WASHINGTON -- Ronald Reagan's dream of shielding the nation with a missile defense system, which critics derisively dubbed "star wars," may be closer to reality.
Legislation that promises to put in place a limited anti-missile system passed the House yesterday, 317-105, with bipartisan support. On Wednesday, a similar measure won nearly unanimous approval in the Senate and gained the endorsement of the White House.
Differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill are expected to be resolved with little difficulty.
After years of refusing to commit to a missile defense system, President Clinton and many congressional Democrats have done an abrupt about-face and now support some version of it. If funding is approved, the Defense Department says, the anti-missile system could be completed by 2005.
With the tide in their favor, longtime Republican champions of the idea are sounding a triumphant note.
"For too long, our citizens have been totally unprotected," Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Western Maryland Republican, told colleagues. "Even a single ballistic missile could not be shot down. It's high time that we get on with the task of protecting our people."
Yesterday, Rep. Constance A. Morella of Montgomery County was one of only two House Republicans to oppose the measure. The Democrats were split evenly, with 103 -- including Reps. Benjamin L. Cardin of Baltimore and Steny H. Hoyer of Southern Maryland -- voting for the measure, and Reps. Elijah E. Cummings of Baltimore and Albert R. Wynn of Prince George's among 102 who voted against it.
Clinton and other Democrats who support the measure say their change of heart reflects a change in circumstances. They say they have become increasingly alarmed that rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran pose a threat that cannot be met with Cold War-era arms treaties.
"We are committed to meeting the growing danger that outlaw nations will develop and deploy long-range missiles that could deliver weapons of mass destruction against us," Clinton said this week.
The president put $10.5 billion in his budget for developing a missile defense system over the next five years but wanted to wait until June 2000 before deciding whether to deploy it.
In explaining Clinton's newfound willingness to agree to deployment, the White House noted that the legislation takes care not to conflict with the goal of negotiating further nuclear weapons reductions with Moscow.
But arms-control advocates, who fiercely oppose a missile defense system, said the White House and Democrats were simply trying to neutralize an issue they fear could hurt their party in 2000 elections, particularly after allegations that China acquired secret U.S. nuclear and missile technology.
"This is just one more Clinton flip-flop," said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an arms-control advocacy group. Vice President [Al] Gore wants to take the issue off the table, like they did with deficit reduction, welfare reform and military spending."
In spite of the votes this week, deployment of an anti-missile system is a long way off. Even if the bill becomes law, it would be only a policy statement, guiding -- but not binding -- decisions on spending and authorization.
What's more, critics say, the technology to develop such a system does not exist and perhaps never will. They say more than $120 billion has been spent since 1983 in failed attempts to realize Reagan's vision of an impenetrable space-based missile shield.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, held up an umbrella with cloth cut from between its ribs yesterday and described it as the "prototype" of the proposed missile shield.
"What's next?" Kucinich asked the House. "Duck and cover drills?"
But part of the reason for the broad Democratic support is that the proposal has been scaled back to more realistic proportions, said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr., a South Carolina Democrat.
"This is a big difference from what Ronald Reagan first proposed," Spratt said. "It's ground-based, very limited and doesn't interfere with existing treaties. I think people felt we had already invested so much in it, the logic was to finish the job."
If Democrats were looking for reasons to back the proposal, they got plenty from a bipartisan commission of defense and security experts that first reported to Congress last year on the missile threat from rogue nations.
Donald H. Rumsfeld, a former defense secretary who chairs the panel, updated his report during a closed briefing in the House. He told reporters later that 25 to 30 nations have, or are trying to obtain, ballistic weapons capability.
North Korea's test Aug. 31 of a three-stage ballistic missile, on a trajectory over Japan, played a role in generating bipartisan support in Congress for developing a defense against missiles.
A key turning point in the debate came when Sens. Mary L. Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, and Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican, struck a compromise that broke a three-year deadlock.
Their amendment makes clear that deployment of the system is not intended to interfere with arms-reduction talks with the Russians. In fact, many senators say, they hope Russia will join the United States in some kind of cooperative defense against attacks by rogue nations.
Isaacs dismissed the Landrieu-Snowe amendment as too inconsequential to justify Clinton's shift from his veto threat of 1995.
"I think the president realized his veto threat could not be sustained," said Frank Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy and a longtime advocate of a missile defense system.
"This is only a first step," Gaffney added, "but I think what we end up with may very well look a lot like what Reagan had in mind."
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Pub Date: 3/19/99