A Visit to Fort Greely, Alaskaby Claes Andreasson
"A show of strength creates peace. Which is why I do not mind having a part of the missile defense system here," said farmer and minister Terry Flugrad straddling a wooden chair in the small coffee house in Delta Junction, in interior Alaska.
Terry, as well as all the other guests at Diehl´s Delight, agree that President Bush's missile defense is a blessing. The "testbed" that is being built at the army base close by creates new jobs and could provide the community with a swimming pool, an indoor hockey rink and a new railroad.
The first snow of winter has wrapped the plains. So far, the future testbed is nothing but a 135-acre opening, bordered by wild aspen and spindly pine, scorched by wildfires of the past.
At one end of the desolate field, a glimpse of the new water well; at the other, the white-dressed range dominated by Mount Hayes. The warm serenity of the morning sun is disturbed by the constant rumble of light-yellow, gigantic bulldozers and dumpers, running back and forth with loads of dirt.
Fort Greely is situated just outside of Delta Junction. The recently shutdown army base is about to be awakened by President Bush's National Missile Defense (NMD) program. The now solitary field will eventually house five missile silos and a command-and-control center.
"I´m not opposed to the testbed," coffee house owner JoAnne Heitman says, while picking up a couple of used cups. "It´s good for the community. Especially if our local people can get some of those four hundred jobs they are talking about. I have also heard rumors that Boeing is going to build hundreds of new homes for all the people working at the site."
A facility like this means a lot to a small community, one that has 840 inhabitants according to the last Census.
"The ability to ward off a problem, an attack, seems like good insurance to me," Terry Flugrad adds. "But I believe chances are higher of being killed driving down the highway than of the community being hit by a missile."
The Frozen Protesters of Fairbanks
While Deltans are hopeful, opinions differ in Fairbanks, a two-hour drive northwest. One sunny Saturday morning in October, some fifty people are gathered in Golden Heart Park in the center of town to protest putting weapons in space.
"The missile defense starts here in Alaska with the new testbed. And that starts the weaponization of space -- missile defense is just the first layer of US domination of space," says Stacey Fritz, coordinator for "No Nukes North."
"We are the biggest bully on the block," Lynn DeFilippo adds. "We've got the most weapons, the most money, the most resources. And now we are getting a shield. What does a shield do? It makes you impervious! And it allows you to hold up the shield up in one place, and strike somewhere else."
"I think that the best way to stop or stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons would be stronger international arms control treaties," Stacey Fritz continues. "Certainly not by throwing away the ABM Treaty, and all the treaties that go with it."
The events of September 11 have had an impact on the public debate in the United States about missile defenses. "When I first heard of the attacks, I thought: ´Well, there goes missile defense´," Fairbanks author Dan O´Neill says. "Isn't this really proof that the tactic of choice by terrorist groups is not going to be to send a missile halfway around the world, but to act from within our own country, and hit us that way. This proves it!"
"But immediately, we began to hear people say: ´This justifies missile defense.´ and the idea was ´My God, if they'll do this, they'll do anything´. I don't think that's true."
"ICBMs are imminently traceable. The U.S. policy of deterrence has been that if you launch a nuclear missile at our country, then all of the men, women and children, and all of your major cities will be annihilated. Immediately. So, I don't see any "rogue state", any Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, who would spend all of their people and all of their cities for one shot at us."
Dan O´Neill also doubts the depicted image of a nuclear missile threat towards the United States. "As I have read about the North Korea missile program, it is essentially a tin shack on a gravel pad. They have never tested a re-entry vehicle, which you need to bring the thing back in. Even if they had that, they don't have the capability to build a nuclear bomb sufficiently light to match that payload. In other words - we are not at risk!"
Tests Threatening the Fishing Industry
If and when the plans for a testbed at Fort Greely will be completed, no test missiles will be launched from there. For security reasons, the rockets instead will be transported and launched from a ramp on Kodiak Island, south of Anchorage. But those tests are not risk-free either.
At 9:12 a.m. on November 9 a combined Polaris- and Orbis rocket was launched from the Kodiak ramp. It was the first of four missiles to be launched in the next two years. "The goal of the test was to learn more about how ground-based radar systems in California would pick up the characteristics of a warhead and decoys in space," says Lt. Col. Rick Lehner of Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) in Washington DC.
But only 52 seconds into the flight the command center lost telemetry data and data transmission from the missile, and it was destroyed. Carolyn Heitman, living on Kodiak Island is upset about the test: "It is unbeliveable that any intelligent person would launch a missile in a snow- rain- and wind-storm. The weather was so bad in Kodiak that it is no wonder communications were lost with the missile."
"Do you have any idea what something like this is going to do to the fishing industry in our area? Fishermen are proposing to try and sell Alaskan salmon as an organic product. Who is going to want to buy fish that is swimming around in contaminated Alaskan waters caused by toxic, hazardous missile chemicals, like thorium, freon, halon and asbestos?"
Concern over the environmental effects of future tests at Fort Greely and Kodiak Island is also the reason a number of organizations have filed a law suit against the Defense Department. But military programs have always been important in Alaska, a state with no revenue from income or sales tax, a state that makes 85 per cent of its budget from the sale of its oil and gas.
"When Fort Greely closed, it hit the community very much. Delta Junction has to a large degree been dependent on the army base. At that point, a lot of people thought Delta was going to die. Now, with all the talk about the testbed, there is a renewed hope for the future," says Carin Bjorn von Letzendorf, a Swedish priest who recently moved to Delta Junction. "And remember," she adds "this entire area is Republican, with at strong feeling for the defense, a strong feeling that the military is doing a fine job."
Swedish journalist Claes Andreasson visited Alaska, site of the US National Missile Defense testbed, in November 2001.