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The year is 2015. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is still tyrannical at 78, ruling over his oppressed and hungry people. Despite continuing sanctions, he has built a ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States in 30 minutes, and what the heck, he's mad and he lets it fly. As the missile struggles into space, a satellite sends a warning to a station based in Turkey, which has two, three, maybe four minutes to launch an interceptor rocket before the missile enters space.

The rocket is launched, hits the missile, and the Americans high five each other. Disaster averted. The only problem is that the interceptor hit the end of the missile, not the nuclear warhead, which hurtles to the ground and detonates over Paris, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

That's one of the hitches with so-called boost-phase missile defences that the US Navy believes can work within five years.

James Lindsay, a former staff member on president Bill Clinton's National Security Council and co-author of a new book, Defending America, says the odds of the Paris scenario are significant.

Many experts on missile defence believe the results of the system are unpredictable, strategically and practically. Depending on the system, whether small-scale or involving massive Reaganesque Star Wars programs, it could make the world safer, or backfire.

None of the multiple schemes the US has considered has been successfully tested. Fifty Nobel laureates last year wrote a letter saying it was technically impossible to hit a bullet with a bullet, as the technology is labelled. Get it wrong and the results would be catastrophic, for Paris, or for global security, with a new nuclear arms race just when there was a chance that the end of the Cold War would dramatically lessen the threat of nuclear weapons.

For US President George W. Bush and his defence team, shooting down missiles launched deliberately or accidentally by rogue nations such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea, none of which yet has intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US, is the Brave New World we're in. He's asking the world, particularly US allies, to fundamentally change the way security is viewed.

No longer, he said this week, were the US and Soviet Union locked in a Cold War nuclear rivalry, deterred from launching nuclear weapons at each other for fear of retaliation - so-called mutually assured destruction. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits most defensive systems, deliberately leaving each superpower vulnerable to the other's arsenals, was enshrined in the past. It was not suited to this less certain, less predictable world, he said.

Like Saddam Hussein, some of today's tyrants were gripped by an implacable hatred of the US, President Bush said in a speech that left no doubt that the US would pursue a missile defence shield. But what kind and how large will not be known until a review is completed in the next few weeks.

"They hate our friends, they hate our values, they hate democracy and freedom and individual liberty. Many care little for the lives of their own people," Bush said. "In such a world, Cold War deterrence is no longer enough. To maintain peace, to protect our own citizens and our own allies and friends, we must seek security based on more than the grim premise that we can destroy those who seek to destroy us."

To critics, and some anxious allies, missile defence is America's shield of dreams, the result of its unbridled faith in technology and its inexplicable insecurity despite its unrivalled world dominance. Since 1985, according to an analysis by Chris Hellman of the bipartisan Centre for Defence Information in Washington, world military spending has plummeted from $US1.2 trillion ($A2.3 trillion) to $US809 billion in 1999 because Cold War fears have declined.

But the US share of global military spending continued to rise, and now stands at 36 per cent. Depending on which defence shield is authorised, the US could spend from $US100 billion to $US1 trillion, making it one of the most expensive military projects in history. Americans back the system in theory, but these are times of peace when people look to domestic issues. One survey found that 64 per cent of Americans believed the US had already deployed missile defences.

Critics say that a shield to make the US and its allies invulnerable to missile attack will create more problems than it solves, even if it is successfully deployed.

Nick Berry, of the Centre for Defence Information, says it's a bunker mentality. "No one wants to challenge the US; there has never been an attack on a nuclear power," Dr Berry says. "We have enormous resources to deal with anyone. It just stretches the imagination to compare the threat level now with the Cold War. That, to me, is preposterous."

The Clinton administration dropped the "rogue nation" label last June, but it has since been revived. Robert Litwak, a former National Security Council staff member and author of Rogue States and US Foreign Policy, says the term is a product of an American culture that has traditionally viewed international relations as a clash between the forces of good and evil.

Nuclear deterrence alone, supporters of missile defence say, is no longer enough because leaders of these "rogue nations" are so irrational they would shoot a missile at the US, despite the certainty of crushing retaliation. Saddam Hussein, for instance, has used biological weapons against his own people, but Litwak questions whether the rogues are crazy enough to attack the US.

North Korea, seen as the biggest threat since it sent a satellite into space on a Taepo Dong-1 missile in 1998 (claiming the satellite was broadcasting revolutionary hymns), is no longer testing missiles. North Korea hosted a historic summit with the South Korean leader in June last year and was negotiating, however tentatively, with the Clinton administration to halt its missile program. In February, Bush suspended the negotiations indefinitely. He said the North could not be trusted to abide by treaties.

Litwak says the election of a reformist president in Iran in 1997 gave an opening to the West, and Iraq's economy and war-making ability have been so decimated by sanctions since the Gulf War that its threat is remote.

Intelligence officials estimate that, by 2005, North Korea could be capable of developing a missile that could reach the US. Iran could be capable of it by 2010 and Iraq by about 2015. The Pentagon believes the US could have a rudimentary shield up by 2004, but other analysts say that is optimistic.

Supporters of missile defence say Litwak's arguments are naive. Jack Spencer, an analyst from the Heritage Foundation, which has strongly backed a comprehensive missile defence system, asks why North Korea, which can't feed its people, would invest in this technology. "I will tell you why, because the US right now is completely vulnerable to even one ballistic missile," Spencer says. "It gives a country like North Korea the international standing to throw its weight around, and we can't have an irresponsible nation like that with that capability."

Baker Spring, also from Heritage, argues that missile defence has nothing to do with "fortress America" hiding behind its shield. If Iraq had had intercontinental ballistic missiles during the Gulf War, he says, the US would have been less likely to intervene. The lesson for the allies abroad is that a secure America can be a more engaged America.

There is intense debate in the US about what kind of system should be built. Most analysts acknowledge that Bush will approve a far more ambitious scheme than the limited land-based shield that the Clinton administration proposed. Even among its allies, with the notable exception of Australia, there is an awareness of the inevitable, but nervousness about dismantling a system that, while out of date, has mostly worked politically for almost 30years. Most reacted cautiously to Bush's speech, welcoming the announcement of consultation with allies, and praising Bush's intention to cut America's nuclear arsenal, now at 7200 warheads.

Bush has alluded to a layered missile system, which would mean the US could shoot down a missile at any stage of its flight - during launch, its trajectory through space, to descent. If one failed, another might succeed. Clinton's model would have protected only the US. Bush wants to protect all US allies.

Clinton was a reluctant supporter of missile defence, and proposed ground-based interceptors linked to satellites that helped guide the rockets to targets. There is increasing support in the US for the boost-phase model, which could put defences on ships or land to intercept missiles soon after launch when they move relatively slowly. Airborne lasers on modified Boeing 747s are being looked at to protect troops and allies. Research in space-based laser systems, with hints of Ronald Reagan's dream of neutralising thousands of warheads, is in the early stages. None of them have yet worked in tests.

Lindsay backs a limited boost-phase system that could not threaten China's or Russia's nuclear deterrent because both countries could launch missiles from well within their borders, giving interceptors too little time to strike them. He would back it up with a small ground-based system in the US.

The US administration has said that missile defence is not directed at China, which fears that the system is designed to contain its emerging power and throw a protective shield over Taiwan. A Taiwan so protected, says China, could be a Taiwan emboldened to declare independence.

The Republican Party, at least since Ronald Reagan's failed proposal in 1983 for a space-based defence system that could protect against thousands of Russian warheads, has held to missile defence as an article of faith. Democrats, who tend to have more faith in treaties, are now freed from Clinton's policy and charge that Bush would be irresponsible to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Senator Carl Levin, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said Bush's speech was cloaked in conciliatory rhetoric, but was really an announcement of withdrawal from the treaty. "I believe that it could risk a second Cold War. Cold War II, I call it. It's too early to tell," said Lindsay.

The crucial matter is whether the system Bush eventually announces will be limited enough to deal with rogue nations or accidental missile launches, which Lindsay believes is well justified, or big enough to counter China.

China has about 20 missiles capable of reaching the US. Analysts say that by the time Clinton's system was operational, it could not have countered China's weapons. If Bush approves a huge system to protect against hundreds of missiles, it would be seen as not about rogue states, but about containing China.

China has warned it would speed up its missile program if a missile shield goes ahead. Allies fear that India would respond, then Pakistan, and an Asian arms race would be inevitable. China could also retaliate by selling weaponry to those rogue states the US says are the threat to world peace.

"Is China one of the rogue nations?" Lindsay asks. "That's the big question. My guess is that there are people in the administration that think China is a rogue nation, and there are others saying that that would be taking a walk down a very dangerous path.

"If this is the Son of Star Wars, it's utter folly and will hurt Americas interests."

Gay Alcorn is The Age United States correspondent

Gay Alcorn's article in The Age

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