Review by Choice Review
The Phantom Defense is an explicit argument against the George W. Bush administration's plan to accelerate development and deployment of national missile defense (NMD). Coauthored by a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer, a former CIA and State Department analyst, and a physicist, the work harnesses both political and technological arguments to make its case. Its basic thrust is that the perceived threat from "rogue states" on which the need for NMD is based is a hollow one, and that current plans will trigger a renewed arms race with an unnecessarily alienated Russia and China. According to the text, the imperatives of the military-industrial complex, rather than strategic and scientific logic, are determining policy on this important and expensive policy issue. The authors assert, perhaps with eerie prescience, that rogue states are much more likely to use terrorist-type weapons and delivery systems to attack the US than they are to employ ballistic missiles. The book concludes with a range of alternative policy and arms control measures available to deal effectively with the threats involved. It also includes a useful appendix on technical countermeasures to missile defense systems. Recommended for general readers, upper-division undergraduates and above. J. L. Twigg Virginia Commonwealth University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
The authors, veterans of the military, the CIA, the U.S. Foreign Service, and Argonne National Laboratory, declare that "national security must take precedence over partisan and self-serving policies; national missile defense should be turned down in the national interest." This brief, focused book explains this damning conclusion. Part 1 examines the history of "Star Wars," the mythology that has been cultivated around the dream of a national missile defense (NMD) system, and the place of NMD in a larger unilateralist worldview gaining strength in Washington. Part 2 dissects the threat NMD is intended to meet, explains "why national missile defense won't work," and describes the flaws of newer, more exotic forms of NMD currently being proposed. Part 3 considers the geopolitical consequences of a unilateral U.S. effort to implement NMD and discusses the arms-control and policy alternatives. Testing possible NMD systems has already cost the nation billions of dollars; perhaps before we decide to implement this technology, voters and politicians need to consider the questions raised here. --Mary Carroll
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The authors (Eisendrath and Goodman are senior fellows with the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C.; Marsh is a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory) present a sound indictment of the missile defense plans of the Bush administration. The thesis of this compressed, not overly technical book is that effective defense against incoming ballistic missiles is impossible given the current state of technology. Countermeasures (camouflaging the real warhead, decoys) against a defensive system can be devised by an attacking state at low cost, so the defensive system cannot reliably distinguish real from sham targets. The authors see no point in pouring $100 billion or more into a system so fraught with technical difficulty and so vulnerable to unsophisticated countermeasures. If national missile defense is the "phantom" of the book's title, then why has it been pursued so intensively by the right wing of American politics? For the authors, the answer lies in the alliance of defense contractors, who have benefited from the enormous sums spent on Star Wars initiatives since the Reagan years, with politicians on the right, who batten on campaign contributions from those contractors. The authors trace how pressure to portray missile defense as feasible has led to exaggeration of threats, rigged tests and suppression of inconvenient data. This book presents a partisan but powerful case, one that advocates of national missile defense will be called upon to rebut. The outcome of the debate matters, and not only because of the money at stake. If the authors here are correct, deploying even an ineffective missile defense will trigger a renewed arms race and jeopardize rather than enhance U.S. security. (Oct) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
