 200 miles in international waters on a ship, a terrorist actor, and send a SCUD into the United States with a far more devastating effect than 9/11. That's one major reason. Two, despite the publicity that the failures in missile defense have received - it's true, six out of 12 tests of the ground-based program have failed.

On the other side, on the sea-based activity, seven out of eight intercepts, including one this summer with the Aegis cruiser, have been successful. So there is great success. And then third, a statistic that many people don't know. According to the U.S. (unintelligible) redistribution data in 2000, 65 percent of all Americans live in coastal states.

The Atlantic, Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. And indeed, 75 percent of all African Americans live in those states. This is an issue for all of us. For Americans together to think about. So these are three kind of, what I would think are powerful reasons to look at our report and to revisit the issue of missile defense. Not necessarily to embrace it completely, but let it be part of a toolkit of our deterrent strategy.

Tavis: Even if one agrees with what the report suggests, how does one get traction on an issue like this? When I think, at the moment, to your point about all Americans, I think most Americans at this point are turned off to defense conversations to begin with, in part because of all the drama that we're experiencing right now. And not just drama, but let's be frank about it, our failure in certain parts of the world to achieve the objectives we said we were going into these various places for in the first place.

So in a space like this, even if you agree with missile defense, how does this conversation get off the ground, no pun intended?

Skinner: Well, I think partly with the conversation I'm having with you right now, to just begin to revisit the issue, talk about the new technologies, talk about the successes, be realistic about the failures. That's a part of it. But surveys show that despite the difficulties the United States has experienced in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and around the world, that consistently 70 percent of Americans do support the idea of a defensive shield being deployed for the United States.

So this is something that's been consistently supported by Americans when they've been polled on this issue. It just makes intuitive sense that you try to protect yourself before a weapon ever hits your territory.

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