LONDON – George W. Bush and his Republican praetorian guard of hard-liners (many of whom, for no other reason than cowardice, ducked the call to duty in Vietnam) have put Al Gore needlessly on the defensive on the issue of national missile defense. Their intent, by hook or by crook, is to make Mr Gore look weak on defense, even if it means unilaterally abrogating a solemn international treaty with Russia and risking driving emerging Russia back into its Cold War bunker.

Missile defence is predicated on the increasingly nonsensical notion that a “rogue state” (though these words are no longer politically correct, according to no less an authority than Madeleine Albright) will fire nuclear tipped missiles into Alaska and even northern California and seize a political advantage that its suitcase nuclear bomb deposited in a left-luggage locker in New York’s Grand Central Station could not. No wonder that even the ever-faithful British who have made a habit of never querying U.S. defense issues have started to air their doubts.

Now, by one of those quirks of journalistic fate, I have been handed a report that has been considered at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The report makes it clear that 1) that there is an alternative that would mean that it was quite unnecessary either to need to break international law or alienate Russia, 2) that this alternative has the added bonus that it would not neutralize China’s strategic retaliatory nuclear capability and thus would not work to indirectly trigger a dangerously destabilizing nuclear arms race between China and India. The reason, perhaps, that this report has been kept from out-loud discussion is that it is astonishingly similar to the proposal touted recently by the Russian president Vladimir Putin.

In four words it is a system of “Airborne Boost-Phase Defence” or, in common parlance, shooting down missiles as they take off rather than waiting for them to come near to landing. Rocket boosters are easy both to detect and to track. They are more vulnerable and easier to destroy than incoming warheads, and the entire payload- warheads and decoys- can be downed with a single shot. Added to that, is that such a defense system need only cover the enemy’s territory rather than the wide expanse of territory at home that might be threatened. Moreover, the Pentagon has already admitted that it will have difficulty distinguishing between decoys and an actual incoming missile. But with this boost-phase defence, such misleading counter measures would be much more difficult if not impossible. However, such a system is only effective against small states like North Korea or Iraq, not against big continental countries like Russia and China with their intercontinental ballistic missile forces. Thus it is not going to upset the status quo, a vital political consideration for those who value big power strategic stability.

How does it work? It is, according to these papers before me, based on a high-speed rocket making use of a small “kinetic-kill vehicle” for a payload. This homes in on the booster’s infra-red signature. For dealing with the supposed coming threat from North Korea these airborne interceptor launch platforms could be located over international waters in the Sea of Japan. They can be launched from fighter aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicles. Or they could be a high-powered laser carried aboard a Boeing 747-400F.

There are 80 pages of scientific and strategic justification for this scheme, which a layman like me peruses with leaden eyes. But certain items stand out- it is more likely to work than the so far unproven national missile defence system to be based in Alaska. Second, it is very much cheaper. Third, it avoids adverse Russian or Chinese reactions which could undermine US security in the long term.

This raises the political question why has the Clinton Administration attempted to portray thinking of this kind as purely Russian inspired when its very own advisors are hard at work on a similar idea? Why also has the Clinton administration not encouraged public debate, as it has with its spend-thrift, dangerously destabilizing and, more than likely, unworkable Alaskan scheme?

Beyond that one can also ask why, when Mr Clinton has achieved so much with his creative diplomacy with North Korea, when the UN-led disarmament programme in Iraq seems in retrospect to have been thoroughly effective and when every U.S. general knows full well the U.S.’s best defence against the “rogue states” is its retaliatory capability, does the Clinton Administration persist in tying itself publicly to the pursuit of its national missile defence scheme?

There is indeed only one answer – that for too long Mr Clinton has run scared before the old Cold War warriors who have now arranged themselves anew around the Republican presidential candidate. The Clinton Administration, having no defence of its own, has capitulated before the right’s offence. No administration since the onset of the Cold War has done so little for arms control. The Clinton Administration enters its final days having passed up the great historic opportunity to engage in really effective nuclear disarmament with its erstwhile enemy, Russia, despite the encouragement from a range of informed opinion from a former secretary of defence to a former head of U.S. nuclear strategic forces. It is a mistake that is not much less than a war crime. That Mr Clinton should compound this dreadful record by conniving in obfuscating the choices before the American people in providing for their defence – albeit in this case, most likely, only an imaginary threat- is beyond all reason. It is simply cowardice and in another age Mr Clinton would have been taken out and shot.

I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com