Was this supposed to convince me?

When I saw the head for Jeffrey Simpson's column in today's Globe and Mail I clicked through immediately, expecting a forceful argument in favour of Canada's participation in the American Ballistic Missile Defence system:

There's only one way to go on missile defence

I can only assume that someone else wrote the head because what I got left me wondering if Simpson isn't holding out hope that someone will come along and convince him otherwise. His conclusion isn't exactly a ringing endorsement:

Participation at a small financial price, under the circumstances, is likely the best option.

What comes in between is a mushy mixture of fact, speculation, some arguments that support the opposite view and a couple of things I think are just wrong.

Simpson acknowledges that the possibility of terrorists or rogue states firing ICBMs at us actually ranks pretty low on the list of likely threats we face these days. And he doesn't try to convince us that the system is foolproof either. He also raises the danger posed by the risk of malfunction, though when he writes it off as something inherent in "any high-tech system" he understates the problem. He should be talking about any high-tech system that's being rushed into service for political reasons without proper testing.

One of the arguments he puts forth in favour of Canadian participation is a familiar one: it's inevitable anyway so we may as well get on board.

The Americans are going to install a system on their territory whether Canada likes it or not, and whether Canada participates or not. U.S. deployment is a given, not an option. And deployment won't change if Democrat John Kerry becomes president.

I wonder if he's told John Kerry that. Kerry has supported continued research but has also said:

We cannot afford to spend billions to deploy an unproven missile-defense system. Not only is it not ready, but it's the wrong priority for a war on terror where the enemy strikes with a bomb in the back of a truck, or a vial of anthrax in a briefcase.

That doesn't sound like inevitable deployment to me. That sounds as though a Democratic administration might just put this puppy on the back burner for a while.

When Simpson gets to the hot button issue of the weaponization of space, his own ambivalence comes through again as he raises an issue I've used to argue against BMD.

The proposed system might morph into a space-based one some day. A lot of U.S. defence planners believe it will. The official U.S. defence doctrine insists that no country should threaten the United States from space. So it's a reasonable bet that this system, as it develops and grows, will expand into space, thereby leading to the weaponization of space, something Canada strongly opposes.

So here is the Canadian dilemma or, shall we say, one dilemma among others. Joining the currently planned system is a bit like being in the early stages of a pregnancy. It's a system that does not offend Canadian policy today but is likely to emerge into something bigger, at which point it will be hard for Canada to withdraw.

I found the analogy to pregnancy a bit ironic. Former defense minister David Pratt's response to concerns about the eventual weaponization of space was always along the lines of "let's worry about that when the time comes", something I previously compared to the "don't worry, honey, I'll pull out in time" method of birth control.

And then there's the possibility that a system such as this might help to touch off a new arms race. Simpson dismisses this, but again does so unconvincingly.

There was a time, say three or four years ago, when missile defence had the potential of so alarming other countries (Russia, China) that it might have sparked some kind of arms escalation. These countries have now come to terms with the U.S. system, or at least accepted that they cannot stop it. Their acquiescence dissipated a Canadian fear: that missile defence might renew an international arms race.

There's a big difference between accepting that you can't stop the US from deploying such a system, and deciding not to do anything in response. It's a distinction I suspect Simpson is aware of. This Christian Science Monitor story was written last month.

Welcome back to the future of US-Russian rivalry. Analysts say that a combination of US military efforts - including missile defense, plans for new low-yield nuclear weapons, and expansion up to Russia's western doorstep - are chilling relations with Moscow and spurring a new, higher-tech arms race.

... A strategy rethink is under way in Moscow. Senior officers speak of an "asymmetrical" response to counter US strength without matching Washington's expenditures.

"I understand America's measures as a continuation of the arms race," says Viktor Baranets, military columnist for the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. "With our slim budget we are making an effort to catch up with the rich American chariot."

"They think that we're kind of crazy to be pursuing [missile defense]," says Marshall Goldman, of the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard. "It is just another example in their minds of how the US is still fighting the cold war."

It seems nothing short of naive to presume that Russia, or China for that matter, will sit back and do nothing while the US continues to arm. You could argue that those countries might pursue their own arms buildup anyway, but how can you convince them to slow down when you're speeding up?

So in the end we're left with the promise that Canada won't actually be out of pocket a great deal of money, which I would submit remains to be seen, and with this:

The Americans, as Canadian professor Joel Sokolosky explained in a recent paper (Realism Canadian Style), prefer to integrate missile defence into the existing North American Aerospace Defence Command. Canada has always played a part in that system, including having the deputy NORAD commander.

If Canada were to balk at participating in missile defence, NORAD would lose some of its importance to the U.S., or Canada would just be cut out of important NORAD responsibilities. By definition, then, Canada would lose some of its importance to the U.S. as continental defence partner.

Missile defence is not directly in Canada's national interest, but NORAD is. So, too, is being seen in Washington as a reliable partner in the defence of this continent. Canada can pick and choose its foreign involvements in U.S.-inspired interventions around the world. But it doesn't have the luxury of being a slacker in the defence of this continent.

But Simpson himself has already acknowledged that BMD has little to do with defence since the threat it purports to protect us against is unlikely to materialize. We seem to be back to ensuring our 'place in the world', from an American perspective, and let's gloss over the consequences because to do otherwise would just muddy the waters.

If we're to have a serious public debate on this issue, I'd suggest that Simpson shouldn't be the one to lead the charge for the pro-BMD side. I really don't think his heart is in it. But the conventional wisdom in the press recently is that the deal is all but signed. With the promised foreign policy review still months away it seems like the government is stumbling into something no one is really that enthusiastic about simply because Bush thinks a partial deployment will lend him some national security cred in time for the election in November. And it seems that a public debate on Canadian participation will never materialize. Based on this Simpson column I can see why.