Rival views of world shaping missile debate

By SARA FRITZ

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 4, 2000

WASHINGTON -- In a few easily overlooked ways, Frank Gaffney and John Isaacs are alike.

Both men once worked on Capitol Hill and obtained graduate degrees in foreign affairs from Johns Hopkins University. Both are steeped in the complex details of U.S. defense policy and fault President Clinton for failing to take action to make America safer. And both are highly respected as writers and thinkers in what they believe to be the cause of world peace.

Yet none of these similarities can bridge the yawning ideological chasm that has put Gaffney and Isaacs at odds on one of the most important questions of our time: Should the United States build a nuclear defense system to ward off incoming missile attacks?

Gaffney, 47, a Defense Department official during the Reagan administration, has become the leading proponent of a missile defense. Isaacs, 55, who has toiled most of his adult life as an opponent of weapons of mass destruction, is the most influential critic.

Their sharply divergent world views are shaping the debate that will determine how the United States will defend itself in the 21st century. Clinton will decide this summer whether to proceed with the deployment of a limited nuclear missile defense, and these men will have helped to create the political context in which that decision is judged.

You may not have heard of either Isaacs or Gaffney. Perhaps you have seen them as talking heads on television or quoted in an occasional newspaper story. As often happens among policy experts in Washington, their influence far exceeds their name recognition.

Predictably, both men are seen by their opponents as part of an evil conspiracy.

Gaffney has been characterized by his critics as the "messenger-in-chief" of a well-funded network of defense contractors, conservative foundations and Reaganite true believers for whom the necessity of a missile defense system is something akin to a religious conviction.

Isaacs and his like-minded friends are portrayed as ultraliberals who would foolishly disarm the United States in the face of danger. "There are few belief systems to which people adhere more assiduously with less reason than that of arms control," Gaffney quips.

Just as the ideas of Gaffney and Isaacs clash, so do their personal styles.

Isaacs is a low-key guy with sad eyes and a spare office that lacks the thick carpeting and expensive artwork of most Washington lobbying shops. He was a college student in the 1960s who got his first full-time job with the liberal group, Americans for Democratic Action, where his wife still works as executive director.

In 1969, Isaacs was introduced to what would become his life's work when he organized a student-faculty letter opposing an anti-ballistic missile system proposed by then-President Richard M. Nixon. Today, he moves easily among the most powerful officeholders on Capitol Hill, although his social friends tend to be liberals such as Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Council for a Livable World, founded as the Council to Abolish War in 1962 after the Cuban missile crisis, operates as a traditional political action committee by endorsing and contributing to candidates, tracking congressional voting records on defense issues and lobbying members of Congress.

By contrast, Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, which he founded in 1988 with the help of some prominent defense hawks in the Reagan administration, is modeled more along the lines of a think tank. Instead of direct lobbying or funding candidates, it churns out a rapid stream of policy papers that are relied upon by conservatives in Congress.

Gaffney himself is a man of formal demeanor with a carefully trimmed beard whose speeches and writings are filled with intellectual indignation. His rhetorical points are always firmly nailed into place with sharp words such as "outrage," "preposterous" and "inconceivable."

A protege of President Ronald Reagan's most conservative defense strategist, Richard Pearle, Gaffney has a loyal following of hawks on Capitol Hill that includes Sen. Jon Kyle, R-Ariz.

But in the final analysis, what differentiates Gaffney and Isaacs most is their attitudes toward the world in which they live and the threat that other nations pose to citizens of the United States. Indeed, this difference is at the heart of their debate over missile defense.

Gaffney strongly believes the United States is vulnerable to a long-range missile attacks from China and Russia as well as the rogue states he describes as "a gaggle of bad guys," including Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

"We are at risk of a missile attack right now," Gaffney said in a recent interview with reporters. "Two months ago, let us recall, the Communist Chinese threatened a nuclear attack against this country. They did it in the context of coming to blows over Taiwan and (they said), "If the United States interferes, we will attack you with nuclear weapons.' "

Isaacs, on the other hand, believes the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union have opened the way for negotiations that will rid the planet of nuclear weapons.

"Of all the ills that have befallen the world, including hunger and disease, the one that really has the least opportunity to destroy us at this point is a nuclear attack," he said. "There should be a time when we don't have to worry about nuclear weapons. President Clinton had an opportunity to move in that direction after the end of the Cold War. There is so much more that that the world could and should have done."

Gaffney says Isaacs and his supporters are hopelessly naive to embrace "the utterly addled idea of ridding the planet of nuclear arms."

"Never mind that others will not follow America's lead, should it make the mistake of actually eliminating its nuclear arsenal -- certainly not the rogue nuclear wanna-bes we currently have to be most worried about deterring," Gaffney recently wrote in his regular column in the Washington Times. "It is, moreover, inconceivable that Russia and China would actually comply with such an obligation, either, given its inherent unverifiability."

Likewise, Isaacs dismisses Gaffney as a defense hawk whose views are frozen in the Cold War era. "For the last 10 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union," Isaacs says, "the Gaffneys of the world have been looking for a new boogeyman, and the best they can come up with are North Korea, Iraq and perhaps China."

Because they begin with such starkly different premises about the nature of the world, it's not surprising that their conclusions about a missile defense system are completely different.

Gaffney wants the United States to deploy a nuclear missile defense on Navy ships that can circle the globe, showing up in hot spots when they are needed. Yet he also still dreams of a space-based system similar to the "Star Wars" system that Reagan set in motion during his administration.

Isaacs holds to the traditional view -- the basic premise of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty -- that if the United States builds a defensive system, it will only encourage other nations to increase their stockpile offensive missiles and, therefore, make the world more dangerous than it is.

Despite their differing views, both Gaffney and Isaacs oppose the Clinton administration's proposal to deploy a ground-based defensive weapons system -- if it is perfected -- in Alaska to intercept any incoming missiles from North Korea.

Gaffney believes the Clinton plan is too little, too late; Issacs believes it is a dangerous waste of money.

If a scheduled test of the missile defense system this week is successful, the president is expected to order the Pentagon to proceed with the development of a ground-based system, but to move as slowly as possible. Both sides would see such a decision as a politically motivated move designed to prevent missile defense from becoming an issue in the November presidential election.

"He is going to make it appear that he is doing something without causing any heartache for any of Vice President Al Gore's key constituencies," said Gaffney, who supports Gore's opponent in the presidential race, Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Another fundamental disagreement between Gaffney and Isaacs revolves around the question of whether it is possible to build an effective missile defense. Although Congress has already spent perhaps more than $100-billion on research and development, this is still debatable.

Gaffney, of course, is a believer. "I think it is absolutely certifiable that we can build a missile defense that will destroy not only incoming re-entry vehicles but decoys and all manner of other chaff and things intended to ensure that warheads penetrate," he said.

Isaacs counters: "In theory, I think you can hit a bullet with a bullet, but that's different than building a workable defense on which you can rely to knock down attacking nuclear warheads. We have always thought of it as a crazy scheme that won't work, pushed for ideological reasons primarily, although aided somewhat by defense contractors. We see it as a technical solution to what is a political and military problem."

When Isaacs is indulging in pop psychology, he likes to compare the urge for missile defense to the American desire for a single pill to cure an illness or France's misguided belief that building the Maginot Line before World War II would hold off the German army.

Despite their many differences, however, there is one more thing that seems to unite the two men in their struggle. Both admit that the renewed controversy over missile defense has been good for the future of their organizations. Both groups seem to be collecting contributions at a brisk rate.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.