BMD Deterrence

Scientific work to attain the academic degree of
Master of Arts, Military Leadership and International Studies (MFIS) from
Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg, Germany
The Effectiveness of Ballistic Missile Defense as a Deterrent Against
Emerging Powers
Mark A. Cramer
Major, United States Air Force
Manteuffelstrasse 20
22587 Hamburg
Tel: 040/170 340 5383
mcramer02@yahoo.com
Matricualtion number: 0877960
Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr
Submitted on: 1 May 2016
First Advisor:
Professor Dr. Klaus Beckmann
Professor of Public Economics
Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg
Second Advisor:
Captain Jason Hines, United States Navy
Dozent , Fachbereicht, Führungslehre Marine
Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr,
Hamburg

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i
The views expressed in this document are those of the author and do not reflect the official
policy or position of the United States Air Force, the United States Department of Defense or the
United States Government.

ii
STATEMENT OF COMPLIANCE WITH EXAMINATION REGULATIONS
I hereby declare that I authored this master’s thesis independently and no other person or
resources other than what is documented in this work were used. All items placed in this work,
whether they were verbally acquired, found in a public document or otherwise identified were
given with consent of the source. As such these sources are separately understood and
identified.
Furthermore, I have not used this master’s thesis as an evaluation to earn another academic
degree.
Hamburg, 1 May 2016
Mark A. Cramer, Major,
United States Air Force

iii
ABSTRACT
On 13 December 2001, President George W. Bush overturned fifty years of thinking on
nuclear deterrence and embarked on a completely new path that embraces Ballistic
Missile Defense (BMD) as a key component of deterrence. This new view of nuclear
deterrence, called Deterrence 2.0 for the purposes of this work, proposes that the addition of a
defensive posture is an appropriate, flexible, and effective method of deterring emerging
regional threats, such as those posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea. The current model of Ballistic Missile Defense, which has
continued to evolve since the 2001 decision, is reliant on the regionally-focused Phased
Adaptive Approach (PAA) concept, of which the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA)
is the most matured in operational development. The PAA concept is enabled by the
technological approach of ‘active-layered defense’. This concept is mainly comprised of sea and
land-based Aegis Standard Missile-3 radar and interceptor systems that are complimented by a
series of sensors and other interceptors to include allied systems integrating into a single
defense network. This thesis will examine whether a defensive-based approach to deterrence
could be effective in deterring emerging regional threats from committing to a ballistic missile
attack.

iv
BENENNUNG
Am 13. Dezember 2001 warf Präsident George W. Busch eine fünfzig Jahre alte
Denkweise im Bereich der nuklearen Abschreckung über Bord und begann damit gleichzeitig
den Weg zu ebnen zukünftig Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) als eine Schlüsselkomponente der
Abschreckung mit anzusehen. Diese neue Sichtweise der nuklearen Abschreckung, im Rahmen
dieser Arbeit auch als „Abschreckung 2.0“ bezeichnet, geht davon aus, dass das Hinzufügen
der defensiven Komponente (Raketenabwehr) eine geeignete, flexible und effektive Methode
darstellt, um den entstehenden regionalen Bedrohungen entgegenzuwirken, wie sie bspw. von
der Islamischen Republik Iran oder Nordkorea ausgehen. Das aktuelle Konzept der ballistischen
Raketenabwehr, das seit dem Beschluss von 2001 kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt wird, basiert
wiederum auf dem regional ausgerichteten Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA), von dem der
europäischer Ableger, das European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) in Bezug auf die
operative Entwicklung am weitesten ausgereift ist. Das PAA-Konzept stützt sich dabei
technologisch auf das Konzept der aktiven, gestaffelten Verteidigung (engl. active-layered
defense). Dieses Konzept besteht dabei im Wesentlichen aus see- und landbasierten Aegis
Standard-Missile-3-Radarsystemen sowie Abfangraketen, die durch eine Reihe weiterer
Sensoren und anderer Abwehrsysteme (basierend bspw. auf Täuschkörper oder Laser) ergänzt
werden und in einem integrierten Verbund operieren. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird untersucht,
ob ein auf defensive beruhender Ansatz der Abschreckung vor einem ballistischen
Raketenangriff effektiv in der Lage ist einer entstehenden regionalen Bedrohung zu begegnen.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................. 1
A. MAJOR RESEARCH QUESTION ............................................................. 1
B. IMPORTANCE........................................................................................... 1
C. PROBLEMS AND HYPOTHESIS.............................................................. 2
D. SOURCES AND METHOD........................................................................ 7
E. THESIS OVERVIEW................................................................................ 12
II. BACKGROUND ................................................................................................. 14
A. MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION AND THE ABM TREATY ........... 15
B. U.S. POLICY SHIFT ................................................................................ 19
C. EVOLUTION OF BMD............................................................................. 24
III. DETERRENCE 2.0............................................................................................. 30
A. GENERAL DESCRIPTION...................................................................... 31
B. POLITICAL TRENDS .............................................................................. 37
C. TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS................................................... 41
IV. EVALUATION OF THE PAA MODEL................................................................ 49
A. JUSTIFICATION FOR BMD DEPLOYMENT .......................................... 52
B. PAA DETERRING MISSILE THREATS.................................................. 58
C. APPA DETERRING A NORTH KOREAN MISSILE THREAT ................ 65
V. CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................. 73
LIST OF REFERENCES............................................................................................... 78

vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Elements Required in Creating Deterrent Effects...............................................11
Figure 2. Elements Required in Creating Influence...........................................................12
Figure 3. Ballistic Missile Attack Ability versus Defensive Effects......................................33
Figure 4. Phases of Ballistic Missile Flight ........................................................................42
Figure 5. Layered and Cooperative Global BMD Concept.................................................48
Figure 6. Prisoner’s Dilemma of MAD ...............................................................................53
Figure 7. Prisoner’s Dilemma of BMD ...............................................................................53
Figure 8. Emerging Actor’s Options with Ballistic Missiles.................................................57
Figure 9. Commitment Value of EPAA ..............................................................................60
Figure 10. Simulated Iranian IRBM Attack on Hamburg and Defended by EPAA ...............64
Figure 11. Commitment Value of APPAA............................................................................67
Figure 12. Simulated DPRK MRBM Attack on Tokyo and Defended by APPAA .................71

vii
LIST OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
AA – Aegis Ashore
ABM Treaty – Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
AFB – Air Force Base
ALTBMD – Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense
APPAA – Asia-Pacific Phased Adaptive Approach
BMD – Ballistic Missile Defense
BMDS – Ballistic Missile Defense Systems
C2 – Command and Control
COCOM – Combatant Command
DSP– Defense Support Program
EPAA – European Phased Adaptive Approach
GPS – Global Positioning System
GBI – Ground Based Interceptor
GMD – Ground Based Midcourse Defense
ICBM – Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile
ICJ –International Court of Justice
IRBM – Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile
JCPA – Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
JFCC-IMD –Joint Force Component Command - Integrated Missile Defense and Space
JFCC- Space –Joint Force Component Command - Space
MAD –Mutual Assured Destruction
MAS –Mutual Assured Stability
MDA –Missile Defense Agency

viii
MIRV –Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles
MRBM – Medium-Range Ballistic Missile
NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NMD– National Missile Defense
NPT – Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
PAA – Phased Adaptive Approaches
SALT – Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
SAM – Surface to Air Missile
SBIRS – Space-Based Infrared System
SRBM – Short-Range Ballistic Missile
START – Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
STSS – Space Tracking and Surveillance System
SDI – Strategic Defense Initiative
SLBM – Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile
SM-3 – Standard Missile-3
THAAD – Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
TMD – Theatre Missile Defense
USNORTHCOM – United States Northern Command
USSTRATCOM – United States Strategic Command
WMD – Weapons of Mass Destruction
WWII – World War II

ix
AKNOWLEDGMENTS
No work of this length is complete without the acknowledgements of the people and
organizations that helped to make it a reality. First, I would like to thank the leaders of the
Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr and Helmut-Schmidt-Universität whose efforts allowed me
the opportunity to earn this masters degree. Second, I want to express my upmost gratitude to
Captain Jason Hines whose mentorship and guidance was without question the most important
influence I had in creating this work. Third, to Professor Dr. Klaus Beckmann who challenged
me to step away from my ‘comfort zone’ and explore the logic and strength that game theory
gives to the study of strategy.
Finally, I want to thank my wife Angela and my children Abigail and Luke. They follow
me wherever I go and never complain. Without them all of my efforts would lack meaning.

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1
I. INTRODUCTION
A. MAJOR RESEARCH QUESTION
On 13 December 2001, President George W. Bush overturned fifty years of thinking on
nuclear deterrence and embarked on a completely new path that embraces Ballistic
Missile Defense (BMD) as a key component of deterrence.1
This new view of nuclear
deterrence, called Deterrence 2.0 for the purposes of this work, proposes that the addition of a
defensive posture is an appropriate, flexible, and effective method of deterring emerging
regional threats, such as those posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). The current model of Ballistic Missile Defense,
which has continued to evolve since the 2001 decision, is reliant on the regionally-focused
Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) concept, of which the European Phased Adaptive Approach
(EPAA) is the most matured in operational development. The PAA concept is enabled by the
technological approach of ‘active-layered defense’. This concept is mainly comprised of sea and
land-based Aegis Standard Missile-3 radar and interceptor systems that are complimented by a
series of sensors and other interceptors to include allied systems integrating into a single
defense network. The purpose of this thesis is to ask: How effective are Ballistic Missile
Defense Systems (BMDS) in deterring an emerging actor from committing to a ballistic missile
attack? Furthermore, can regional BMD programs provide a credible deterrent or is the goal
mainly political?
B. IMPORTANCE
The need to correctly understand the role the BMD strategy plays in both the security of
the United States and its allies is significant in light of the current global security situation and
the sustainability of international relations. Today the U.S. sees the current global security
situation as far less stable than it was in the Cold War. The alarming proliferation of
increasingly sophisticated Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) into the possession of small,
hostile states, such as Iran and North Korea, is reportedly (according to the U.S. Government) a
primary motivator for developing the BMD strategy.2
At the same time Russia has asserted its
security concerns over the global BMD deployment, specifically EPAA, through increasingly
1
Bush, George W., President of the United States. Announcement of the United States’ Withdrawal from
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The White House, Washington D. C. 13 December 2001.
2
BMDR. Page 7.

2
hostile actions that have brought relations between NATO and Russia to a level of tension that
foreshadows a new Cold War.3
The success or failure of EPAA, in this context, will have larger
impacts on U.S. global security objectives as it seeks to mirror EPAA globally in order to provide
extended deterrence to its allies through BMD. Therefore, a challenge of the BMD strategy will
be to provide an assertive deterrent against ballistic missile attacks on the U.S. and its allies
from a number of threats, and at the same time not serve as a provocation for a peer actor.
More broadly BMD represents an enormous change in deterrence philosophy. In the
past, deterrence was largely based on the ability to retaliate against an attack with devastating
consequences to the aggressor thus de-incentivizing the attack. Today defenses are viewed to
be an economic solution to deterring aggression due to technological advancements, global
realities and political will. Over the past decade the U.S., through its investment in a global
BMD strategy, clearly embraces this new deterrence philosophy. The PAA model is the most
important aspect of the U.S.’s global BMD strategy and its success will be measured by its
ability to integrate its allies for common defense, promote regional stability, and most
importantly demonstrate the ability to intercept and destroy a medium- to long-range ballistic
missile.4
EPAA is considered to be the model PAA since it is the first program, most advanced
and will integrate with a robust allied BMD program.5
A failure of EPAA would likely cause a
divestment in BMDS and a re-deployment of U.S. forces to Europe in order to ensure NATO’s
defense. The secondary effect of this kind of re-deployment would be the constriction of
conventional U.S. forces that would need to be based in foreign states to serve as deterrent
force rather than having the flexibility to maneuver globally as needed. Moreover, a failure of
the BMD strategy could also call into question the U.S.’s ability to defend its regional allies and
encourage hostile states to invest further in ballistic missile technology in order to take
advantage of U.S. weaknesses.6
C. PROBLEMS AND HYPOTHESIS
3
Legvold, Robert. Managing the New Cold War, What Moscow and Washington Can Learn From the
Last Once. Foreign Affairs. July/August 2014 Issue. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
states/2014-06-16/managing-new-cold-war. Though the article does not explicitly argue that EPAA alone
is the instigator for current NATO-Russia tensions it does argue that EPAA, as a component of an overall
BMD initiative, has contributed greatly to Russian security concerns.
4
BMDR. Pages 29-30.
5
Note: ‘Allied BMD program’ refers to NATO’s Active Layered Ballistic Missile Defense (ALTBMD). This
will be discussed later in Chapter II.
6
Legvold, Robert. Managing the New Cold War.

3
BMDS have developed at a rapid pace since the U.S. abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002. This abrogation was part of a dramatic shift in defense thinking in
the wake of Al-Qaeda’s 11 September 2001 attack on the U.S. This new thinking concluded
that any commitment to a reduced defensive capability was naive.7
Since then the U.S. has
worked with its allies to install BMDS in order to defend common interests in what is viewed as
an increasingly volatile and multi-polar security environment. As the U.S. and its allies move in
a new direction to deter emerging threats, they are impeded by Russia’s classical view which
argues that deterrence serves to provide strategic stability between mature powers, and that the
introduction of defensive weapons to counter offensive ones will have a destabilizing effect.8
In the second decade of the 21st
Century, the U.S. continues its global engagement to
promote a peaceful order. The U.S. National Security Strategy identifies its core international
interests as countering instability in the Middle East and Africa, engaging rising Asian powers
and continuing its alliances with European partners.9
The most obvious interest is the continued
conflict in the Middle East in combating terrorist organizations that are increasingly violent and
that stand to re-shape the entire region. In the Asia-Pacific region, it is not only the increase of
China’s power that threatens U.S. interests; rather it is an overall recognition of the economic
importance Asian states play in shaping the future. The U.S. assesses that a competition for
resources among Asian states is inevitable and believes it should act as a stabilizing force for
peace to ensure a stable rise of Asian power.10
NATO is challenged by resurgent Russian
military aggression along its eastern border and the situation demands the demonstrated
commitment of U.S. diplomatic and military power. Throughout, the U.S. remains concerned
about rogue states that operate outside the accepted norms of international behavior and
demonstrate the willingness to use WMD to advance their interests. The result of this grand
strategy is that the U.S. has a number of significant security commitments; these are coupled
with the contrasting realities of increasingly limited resources.
Therefore, current U.S. military strategies are being developed to create economic
efficiencies with its increasingly limited forces. Regional BMD strategies, known commonly as
the Phased Adaptive Approaches (PAA), were created as a critical component of a standing
7
Bush. Announcement of the United States’ Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. December 2001.
8
Giles, Kier with Andrew Monahan. European Missile Defense and Russia. The Strategic Studies Institute, U.S.
Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. July 2014. Pages 34-36.
9
President of the United States. The National Security Strategy (NSS). The White House, Washington,
D. C.: February 2015. Pages 24-27.
10
NSS. Page 24.

4
U.S. deterrent presence and are meant to be more efficient in terms of both financial cost and
presence in foreign states. The intent of this approach is to use these relatively small-footprint
forces to provide continuous deterrence and defense within a region against long-range, first-
strike attack weapons. Doing so will give the U.S. more flexibility to move larger, conventional
forces globally to engage in regions as priorities shift.11
A key aspect of this strategy is support
and integration from host, regional allies who are dedicated to the strategy and contribute with
their own BMDS. This integration aspect serves to multiply the number of interceptors in a
region to counter threats and encourage allies to invest in BMD technologies in order to
strengthen its partnership with the U.S.
The U.S. military’s strategy document, the Quadrennial Defense Review, identifies Iran
and North Korea as the two greatest threats to international security, especially in the realm of
developing and employing medium- to long-range ballistic missiles to deliver WMDs.12
Of great
concern is the speed at which their missile systems are developing. Improvements in acquiring
inexpensive, GPS-based guidance systems have given missiles a higher degree of accuracy
over greater distances. Furthermore, both nations have demonstrated the capability to develop
solid-fuel missiles, allowing them to quickly move their missiles to less vulnerable locations,
requiring a much shorter launch time.13
As of July 2015, Iran entered into a complex agreement
with a coalition led by the U.S. that inhibits a nuclear weapons program for fifteen years in return
for immediate relief of some trade sanctions.14
At the same time, Iran continues to develop the
next generation solid-fuel Sijjil MRBMs that could deliver a nuclear weapon to Israel or
southeastern Europe.15
This indicates that when Iran is free from the agreement’s constraints
or exits from the agreement it could make a ‘break-out’ move to quickly acquire a nuclear
weapon to mount on an already proven to be capable ballistic missile. In Asia, North Korea
continues to advance its ballistic missile testing with increased capabilities and has coupled this
threat with three nuclear tests in seven years. As of 2015, the commander of United States
11
Rose, Frank A., Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance. A
U.S. State Department Perspective on the Phased Adaptive Approach to Missile Defense. Remarks to the
Middle East Missile & Air Defense Symposium, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. 12 April 2012.
12
United States Department of Defense. Quadrennial Defense Review 2014 (QDR 2014). Pentagon, Washington D.
C.: 4 March 2014. Page 14.
13
Karp, Aaron. Going Ballistic? Reversing Missile Proliferation. Arms Control Today. Arms Control
Association (http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_06/Karp). 1 June 2005.
14
Sanger, David E. and Michael R. Gordon. Future Risks of an Iran Nuclear Deal. The New York Times.
23 August 2015. (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/24/world/middleeast/in-pushing-for-the-iran-nuclear-
deal-obamas-rationale-shows-flaws.html?_r=0). Accessed 11 September 2015.
15
Vick, Charles P., Senior Technical Analyst. Globalsecurity.org. Sejjl. Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Accessed on 5 June 2015. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/sajjil.htm

5
Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), Admiral Bill Gortney, declared that North Korea’s ICBM,
the KN-08, was operational, and that it would only be a matter of time before North Korea would
be able to develop a matching nuclear warhead to strike the U.S.16
The developments in both
Iran and North Korea are underscored by the historical hostility that both states have for U.S.
interests, as well as their aggressive behavior in ensuring their own security.
The U.S.’s global BMD strategy is being developed to specifically counter the emerging
threats from Iran and North Korea. However, it can be argued that the BMD strategy has a
much broader purpose: it is being developed to deter not only known and emerging threats but
also to deter any future adversary from employing ballistic missiles. This conclusion is derived
from the post-11 September 2001 shift in defense policy that follows a very realist approach to
international relations. Specifically, the U.S. defense establishment believes that arms control
treaties and international organizations established to uphold any international agreement are
incapable of enforcing treaties and therefore are incapable of halting the increasingly volatile
proliferation of weapons technology.17
Moreover, the U.S. defense establishment in 2002 held to
a realist international relations view, which views individual states - as opposed to international
organizations - as the source of power and as such should be looked to for making impacts in
global security.18
As a result the U.S., early in the process of developing its new BMD strategy,
only engaged individual allied states such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Japan in order to
aggressively build missile defense sites to counter emerging threats. This rushed development
in turn led to programmatic delays, increased costs in terms of time and money as well as what
appeared to be a confused, awkward strategy that required multiple adjustments over a 10-year
period.19
In light of these hindrances an adversary could perceive weakness in the U.S.’s ability
create an effective deterrence based on missile defense. This perception could then embolden
16
Harper, Jon. NORAD commander: North Korean KN-08 missile operational. Stars and Stripes. 7 April
2015.
17
Karp, Aaron. Going Ballistic?
18
Staack, Michael, Professor Doctor, Professor of Political Science, Helmut-Schmidt University. Lecture:
What are the International Relations Theories? Fühungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Hamburg, Germany.
8 May 2015. This citation is derived this lecture on general understanding of Realism as it relates to
international relations. The U.S. approach fits the definition of Realism as described in the lecture.
19
Futter, Andrew. Ballistic Missile Defense and U.S. National Security Policy, Normalization and
acceptance after the Cold War. 711 Third Avenue, New York: Routledge, 2013. Pages 136-146. This
section of Futter’s work illustrates President Obama’s motivation for overhauling European BMD plans
from 2008 to 2009. The intent was to continue the work of installing BMDS. However, in light of political
changes it was more economical and in-line with administration beliefs to organize the installation through
the NATO organization and a changed pace.

6
adversaries to further invest in ballistic missile technology since, in their view; the U.S. has over
invested in a defense program that they can defeat.
While the U.S. re-orients their deterrence paradigms to face WMD-armed rogue states,
the Russian Federation specifically views this re-orientation with hostility. Though there are a
number of other factors that might contribute to Russia’s current aggressive and seemingly
irrational behavior (to include NATO and EU expansion), the development of EPAA is a
considerable security concern for Russia. Its military doctrine repeatedly cites the U.S. missile
defense program as a destabilizing force demonstrating Western hostility and uses the BMD
issue as an excuse to increase militarization. This militarization includes further investment in
strategic weapons to maintain parity with the U.S. in what it perceives as an effort to counter
Russia’s ability to defend its territory through the threat of nuclear retaliation.20
Furthermore,
while the U.S. and NATO provide a number of guarantees that EPAA and Europe’s Active
Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense program (ALTBMD) do not pose a threat to Russian
security, Russia continues to make aggressive gestures towards the West with increased
military operations along NATO’s territorial boundaries and along U.S. interests in the Pacific.
According to Kier Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre, the reason for the
Russian leadership’s distrust of BMD is due to the idea that it negates the role its nuclear
weapons play as a centerpiece of their security and diminishes Russia’s standing as world
power.21
This distrust is given some credibility when looking at the U.S. BMD endeavor globally.
At present the U.S. will deploy globally hundreds of integrated interceptors to defend its vital
interests. However, BMDS are not capable of deterring Russia or China due to the fact that
these states possess a matured arsenal of nuclear forces that could overwhelm any conceivable
BMD force. Therefore, for the purposes of this work, consideration of BMD deterrence effects
on a peer actor are not examined because it is not the intent of the U.S. BMD strategy nor has it
the capability to prevent a large scale nuclear strike from Russia or China.22
Internal to the PAA model there are technical challenges with regards to the
interoperability of U.S. weapon systems with allied BMDS. For example, the aim of the NATO
strategy is to provide a layered defense architecture that can intercept ballistic missiles at all
20
Security Council of the Russian Federation, National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation up to
2020 (NSSRF 2020). Moscow. (http://www.scrf.gov.ru/documents/99.html). 12 May 2009. Note: English
version found (http://rustrans.wikidot.com/russia-s-national-security-strategy-to-2020). Accessed on 1 Jun
2015.
21
Giles. European Missile Defense and Russia. Page 51.
22
BMDR. Pages 4-5.

7
phases of flight, which requires a large number of interceptors with varying capabilities.23
The
NATO-Europe contribution to BMD is ALTBMD and it is composed of varying models of short- to
medium-range interceptors from a number of NATO members. The U.S.’s EPAA, on the other
hand, employs only the Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) as an interceptor. Additionally, EPAA is the
focal point for shared early warning as well as the Command and Control (C2) architecture
through its integration into the larger U.S. BMD program.24
This highlights the greatest technical
challenge to any PAA strategy, which is interoperability in a compressed decision timeframe. A
key component of the 2010 NATO BMD agreement is that nations contribute assets voluntarily
and thus are not required to standardize capabilities.25
In fact many states develop their BMD
programs independently of other allies for political and technical reasons. This creates
challenges in area-defense planning as different planning tools are used with different results
and often the data cannot be shared due to national classifications. The challenge for any PAA
will be to advocate for agreeable procedures to overcome national classification limits and
network interoperability issues in order to create a responsive BMD architecture.26
The U.S. faces a number of challenges and opportunities with regard to the development
of a BMD strategy to protect its sovereign territory and provide extended deterrence to its allies.
This thesis will develop and argue two basic hypotheses that encapsulate the real impact of
BMD as a deterrent against an emerging power. First, can U.S. through its pursuit of a global
BMD strategy lead its allies through a paradigm shift on how to deter aggression in what can be
simply described as a Deterrence 2.0 approach to defense? Second, is the U.S. BMD strategy,
as realized through the PAA model, a well-constructed deterrent against emerging ballistic
missile attacks?
D. SOURCES AND METHOD
This thesis uses official government documents, academic works by authors in the fields
of deterrence and strategy, contemporary works on security affairs and interviews with selected
experts in the field of missile defense to establish the present facts, historical context and
associated issues of the developing the BMD strategy. The factual information and current
affairs are examined through the context of academic works that define deterrence, strategy and
23
24
Note: This architecture is discussed in Chapter II in further detail.
25
NATO 2010. Strategic concept for the defense and security of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization. Adopted by the Heads of State and Government in Lisbon. 20 November 2010. Article 37.
26
Burke, Alan W., Chief of Integrated Air and Missile Defense, Headquarters U.S. Air Forces in Europe
and Africa, Operations Division (USAFE). Written interview. 20 March 2015.

8
international relations in order to understand how BMDS serve as an instrument of strategic
defense. Furthermore, a large portion of this thesis is dedicated to describing the historical
evolution of missile defense, its role in deterrence and the current, technical development of
BMD with particular attention to the regional PAA model. The intent of this research and
subsequent explanations are to give a well-defined context in order to understand the present
issues. This context will then be used to evaluate BMD as a whole in deterring aggression.
Deterrence 2.0 is this thesis’ general concept term used to describe the reality of the
previously-mentioned shift in defense thinking within the U.S. In order to describe the meaning
of Deterrence 2.0, this thesis uses research material specifically designed to illustrate the
political trends and technological developments that are at the core of this concept. Deterrence
2.0 is the central component of this thesis as it will establish the main precondition for evaluating
BMD. It is fully explained in Chapter III and prior to the evaluation.
A deterrent, for the purpose of this work, is broadly defined as a military posture short of
combat that is designed to cognitively dissuade an adversary from taking an action because this
military posture has a perceived and credible ability to retaliate from or deny an attack.27
Thomas Schelling, a noted author on deterrence and strategy, defines the role of a modern
military strategy not as simply winning a war but having a larger responsibility of dissuading
aggression and avoiding threats that could force a state into war.28
In this context military
strategy is a part of achieving an entire state’s interests. Therefore, military strategy is not a
reactionary plan, used only in a crisis, but a proactive element of a broader ‘grand strategy’ to
create conditions for the continuance of a state’s prosperity. Furthermore, according to
Schelling, military power is a form of diplomacy whereby the threat of using force to either
defend a state’s territory or the willingness to deploy forces and hurt an enemy can be used as a
form of bargaining to achieve certain aims. Consequently, military power is intended to
influence an adversary’s behavior coercively in favor of the state’s aims.29
This thesis develops a model that is influenced by the works of Thomas Schelling and
the complimentary work The Art of Strategy by as Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff to evaluate
27
Codner, Michael, Director, Military Sciences, RUSI. Defining ‘Deterrence’, Framing Deterrence in the
21
st
Century (http://www.rusi.org) RUSI, London. 18-19 May 2009. Pages 1- 2 and 4.
28
Schelling, Thomas C. and Morton C. Halperin. Strategy and Arms Control. New York: The Twentieth
Century Fund. 1961. Pages 1-2 and 31-34.
29
Schelling, Thomas C. Arms and Influence. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University. 1966. Pages 1-
6. Note: Briefly explains Schelling’s argument of military power as it relates to diplomacy in order to avoid
conflict or conflict on unfavorable terms. The term of this concept is called The Diplomacy of Violence.

9
whether or not a PAA can deter a regional emerging actor from using ballistic missiles
offensively. Thomas Schelling is one of the most respected authors in defining deterrence,
expanding game theory and was a key contributor in framing Cold War strategic thinking,
specifically as it relates to the concepts of arms control and Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
At the time of his writing in the 1960s, Schelling’s contextual understanding of the geo-political
realities drove the focus of deterrence on the use of offensive nuclear weapons as the only way
to achieve the desired effects. The primary conclusion from Schelling’s argument was that
deterrence is achieved through the threat of a retaliatory second strike between two powers that
had achieved, through arms control, a level of understood capability to survive a first strike and
then return the harm done.30
Later game theory was further expanded by authors such as
Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff as a way to codify and apply Schelling’s ideas on rational,
strategic thinking to a number of fields outside of military arenas.31
The impact of game theory
is a scientific approach to strategic planning that allows strategists to analyze the options
available in a given scenario and then evaluate the likely outcomes of a given action. This in
turn helps a strategist anticipate an adversary’s reaction and ultimately choose the optimal
strategic move.32
While Schelling’s work provides justification for deterrence to be viewed as a strictly
offensive strategy; this thesis argues that his explanation of deterrence also provides
justification for a defensive posture. The main elements of a deterrent, as derived from
Schelling and Dixit, are the demonstration of commitment and a level credibility that creates
bargaining power through the threat of force to coercively influence another actor’s behavior
(Figure 2).33
This thesis focuses on how the PAA model demonstrates to an emerging power
U.S. commitment to regional defense. Credibility is measured by both the capabilities of the
weapon systems themselves and aspects of threats and promises that would follow an
emerging powers’ decision on whether or not to strike with a ballistic missile (Figure 1). Game
theory ideas will model these elements to show how the PAA can serve as a deterrent.
Commitment is a process of surrendering and eliminating one’s own options that may be
attractive to avoiding conflict in a crisis. This lack of options is intended to show clear intent to
30
Field, Alexander J. Schelling, von Neumann, and how the Event that Didn’t Occur. Santa Clara
University, California, USA. 25 February 2014. (www.mdpi.com/journal/games).
31
Dixit, Avinash K. and Barry J. Nalebuff. The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist’s Guide to Success to
Business & Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2008. Page xii.
32
Dixit. The Art of Strategy. Pages x – xi.
33
Schelling. Arms and Influence. Chapter 1 “The Diplomacy of Violence”. Dixit. The Art of Strategy.
Chapter 6 “Strategic Moves”.

10
an adversary and to imbed this position into a state’s security strategy so that, through the
course of future events, policy makers and strategists will find it difficult to alter this
commitment.34
The introduction of commitment into a scenario is a strategic move that changes
the course of events in order to favor the actor who introduced it and force the adversary to
question how to continue.35
An example of commitment is to place an army into a position
where all retreat options are removed (destroying bridges to retreat from) and the commander is
left with only the option to fight if attacked or suffer the humiliation of surrender.36
At policy
level, a commitment is demonstrated as one state making significant investments and
decelerations of solidarity to the defense of an ally. As leaders of a state change and the
international relations status quo remains the same, the new leaders will be forced to continue
that commitment or risk needlessly losing the respect of allies or worse.37
In all cases it is
important to note that a deterrent strategy is not necessarily one that creates a logical military
advantage that estimates and counters the anticipated actions of the adversary; rather a
deterrent seeks to influence the actions of an adversary.38
Credibility gives strength to a commitment as it is the mechanism which enables a
commitment to be believable. The understood ability of an actor to either prevent an adversary
from doing harm or the ability to do harm to an adversary is the bargaining power that Schelling
describes as the key result of a good deterrence strategy. This bargaining power matched with
diplomacy is the coercive diplomacy that seeks to influence the adversary’s behavior to favor
one’s position.39
Within credibility there are three components. The first and really the founding
component of credibility is the capability to prevent harm and to do harm. This aspect looks at
the reliability of weapon systems to carry out its desired effect, the training and morale of a force
coupled with the ability to coordinate the action competently. To refer to the earlier example,
positioning an army bravely to counter an enemy advance with no real option but to fight shows
commitment but it would be a meaningless commitment if the army was known to be poorly
trained and ill equipped to have any chance of success.
The next two components of credibility are threats and promises and are closely tied to
the capability. A threat is the perception of a response that seeks to punish an adversary for an
34
Schelling. Arms and Influence. Page 44.
35
Dixit. The Art of Strategy. Page 175.
36
37
Schelling. Arms and Influence. Pages 49 – 53.
38
39
Schelling. Arms and Influence. Pages 1 – 18 and 36 – 41.

11
action. In contrast a promise is a reward for an adversary’s compliance with their aims.40
For
both to be successful, the capability to carry out the threat or the promise must be both
understood and present. In many cases the idea of fixing automatic responses to adversary’s
actions has the added benefit of increasing credibility.41
It is as simple as stating ‘if you do X, no
matter what we will do Y’ or ‘if you do A we can give you B as a reward’. An example of a threat
is the simple MAD concept where there was an understood perception that if one side would
preemptively strike with nuclear weapons then the other side would automatically strike back
with equal or greater force. In terms of a promise, a stronger state could offer an adversary
relief from economic sanctions in return for divesting from their WMD program. In this example
both sides benefit from a reduction of tension caused by weapons proliferation and increased
economic prosperity. The strength of understanding the these two aspects of credibility is that
where a commitment is an unconditional act, the following responses of threats or promises
introduce options on the part of the actor in how best to act in order to influence an adversary.42
Elements of Deterrence
Commitment Credibility Bargaining
Power
Promiseand/
orThreat
Figure 1. Elements Required in Creating Deterrent Effects
40
Dixit. The Art of Strategy. Pages 181 – 182.
41
Dixit. The Art of Strategy. Pages 181.
42
Dixit. The Art of Strategy. Pages 177 – 185.

12
Bargaining
Power Diplomacy Coercive
Power
Elements of Influence
Figure 2. Elements Required in Creating Influence
In summary this thesis will examine whether or not a regional PAA can deter a ballistic
missile strike by Iran and North Korea in Chapter IV. It will use relevant, historical narratives to
understand the complexity of the strategy and to further understand the evolution of modern
deterrence thinking. Technical information will be used to highlight, in light of this new thinking
on deterrence, what is possible to further underscore the effectiveness of BMD. The evaluation
of the PAA will be accomplished using elements of Schelling’s arguments on deterrence and
game theory aspects to demonstrate the applicability of these well-regarded works to new
ideas. This thesis will not offer a defined solution to the present challenges of employing a BMD
strategy but it will conclude where both its strengths and weaknesses stand.
E. THESIS OVERVIEW
Following this thesis introduction, Chapter II discusses the evolution of missile defense
from the late 1960s to the present with more detail focused on the organization and evolution of
the PAA model and the global BMD strategy.43
This chapter will form the factual understanding
of missile defense. Chapter III explains Deterrence 2.0 as a simplified term that is used to
43
Note: The description of how the PAA model evolved will almost exclusively focus on the history of
EPAA since it is at present the only true PAA. The U.S. endeavors to formalize its agreements with allies
in the Middle East and Asia to replicate PAA in those regions.

13
describe the United States’ new belief in how best to deter aggression in the 21st
Century. This
will build on Chapter II in order to establish how the U.S. departed from previously accepted
norms of deterrence and its view of the future. Chapters II and III form the oriented
understanding of modern BMD and will set the preconditions for the evaluation of the PAA
model. Chapter IV uses the previously-mentioned deterrence model to evaluate the PAA model
as it relates to deterring emerging actors from using offensive missile strikes against U.S.
interests. Chapter V sets conclusions and forecasts how the BMD strategy could impact future
international and security relations for the U.S., its allies and potential adversaries.

14
II. BACKGROUND
In order to evaluate the United States’ BMD strategy it is imperative to understand the
historical evolution of both the political and strategic environment as well as the technological
capabilities that shape present decisions to create this strategy. Deterrence theories became a
dominant component of international relations at the end of WWII and continue to the present
day. The motivations of Cold War deterrence thinking were rooted in the desire to maintain a
stable, albeit complex, world order and to dissuade the use of nuclear weapons which had
become even more destructive with the use of ballistic missile systems.
There currently exist two views of deterrence. The first is the classic mid-Cold War view
that believes in a combination of policies where each state controls an equitable number of
offensive capabilities that allow the other side to adequately retaliate in the event one side
conducts a preemptive attack. At the same time the opposing sides, at their discretion, seek to
limit, reduce or in some cases eliminate certain offensive and defensive weapons so to prevent
an expensive arms race or a destructive miscalculation between adversaries. The strength of
this view is that it promotes a power balance between parties, de-incentivizes preemptive
strikes, and leaves open the possibility an avenue to reduce tensions through arms control.44
Russia, for a number of reasons, is a major champion of this classical approach.
The second view believes that the world has quickly moved past the Cold War order and
that the greatest threats to national security are the numerous emerging actors that can easily
acquire destructive weapons and would use these weapons for various reasons. The resulting
world view is a chaotic international order where sensible treaties are unenforceable and it is
therefore prudent for matured states to take defensive measures to guard their interests and
shape the global events.45
This new thought is largely championed by the U.S. and NATO.
Today, the U.S. deployment of regional PAAs to provide security for both its forces in a
region and its allies represents a major departure from previously accepted norms and protocols
of defense that dominated thinking from the late 1960s to the present. As a result of the
departure from these accepted norms, the U.S. BMD strategy has received a great deal of
hostile criticism that logically calls into question its effectiveness as a deterrent. However, what
motivates U.S. policy makers to continue to invest in the future of BMD is a realization that the
44
Futter. Ballistic Missile Defense and U.S. National Security Policy. Pages 11-14.
45

15
threats to its security are much more diverse than in the Cold War and any commitment to a
reduced defensive capability would be naive.
A. MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION AND THE ABM TREATY
MAD became the institutionalized concept of deterrence and balancing power in the
early 1970s with the establishment of a number of arms control treaties between the U.S. and
the Soviet Union. For the purposes of this work, the most notable agreement was the 1972
ABM Treaty, which placed significant restrictions on the deployment of key components of
BMDS such as interceptors and early warning radars. The assumption of the ABM Treaty was
that by placing a limit on defensive weapons it would de-incentivized further investment in
creating countering offensive weapons and would limit the arms race.46
The ABM Treaty was
further supported by a number of associated treaties that sought to place restrictions on
offensive nuclear weapons and therefore demonstrated how matured states could reduce
tensions through deterrence and controls. The intent of MAD was to accept that while the
opposing political objectives of the U.S. and the Soviet Union were largely irreconcilable, a
peaceful coexistence could be achieved when capabilities are balanced and intentions are
understood.47
The origins of MAD reach back to WWII and the strategic bombing campaign against
Germany by allied forces. During this period, the concept of total war was realized, and the
term strategic warfare was defined as a long-distance attack against an enemy’s population
centers and industrial capabilities. More specifically, the change from conventional warfare to
the new understanding of strategic warfare meant that the enemy’s military forces would be
bypassed in favor of striking a devastating hit against the state itself.48
Furthermore, the
demonstrated effects of the atomic bomb against Japan in 1945 made a strong case for
targeting population centers and industrial capacities with strategic weapons since it used a
relatively small force to achieve devastating results that prompted Japan to capitulate.49
A
parallel development was the use of ballistic missiles to attack strategic targets in order to
impact the will of a population. The German V-2 rocket system was effective in delivering
46
Futter. Ballistic Missile Defense and U.S. National Security Policy. Page 13.
47
Watts, Carl P. ‘Arms Race’, Encyclopedia of the new Cold War. New York. MTM Publishing,
Routledge. 2008. Pages 37-41.
48
Carty, Tony. The Origins of the Doctrine of Deterrence and the Legal Status of Nuclear Weapons.
Ethics and Defense. Ed. Howard Davis. New York, NY, USA: Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1986. Page 105.
49
Note: This is derived from military principal of economy of force. Both atomic bomb strikes were made
by one airplane using one bomb. The impact was a complete destruction of a city and its industrial
capacity thus making an enormous strategic gain towards Japanese capitulation and ending WWII.

16
conventional warheads against cities in the United Kingdom, causing terror in the population
and conversely forcing allied forces to quickly change priorities in their campaign against
Germany. A U.S. Army study in November 1944 concluded that, due to technological
limitations, it was impossible to defend against a V-2 attack and therefore the best option was to
continue an operational offensive against V-2 launch sites and production facilities.50
The
capitulation of Japan and the Allied fear of V-2 attacks on their populations during WWII
demonstrated that the concept of total war, utilizing long-range, mass effect weapons, could be
effective in destroying both an enemy’s capability and will to fight.
The first deterrent doctrine adopted by the U.S. was massive retaliation, which called for
an immediate nuclear response to defend against a Soviet attack on NATO.51
This
understanding prompted the Soviet Union to invest further in offensive nuclear weapons
systems and in response the U.S. continued to do the same.52
By the end of 1962, nuclear
weapons tests were occurring at a rate of three per month and collectively the U.S. and the
Soviet Union controlled over 37,000 nuclear weapons that could be delivered via ICBMs,
SLBMs and bombers.53
At the operational level, this strategy prompted both sides to maintain a
massive nuclear force that could be quickly launched against pre-determined targets in order to
prevent the other side from launching their nuclear forces. The execution of this strategy
depended heavily on rapid decision making that was supported by complex early warning and
C2 systems. The result of massive retaliation is that the Cold War arms race focused heavily on
offensive, strategic weapons and the employment relied on rapid decision making in a relatively
short period of time in order to neutralize the adversary's retaliatory capabilities. Effectively,
more nuclear weapon systems were needed to deter the other side from taking preemptive
action.
The 1961 Berlin Crisis and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis demonstrated how seriously
dangerous massive retaliation had become to civilization. The attempt by the Soviet Union to
promote political and security interests against NATO, combined with the lack of clear
communication between the opposing sides, brought both sides to near brinksmanship with the
50
51
Rowen, Henry S. Introduction. Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction, Its Origins and
Practice. Ed. Henry D. Sokolski. Strategic Studies Institute. U.S. Army War College. November 2004.
Page 3.
52
Note: NATO nuclear weapons development was restricted to the United States, United Kingdom and
France. Offensive nuclear weapons are defined as both the nuclear warhead and delivery systems such
as ballistic missiles and bombers.
53
Norris, Robert; Hans M. Kristensen. Global nuclear weapons inventories, 1945-2010. Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists. 1 July 2010. (http://bos.sagepub.com/content/66/4/77). Accessed 4 July 2015.

17
execution of the massive retaliation deterrence. It was clear by this point that miscalculation or
errors in the C2 systems were inevitable and the result could be the end of civilization. Both
sides understood that the arms race, the construction of either more strategic weapons or the
development of more sophisticated weapons, was fueling the tension. This tension was
compounded in the late 1960s by the U.S. and Soviet Union initiatives to invest in anti-ballistic
missile defenses (ABM) in order to gain some direct protection against a nuclear strike.54
In
addition, both sides developed MIRV delivery systems in order to overwhelm ABMs, which had
the added effect of multiplying the number of nuclear weapons that could be delivered in a
preemptive strike. As a result, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union realized that cooperative
control measures must be taken.
The MAD deterrent doctrine began in the late 1960s and was institutionalized in the
1970s through a series of treaties between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that sought to balance
power and reduce miscalculations through the creation of mutual vulnerability. The underlying
belief of the arms control measures was that the weapons technology could never be eradicated
but it should be limited and controlled so to minimize the chances of a preemptive nuclear attack
and retaliating exchanges.55
On the political level, the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed that
their differences were irreconcilable and that the promotion of the arms race could have
devastating consequences. At the strategic level, the arms race was unsustainable as both
sides attempted to quickly develop new methods and technologies to counter the other’s
perceived strengths.56
At the operational and tactical levels, the chances for miscalculation
were overwhelming. The first breakthrough in developing MAD was the 1968 Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which attempted to halt the spread of nuclear weapons
technology to other states, and encouraged the use of nuclear technology for peaceful
purposes. This, in effect, reduced the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the boundaries of
NATO and the Warsaw Pact and the possibility that a nuclear exchange could then be limited to
those territories by not expanding nuclear targets to other allies in other parts of the world. The
next major step was the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I and II that were agreed upon
between 1972 and 1974. SALT placed limits on the number of offensive strategic systems such
as SLBMs and ICBMs but left open MIRV technology since it created a decisive, offensive
weapon that could overwhelm defenses. In parallel with the SALT I agreement, the 1972 ABM
54
55
Shelling. Arms Control. Pages 5-6.
56
Battilega, John A. Soviet Views of Nuclear Warfare: The Post-Cold War Interviews. Getting MAD:
Nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice. Ed. Henry D. Sokolski. Strategic Studies
Institute. U.S. Army War College. November 2004. Pages 156 – 159.

18
Treaty was also put into force to ensure that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were equally
vulnerable to attack.57
The ABM Treaty specifically limited the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the deployment of
no more than two ABM sites comprising no more than 100 interceptors each that could protect
only the nation’s capitol and one ICBM launch field. It also placed restrictions on early warning
capabilities and interceptor development.58
The U.S. chose to limit the deployment of the
Safeguard ABM system to the ICBM field at Grand Forks AFB, while the Soviet Union deployed
its Galosh interceptors to defend Moscow. By 1975 the U.S. had abandoned the Safeguard
program since it was seen as largely ineffective in truly defending against a large MIRV attack.59
At the political and strategic level, however, the ABM Treaty was seen as breakthrough in
reducing the arms race. The ABM Treaty effectively created a mutual vulnerability between the
U.S. and the Soviet Union. Both sides would suffer the complete destruction of population
centers and military capabilities if a nuclear exchange were to happen.60
If a preemptive strike
or miscalculation were made, the offending side would still be vulnerable to a massive
retaliatory strike because nuclear forces had, by this time, developed a high degree of
survivability through distributed SLBMs as well as complex and survivable C2 networks. As a
result both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were incentivized to communicate and reduce the
possibility of a nuclear exchange.
MAD and the ABM Treaty are critical to a proper understanding of modern BMD issues.
MAD was largely successful in reducing the possibility of a direct U.S.-Soviet conflict and
limiting the number of strategic weapons in the bi-polar, Cold War era. Credibility is given to
MAD as a contributor to the Cold War’s peaceful conclusion and the subsequent commitment to
arms control. Specifically, the U.S. and the now Russian Federation entered into the Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaties (START) after the Cold War, which made the next step from limiting
the number and capabilities of weapons to actually reducing existing stockpiles. 61
A conclusion
that can be drawn from how the Cold War ended is that since each side understood that a
57
Sokolski, Henry D. Taking Proliferation Seriously. Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutually Assured
Destruction, Its Origins and Practice. Ed. Henry D. Sokolski. Strategic Studies Institute. U.S. Army War
College. November 2004. Pages 341- 344.
58
United States Department of State. Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of the
Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM Treaty). 26 May 1972.
Moscow. (http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/abm/abm2.html ). Accessed 4 July 2015.
Articles I and III.
59
Futter. Ballistic Missile Defense and U.S. National Security Policy. Pages 13-14.
60
Sokolski, Henry D. Taking Proliferation Seriously. Pages 341- 344.
61
Note: ‘START in the 1990s’ refers to the 3 treaties that were made between the U.S. and Russia from
the 1990s to 2010. They are START I in 1991, START II in 1993 and New START in 2009.

19
nuclear exchange was effectively futile in achieving strategic objectives it was more productive
to seek continuous agreements in order to pursue a peaceful coexistence. Today the MAD
concept is still viewed by Russian policy makers as a critical component of its security
relationship with the U.S.62
B. U.S. POLICY SHIFT
The U.S. was never comfortable with MAD as a deterrent concept. The idea that one’s
security was dependent upon the opponent’s rational judgment was counter to the natural idea
that threats should be removed.63
This was evident from the early 1960s and forward as U.S.
nuclear strike plans only targeted Warsaw Pact military targets as opposed to population
centers. The belief was that by preemptively striking military targets the enemy would lose their
ability to retaliate and, more importantly millions of lives would be spared by a nuclear
exchange. The desired result was that the Soviet Union would also be less inclined to use their
surviving nuclear forces to strike population centers within NATO.64
The result was that the U.S.
began to slowly favor a flexible response by seeking options that would limit damage in conflict.
This belief was drawn from several major observations. The first was that Berlin and Cuban
Crises never produced a nuclear exchange which led some strategists to believe that nuclear
deterrence was really a bluff and neither side would ever commit to this exchange.65
Second,
MAD did not stop communist expansion forcing the U.S. to engage in conventional warfare with
Soviet allies, notably in Korea and Vietnam. A broad conclusion from this understanding is that
while MAD was successful in preventing a direct conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union,
it did not deter the Soviet Union from making aggressive movements elsewhere. Additionally,
the ideas of a graduated response through limited conflict to oppose this aggression proved to
be costly.66
By the early 1980s the U.S. began to formally shift away from MAD. By 1980 the Soviet
Union had invaded Afghanistan, was fomenting revolutions in South America and, while still
62
63
Shinichi, Ogawa. Missile Defense and Deterrence. The National Institute for Defense Studies. Tokyo,
Japan. (http://www.nids.go.jp/english/publication/kiyo/pdf/bulletin_e2001_2.pdf). 7 November 2001.
Accessed 16 August 2015. Page 42.
64
Fairbanks, Charles H. Jr. MAD and U.S. Strategy. Getting MAD: Nuclear Mutually Assured
Destruction, Its Origins and Practice. Ed. Henry D. Sokolski. Strategic Studies Institute. U.S. Army War
College. November 2004. Pages 137- 146.
65
Fairbanks. MAD and U.S. Strategy. Page 138.
66
Field. Schelling, von Neumann, and how the Event that Didn’t Occur. Note: Referring specifically to
the use of graduated response to oppose North Vietnam through Operation ROLLING THUNDER. This
concept proved to only hamper and lengthen a campaign while risking U.S. credibility.

20
respecting the rules of SALT I and II, had begun to heavily modernize their offensive nuclear
force which drove the U.S. to do the same setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race. Even
more alarming was the fact that the Soviet Union had taken actions to step away from the ABM
Treaty. Specifically, they had mass produced the SA-5 Surface to Air Missile (SAM) systems
and begun to widely distribute the missile throughout their territory. The SA-5 showed the
capacity to be easily converted from a SAM to an ABM.67
Furthermore, the Soviet Union placed
an early warning radar within the interior of Russia in direct violation of the ABM Treaty, Article
VI.68
All of these actions suggested to U.S. leaders that the Soviet Union could be on the verge
of leaving their ABM Treaty commitment and then quickly advance their ABM programs to gain
a decisive strategic advantage.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan established the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as
a very public and aggressive research campaign to develop and potentially employ a
comprehensive missile defense shield. This campaign would employ a large early-warning
network coupled with numerous weapon systems to include space-based lasers to destroy
incoming ICBMs. The stated goal was to defend the U.S. from a massive ICBM attack from
either the Soviet Union or China. His reasons were logically based on the current Soviet threat
assessment and a desire to erode Soviet tyranny. However, like a number of his
contemporaries he had a larger ideological motive.69
The U.S. government had come to view
MAD as an unsustainable security doctrine that was based on allowing uneasy vulnerabilities
that created peace only through fear. This fear could then, on a conventional level, force
compromises or surrender positions and values on other fronts. President Reagan espoused his
vision of SDI by stating:
“I call upon the scientific community, who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their
great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace. To give us the means of
rendering these weapons impotent and obsolete….to achieve our goal of
eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles.”70
While SDI proved to be too expensive and was never fielded it was successful in two
areas. First, it caused the Soviet Union to reorient their defense spending on means to counter
67
Schneiter, George R. Implications of the Strategic Defense Initiative for ABM Treaty. Center for Naval
Analyses. Alexandria, Virginia USA. Professional Paper 441. February 1986. Page 6.
68
Schneiter, George R. Implications of the Strategic Defense Initiative for ABM Treaty. Page 6.
69
Note: This ideology is President Reagan’s desire to confront and degrade Soviet power since it was an
enemy of NATO and U.S. interests. Cooperation in his mind was close to appeasement and could serve
only to delay an inevitable conflict on terms favorable to the Soviet Union.
70
Reagan, Ronald. President of the United States. Announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
The White House, Washington D. C. 23 March 1983.

21
SDI and this heightened spending contributed to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union in the
early 1990s. Second, SDI provided the technological and organizational foundations for future
BMDS that would be developed in the next century.
The U.S. formally exited the ABM Treaty in June 2002 as part of its major shift in
defense thinking in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack. The intent of the
departure was to give the U.S. the legal authority to capitalize on technological concepts that
dated back to SDI in order to install a global BMD strategy. There were two major reasons for
this departure. First, the conditions on which the ABM Treaty was founded, namely the Cold
War arms race, were no longer relevant. By 2001, the U.S., NATO, and the Russian Federation
were seemingly cooperating in a number of areas to create mutual stability and security.
Specifically, the U.S. believed that START I and II were now the primary mechanisms to
maintaining a balance of power with Russia’s nuclear deterrent. 71
NATO and Russia were
seeking mutual security transparency with agreements such as Open Skies, the Conventional
Forces of Europe Treaties, and the NATO Founding Act. The second reason was that the Al-
Qaeda terrorist attack demonstrated to policy makers that national security threats were now
much more diversified than in the Cold War and new enemies could not be deterred with
offensive strategic weapons. Moreover, in the past decade, smaller states had acquired nuclear
weapons and advanced ballistic missile technologies. This demonstrated that arms control
treaties such as NPT and the ABM Treaty, which were paramount to ending the Cold War
peacefully, were now largely viewed as unenforceable in a global market where WMD
proliferation was occurring at a rapid pace.72
Facing a number of emerging threats the U.S.
concluded that any commitment to a reduced defense was naive.
The U.S. immediately developed a BMD strategy and supporting architecture after the
ABM Treaty abrogation. The first step was to reinvigorate research and the development of
BMDS with the establishment of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which was given direct
access to the Secretary of Defense and delegated authority to advise other components of the
military.73
United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) was assigned to lead the
employment of the global missile defense strategy through their delegated sub commands:
Joint Force Component Commands- Integrated Missile Defense and Space (JFCC-IMD and
71
Bush. Announcement of the United States’ Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
72
73

22
JFCC-Space).74
Furthermore, regional Combatant Commands (COCOM) were assigned the
responsibility of employing regionally tailored BMD theatre strategies that integrate with
STRATCOM in order to provide a global understanding of a ballistic missile attack. Through this
architecture, MDA acts as the continuous research and development agent who advises
USSTRATCOM and other COCOMs on the best BMD strategy options. The BMD strategy was
broadly organized into National Missile Defense (NMD) for the protection of the U.S. sovereign
territory and Theatre Missile Defense (TMD) to protect deployed U.S. forces and by extension
its allies as well.75
In 2002 the Bush Administration identified North Korea and Iran as the top ballistic
missile threats to the U.S. and its allies. Intelligence estimates demonstrated that both states
were developing WMD programs and ICBMs that could reach the U.S. Furthermore, Iran
showed the capability to attack NATO allies and North Korea was had already demonstrated a
similar capability to attack Japan in 1998. The fear was that these ‘rogue states’ would use the
threat of a relatively small ballistic missile force to paralyze U.S. actions under the threat of
attack against a population center.76
In 2003, the MDA proposed the employment of the Ground
Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) weapon system to counter emerging ICBM threats. GMD is a
defined as the sensor, tracking and C2 architecture used to employ the Ground-Base
Interceptor (GBI), which is a 3-stage missile designed to intercept an ICBM in mid-course flight
above the Earth's atmosphere.77
In 2005, the NMD component of the BMD strategy deployed
nine GBIs to Fort Greeley, Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to defend
against North Korea with a plan to increase the number of GBIs to 26 by 2010. To defend
against the Iranian threat, the U.S. sought to deploy a GMD or Third Site in Europe78
. In 2007
and 2008, the U.S. entered into direct agreements with Poland to deploy 10 GBIs on Polish
74
JFCC-IMD assigns assets and prioritizes target ballistic missiles when they cross through multiple
COCOMs. JFCC-Space provides the necessary early warning and tracking architecture that is critical to
BMD.
75
BMDRR. Pages 11-12.
76
Bush. Announcement of the United States’ Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
77
Pifer, Steven. Missile Defense in Europe: Cooperation or Contention? Foreign Policy at Brookings.
Arms Control Series, Paper 8. May 2012. Pages 8-9. Note: The GBI is significant since it demonstrates
a departure from the capabilities limit ABM Treaty. The GBI is specifically designed to only counter
ICBMs at long ranges where the ABM Treaty limited interceptor capabilities to terminal phases of flight.
78
Note: The ‘Third Site’ refers to the deployment of BMD capabilities outside of the U.S. It is also used
as a parallel term to mark the departure from the constraints of the ABM Treaty which limited the
deployment of BMD sites to just 2 and only side the nation.

23
territory and with the Czech Republic to deploy the X-Band early warning and tracking radar
site.79
Russia, who until the Third Site plan was announced, had been somewhat silent on
BMD, and then made an immediate and strong objection to this proposed deployment. Russia
cited several reasons for objecting to the Third Site. First, was a belief that GMD would be
aimed at Russia and therefore drive a return to the arms race that the ABM Treaty sought to
prevent. Secondly, Russia noted concerns over the lack of legal guarantees to ensure Russian
security in light of the BMD deployment. These objections were backed up by an increase in
Russia military spending and the deployment of forces to their western borders.80
In a broader
context, Russia had further reasons for concern beyond what was stated. From 1999 to 2004,
NATO had expanded its membership to former Warsaw Pact states giving Russia a sense of
further defeat after the Cold War.81
Additionally, the GMD deployment to Europe seemed to go
against the NATO-Russia Founding Act, which called for any further deployment of conventional
forces within NATO to be of a temporary nature.82
Finally, the past decade had shown that the
U.S. was now the sole global power as it was prosecuting two major conflicts and amassing a
global coalition to further U.S. aims. All these actions, from the Russian perspective, gave them
a sense of being reduced in global status and being slowly stripped of power.83
By 2009, Russia had invaded and occupied parts of Georgia to reassert its influence on
the western-leaning government and was accused of being behind a hybrid-cyber attack against
Estonia as retaliation for removing a Soviet-era memorial.84
Furthermore, Russia demonstrated
a lack of interest in committing to New START, which would be a third arms reduction
agreement and the cornerstone of what the U.S. saw as the primary source of continued
stability in U.S. - Russian relations. At this point Russia referred to the Third Site as a
contributing source for their increasing tension with the West.85
At the same time, North Korea and Iran were further increasing their WMD and ballistic
missile capability. By 2009, North Korea had tested its second nuclear weapon and
79
Pifer, Steven. Missile Defense in Europe: Cooperation or Contention? Pages 8-9.
80
Giles. European Missile Defense and Russia. Pages 11-16.
81
Legvold, Robert. Managing the New Cold War.
82
Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security Between NATO and the Russian
Federation. Paris. 27 May 1997. Arms Control Today. Arms Control Association.
(https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997_05/found). Accessed on 12 July 2015.
83
Futter, Andrew, Ph D. Senior Lecturer in International Relations. University of Leicester, United
Kingdom. Personal Interview. 14 April 2015.
84
Marching off to cyber war. The Economist. Technology Quarterly: Q4 2008. 4 December 2008.
85

24
demonstrated a rudimentary ICBM capability with its Taepodong II missile test. Iran was
furthering an assumed nuclear weapons production program under the name of a civilian power
program. Iran had increased testing of MRBM and IRBM systems, and on the political level it
had increased its anti-Western and anti-Israeli rhetoric. Moreover, the GBI were largely
unsuccessful in tests and the Polish GMD base was still years from becoming operational.86
Given these conditions, it was clear to the U.S. defense establishment in 2009 that a change in
the BMD strategy was necessary.
C. EVOLUTION OF THE BMD STRATEGY
The President Obama administration was initially skeptical of missile defense upon
taking office in 2009; however, it led a massive expansion and reorientation of the BMD
strategy. Soon after taking office, the Obama administration assessed that there was a
continued need for a robust missile defense program. In the national security arena, the Obama
administration took office with two policy objectives: first, to improve relations with Russia
(measured by the signing of the New START treaty) and second to deter or eliminate the WMD
and ballistic missile threats posed by Iran and North Korea.87
These goals drove an
assessment of the BMD strategy it inherited from the Bush administration; their assessment
concluded that a change was required. Within the European-BMD strategy, there existed a
number of programmatic problems with the deployment of the GMD systems. These problems
focused on the technical inadequacies and the length of time to deploy the systems in Poland.88
Additionally, a new threat assessment showed that the primary ballistic missile threat was not
Iranian ICBMs targeting the U.S. Rather, Iran was making multiple MRBM and IRBM tests that
indicated it was more likely to strike at U.S forces in Europe, and its NATO allies or Israel.89
This, in turn, caused NATO to reorient its priorities on missile defense and assert a larger role.
At the same time, the U.S. was mindful that the presence of a Third Site was a major irritant to
Russia and that any change in course could open a path to improving relations with Russia—a
key goal of the new Obama Administration.
The primary problems with the GMD deployment was that the system was both
unreliable and taking too long to become operational. The Bush administration pursued a ‘spiral
development deployment’ model whereby weapon systems are fielded before they are proven
86
87
Futter, Andrew. The elephant in the room: US ballistic missile defense under Barack Obama.
Defense & Security Analysis. Volume 28, Number 1, 3-16 March 2012.
88
89
BMDR. Page 29.

25
to work. The cause of this seemingly illogical approach was mainly political since it
demonstrated the U.S. government’s desire to aggressively install BMDS before it could be
curtailed in debates on the merits of stepping away from traditional thoughts on deterrence.
Secondly, it quickly built a strategic and technological framework that did not previously exist to
improve upon in the future.90
The problem, however, was that the GBI weapon system was
remarkably expensive, and its test performance was mired in controversy over its true success
rate. A number of the GBI tests had either failed to intercept a target or the conditions of the
actual test were of such a limited nature that they were not fully demonstrating the GBI’s
purpose of intercepting an ICBM in the exo-atmosphere. 91
While the GBI development plan
demonstrated that it would be able to reliably perform its mission, that would not be a reality
until 2017 and the program would begin installation between 2004 and 2006. The real impact of
the GMD deployment was that it actually undermined deterrent capabilities since the capability
would not be immediately operational, would remain very costly and is only effective against
ICBM threats.
The second problem was that by 2009, the threat environment had changed. The GMD
Third Site in Poland was being installed to primarily defend the U.S. against the emerging
Iranian ICBMs.92
However, the U.S. Intelligence Community93
had assessed that Iran was far
from being able to employ a nuclear-armed ICBM that could pose any real danger to the U.S.
Instead, Iran had made significant gains in employing MRBMs to IRBMs that were a direct
threat to NATO and Israel. In the Pacific region, similar assessments were being made about
the North Korean threat to U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea.94
This drove the Obama
administration to conclude that, while the threat of an ICBM attack on the U.S. from a ‘rogue
state’ was credible, it was a distant threat. However, a clear and present threat was an attack
on allies and U.S. forces in allied states by MRBMs and IRBMs.95
Therefore, adversaries could
use the threat of a ballistic missile attack on a U.S. ally as a way to undermine alliances—a
significant source of U.S. global power.
90
91
BMDR. Page 30.
92
BMDR. Page 29.
93
Note: U.S. Intelligence Community is the term used to define all the Intelligence organizations within
the U.S. government. Each organization is responsible for a specific intelligence discipline and they often
collaborate to develop a collective conclusion on a subject to provide actionable advice to the President.
Members of the Intelligence Community include the CIA, DIA and NSA.
94
95
BMDR. Pages 4-9.

26
The third problem stood within the U.S. European-BMD organization and objectives.
The Third Site basing agreement was made only with Poland and the Czech Republic as
opposed to NATO as a whole. In addition, the system was intended to first defend only U.S.
interests and then provide Europe with supplemental defense.96
In 2005, NATO committed to
the ALTBMD program, a new BMD force comprised of voluntary NATO members to provide
protection to deployed forces. The early vision of ALTBMD was effectively to provide small
area, point-defense TMD. This supported NATO’s vision of future operations outside of its
territorial space.97
NATO, by this point also recognized the threats posed by Iran but lacked the
organizational and technological capabilities to defend European territory. Russia was alarmed
too by the basing of the Third Site in Poland since it also recognized that Iran did not have a
credible ICBM capability and therefore concluded that the GMD deployment must be targeted
against Russia’s nuclear deterrent.98
Russia, in response discussed the possibility of scrapping
its START agreements and putting an emphasis on preemptive strikes against U.S. BMD
assets.99
The needed re-orientation was announced on 17 September 2009 by President Obama
with the introduction of EPAA, a 4-phased plan that would use proven technologies to defend
against known threats on a prioritized basis. The goal of this plan is to gradually expand
capability and coverage area between the years of 2011 and 2020, to create protection for a
majority of the NATO allies. Most importantly, the controversial Third Site was cancelled and
the GBIs were re-deployed to the U.S. to add strength to the NMD component of the now-global
BMD strategy.100
The land-based GBI component of EPAA was replaced by the shorter-range,
SM-3 interceptors based on U.S. Navy Aegis-equipped ships patrolling the eastern
Mediterranean to provide an intercept platform against Iranian MRBMs in the ascent to mid-
course phase of flight. The SM-3 provided a suitable interceptor since it was more mobile,
96
BMDR. Page 29.
97
Kiefer, Dave, ALTBMD Deputy Program Manager. ALTBMD. Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile
Defense Programme Office, NATO. (http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2011IAMD/DaveKiefer.pdf). July 2011.
Accessed 6 August 2015.
98
Pifer. Missile Defense in Europe: Cooperation or Contention? Page 9.
99
Boese, Wade. Anti-Missile System Uncertainty Grows. Arms Control Today. Arms Control
Association. 4 December 2008. (http://www.armscontrol.org/). Accessed 6 August 2008.
100
BMDR. Page 29-30. Note: The re-deployment of the long-range and high-altitude GBI to US reflects
the globally re-oriented strategy in 2009. NMD will utilize GMD to guard against a limited ICBM attack
which is the most likely type of attack the U.S. homeland could face. Conversely, SM-3s will be utilized to
protect regional interests from an array of shorter range ballistic missile threats through the Phase
Adaptive Approach architectures.

27
significantly less expensive than the GBIs and proven in a number of tests.101
Importantly, the
Aegis program has a plan to continually improve the SM-3 to add greater range and capabilities.
For example the SM-3 Block IIA, scheduled for deployment in 2018 with Phase III, will have the
range and kinetic capacity to intercept IRBM to ICBMs over the entire European area.102
President Obama summarized the purpose and objectives of the new approach to a BMD
strategy:
“The new approach will provide capabilities sooner, build on proven systems, and
offer greater defense against the threat of missile attack than the 2007 European
missile defense program…and it sustains and builds upon our commitment to
protect the U.S. against long-range ballistic missile threats.”103
At the strategic level, EPAA added a number of benefits to strengthening the NATO
alliance by adding more U.S. capabilities to the defense of Europe. NATO’s understanding of
the threat posed by ballistic missiles being used as terror weapons was cemented at NATO’s
2010 Lisbon Summit with the collective commitment made by the NATO Secretary General:
“We will ensure that NATO has the full range of capabilities necessary in order to
deter and defend against any threat to the safety and security of our populations.
Therefore, we will….develop the capability to defend our populations and
territories against ballistic missile attacks as a core element of our collective
defense.”104
With that commitment, NATO members agreed to voluntarily provide capabilities to expand
ALTBMD from point-defense to include high-altitude interceptors that can provide wide-area
defense. Furthermore, some NATO members agreed to invest in Aegis radar systems to
expand a uniformed early warning capacity. EPAA, in turn, will remain an independent and more
capable partner to NATO’s European defense. 105
However, EPAA, through its integration with
the U.S.’s larger global BMD architecture, will provide NATO the needed space-based early
warning and tracking capability. The result of the ALTBMD expansion to match EPAA
capabilities is that NATO could deploy hundreds of integrated interceptors to provide a layered
defense of the European airspace from a ballistic missile attack.
101
Futter. Ballistic Missile Defense and U.S. National Security Policy. Page 137. Ballistic Missile
Defense Intercept Flight Test Record. Missile Defense Agency Fact Sheet. (http://www.mda.mil ). 25
June 2015. Accessed 6 August 2015.
102
103
Obama, Barack, President of the United States. Remarks by the President on strengthening missile
defense in Europe. The White House, Washington D. C. 17 September 2009.
104
NATO 2010.
105
Kiefer. ALTBMD.

28
The second strategic benefit of EPAA is that it will provide greater flexibility for the U.S.
military to manage its forces globally. With reduced financial assets and continuing
commitments to defend allies across the globe, it is logical that the U.S. would use technology
to leverage efficiencies to continue its global role. From 2009 to 2011, the ‘Pivot to Asia’
agenda recognized the need for the U.S. to engage itself more in Asian affairs to provide
security both for its regional interests and to ensure a peaceful rise of China. Many in Europe
view this pivot as a reduction of U.S. commitment to NATO, which is understandable given the
relative peace in Europe in the decade after the Cold War and the number of conflicts
elsewhere. However, given the resurgent Russian threat and the obvious Iranian threat, EPAA
demonstrates that the U.S. is still heavily invested in NATO’s defense and should provide a
continued deterrent at a more efficient cost. Even Poland, who could be slighted by the
cancellation of the Third Site, is reassured as it will host one of the two Aegis Ashore (AA) SM-3
Block IIA sites when Phase III is installed in 2018.106
At the same time, EPAA continues to be a significant source of tension with Russia. In the
spirit of change and renewed cooperation, the Russian Federation accepted the terms of New
START in April 2010 and gave indications that it was in agreement with the principles of
EPAA.107
However, Russia made it clear as a cooperating participant at the 2010 Lisbon
Summit that it wanted to integrate with NATO and share in BMD as a reassurance that NATO’s
BMD would never threaten Russia. While NATO provided counter offers of joint early warning,
shared intelligence and transparency in implementation, NATO denied the majority of Russia’s
demands citing that it gave too much early warning and control authority to Russia on NATO’s
BMD programs.108
Put more bluntly, a U.S. State Department official stated “NATO will protect
NATO, and that’s the bottom line…”109
In response Russia now cites NATO’s BMD coupled
with the U.S.’s strategic prompt global strike concept as a key threat to Russian security.110
Internal to EPAA and NATO, there remain challenges to the sustainment of the strategy.
EPAA’s Phase IV was cancelled in May 2013 due to reported financial costs and global
priorities. Phase IV would have added the SM-3 Block IIB to the AA bases in Romania and
106
United States Department of State. United States European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) and
NATO Missile Defense. Fact Sheet: Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance.
(http://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/162447.htm). 3 May 2011. Accessed 6 August 2015.
107
Pifer. Missile Defense in Europe: Cooperation or Contention? Page 15.
108
Futter. Ballistic Missile Defense and U.S. National Security Policy. Page 150-153.
109
Collina, Tom. Missile defense cooperation stalls. Arms Control Today. Arms Control Association.
July/August 2011.
110
NSSRF 2020.

29
Poland, giving the system the capability to not only hit short to intermediate-range missiles but
also ICBMs in the exo-atmosphere. This cancellation reflects the realities of a strained U.S.
foreign policy and the impacts of its budgetary constraints. However, the cancellation did
alleviate some of the Russian tension over the installation of a ground-based ICBM
interceptor.111
The relationship of EPAA with ALTBMD presents an additional challenge. ATLBMD is
developing as a voluntary contribution of European states to develop their own comprehensive
BMD architecture. The integration of the currently more advanced EPAA and the less uniform
ALTBMD capabilities presents internal coordination challenges, particularly is the ability to share
software and C2 capabilities between the EPAA and ALTBMD forces.112
Finally, continued
Russian protest against BMD for a number of reasons could drive further ‘adaptations’ or
‘course corrections’ within the NATO strategy in order to alleviate international tension. The end
result could be an erosion of a core commitment of the alliance.
At present EPAA is the only PAA and the U.S. wishes to model EPAA with its allies in Asia
and the Middle East. The PAA model is an agreement that focuses on providing a regionally-
tailored, phased plan that incrementally expands capability and coverage over a period of time
and targets its defensive measures based on the most likely threats.113
The key aspects of the
PAA model is its ability to integrate into a global U.S. BMD network to leverage a global defense
and integrate regional allied interceptor systems together in order leverage the added power of
their capabilities. In this concept, the U.S. can extend its defense deterrence to its allies and the
U.S. then benefits from a cooperative approach to defense of mutual interests. This new
endeavor represents a new view of deterrence that is a clear departure from the concepts of an
offensive and decisive force. This new view of deterrence no longer accepts the notion that
security can be achieved through a balance of capabilities and the acceptance of losses if
hostilities ignite. Rather, it seeks to dissuade aggression through a commitment to first
defending a state’s vital interests
111
Doran, Peter B. EPAA Phase Four: Avoiding Death by A Thousand Cuts. Center for European Policy
Analysis. 20 March 2015. (http://www.cepa.org/sites/default/files/documents/CEPA%20Op-
ed,%20EPAA%20Phase%20Four.pdf). Accessed 6 August 2015.
112
Burke. Written Interview. 20 March 2015.
113
Rose. A U.S. State Department Perspective on the Phased Adaptive Approach to Missile Defense.
12 April 2012.

30
III. DETERRENCE 2.0
In addition to a historical understanding of how BMD became a reality, it is equally important
to examine the contemporary viewpoint of how security should be presently achieved. The
understanding of this viewpoint is critical since it provides insights into the reasons for the
installation of a broad global missile defense shield. At a theoretical level, global security
concerns are well past the uncertainties that characterized the immediate post-Cold War
environment. These concerns must now be viewed through the context of a multi-polar world,
where there are many independent actors with numerous motivations and varying, albeit still
dangerous, capabilities. In more concrete terms, the threats to U.S. security are much more
dynamic and unpredictable. The challenge today is to develop a standing deterrent strategy
that provides a politically acceptable force structure and at the same time is flexible enough to
actually deter this broad range of adversarial actors.
Deterrence will remain a central part of any developed state’s military strategy. From a
political point of view, the benefits of victory are not worth the costs of fighting. It is better,
rather, to have the bargaining power that is created by the presence of a good deterrence in
order to preserve national interests without conflict.114
Therefore, a successful military deterrent
is one that is present and never used while the state enjoys peace on its terms since an
aggressor is cognitively dissuaded from an attack. The challenge today is creating a deterrent
that in fact cognitively removes the motivation of aggressors, despite their different motives and
centers of gravity. How can one deter Al-Qaeda when they do not govern territory or
populations but can still strike with devastating consequences? The authoritarian Iranian
government invests heavily in terrorist networks as well as advanced ballistic missiles that are
coupled to a suspected nuclear weapons program. For decades, the Iranian economy and
population has suffered from the impacts of international sanctions and its recognized pariah
status. How then can Iran be deterred when it seems able to endure sanctions and maintains a
second strike capability through terror attacks? Even more challenging is when North Korea
actively provokes the U.S. and its regional allies through sporadic conventional attacks and
multiple tests of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. How can North Korea be deterred
when it has shown a willingness to commit to aggression and the allies are clearly not willing to
retaliate since it risks a second massive and desperate strike by North Korea that could result in
114

31
the destruction of South Korea? Moreover, is it sensible to retaliate with nuclear weapons when
the action could itself have a number of negative secondary effects in an extremely
interconnected world? Today there are a number of scenarios, and for any response there are
even more unknown or undesirable consequences of a nuclear retaliation. It is logical to assess
that U.S.’s security doctrine should move further past the doctrine of flexible response and
create conditions where the security of its populations and territory is nearly assured and it has
a variety of response options.
Deterrence 2.0 takes into consideration contemporary security realities and defines how to
deter aggression in a multi-polar security environment. The pursuit of a new approach to
deterrence was born out of the 11 September 2001 terror attack, but it is important to note that
this new thinking will not deter terrorist organizations such as of Al-Qaeda. Rather it is intended
to deter those hostile states that have emerged to threaten U.S. security but have not yet
achieved a level of strength to outright defeat or destroy the U.S. or its allies. The first section
will describe Deterrence 2.0, propose its goals, and explain why it is a favorable guide to
developing broad defense strategies. The second section will examine the political trends that
lead to the present thinking on defense. Moreover, this section will briefly examine security
trends both inside the U.S. as well as the international trends that further guide defense
planning. The third section examine the role technology plays in making the idea of ballistic
missile defense a reality and drives the broad acceptance of missile defense.
A. GENERAL DESCRIPTON
Deterrence 2.0 states that any strategy should first prioritize the defense of vital interests
against a preemptive attack before considering retaliation options. A credible ability to repel an
attack could cognitively dissuade an aggressor from attacking since it would be both unable to
inflict their desired damage and be exposed to a range of unknown consequences.115
This
concept calls for the development of both strong defensive networks in parallel with a wide
range of efficient retaliation capabilities that are not limited to military weapons. In contrast, to
the accepted retaliation-based deterrence which focuses on the use of a proportional number of
strategic offensive weapons that are designed to destroy a potential attacker’s centers of gravity
in retaliation for a preemptive attack?
115
Note: Vital interests for the purposes of this paper are defined as a state’s sovereign territory,
population centers and forces deployed in an ally’s territory. This expands the notion of a vital interest
from previously accepted norms but accounts for the reality that ballistic missiles used as a terror weapon
would likely be used to attack the fore mentioned interests. Therefore, for deterrence purposes it is
important to highlight this fact.

32
While the number of strategic threats faced by the U.S. today is significantly higher than
during the Cold War, the scale of these threats no longer threaten the very existence of the U.S.
These threats are nonetheless a concern since their impacts could cause unacceptable losses
and serve to paralyze U.S. actions. The number of potential threats to the U.S. and its allies
range from the known Russian nuclear arsenal to rogue states such as Iran, which could use a
ballistic missile as a mass terror weapon to create instability within NATO. Today, the U.S. is
much stronger than any rogue state; therefore it does not need to bargain when it comes to
deterrence.116
As a result, the alliance can both employ strong defenses and threaten retaliation
since there is no reason to negotiate mutual arms control agreements. In light of this strength,
BMD is justified because future capabilities could allow rogue-states to strike the U.S. and its
allies to cause terror. The problem then becomes how to retaliate when the damage caused by
the attack was negated by BMDS and retaliating against an aggressor with the same WMD may
have unacceptable consequences. Thus retaliation options become more complicated as
global realities demand less collateral damage to preserve a lasting stability. Therefore, in this
reality, the only real known is the target of a potential attacker—populations and territories—as
such it is prudent to defend those centers of gravity first.
Deterrence 2.0 defines two categories of adversarial actors that are able to deliver a
WMD via a ballistic missile. The first category is the Established Actor; namely Russia and
China. They are the most capable in attacking and overwhelming a U.S. or NATO BMD force.
However, they are rational actors who will evaluate the consequences of their actions, act
predictably with their forces and have well-defined centers of gravity.117
Therefore, they are the
least likely to launch a preemptive ballistic missile strike. The second category is the Emerging
Actor, which includes Iran and North Korea. These states are the least capable since they have
a limited number of ballistic missile and WMD resources that could be defeated by BMDS.
However, Emerging Actors are the most likely to launch an attack because their actions are
unpredictable, they have little to lose from a strike because their centers of gravity are hard to
define and they may use the threat of a strike as leverage to gain concessions (Figure 3).118
To
account for the different motivations, capabilities and centers of gravity that either an
Established or Emerging Actor possess, Deterrence 2.0, in terms of missile defense, must have
116
117
BMDR. Pages 4-5.
118
Haffa, Robert P. Ravi R. Hichkad, Dana J. Johnson and Philip W. Pratt. Deterrence and Defense in
“The Second Nuclear Age”. Northrup Grumman Analysis Center.
(www.analysiscenter.northrupgrumman.com) Pages 11-17.

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