Big Shield, Bigger Sword

With President Bush in the Czech Republic today making his case for the necessity of his proposed missile defense system, James Carroll wrote an exceptional piece in the Boston Globe today, discussing how efforts to make the U.S safer through a missile defense system could actually have the exact opposite effect.

His conclusion?

Of all the problems that are exacerbating US-Russian tensions today, none compares for destructiveness with Bush's misguided missile defense project. The irony, of course, is that this reigniting of the old tensions in the name of security leads to less security, not more. The tragedy is that it ignores the lesson that had already been so well learned four decades ago.

A consensus has lately developed that the Bush administration's worst legacy will be tied to the disastrous war in Iraq, but that may be wrong. The resuscitation of the fantasy of missile defense, and with it the raising from the dead of the arms race, may result in catastrophes in comparison to which Iraq is benign.