xii, 258, [2] pages. Abbreviations. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Index. Pencil

xii, 258, [2] pages. Abbreviations. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Index. Pencil erasure residue on fep. James M. Lindsay (born November 29, 1959, Winchester, Massachusetts), is the Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a leading authority on U.S. foreign policy. He is also the award-winning coauthor of America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy and former Director for Global Issues and Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council. In 2008, he was the principal author of a Department of Defense funded $7.6 million Minerva Research Initiative grant entitled "Climate Change, State Stability, and Political Risk in Africa. Michael Edward O'Hanlon (born May 16, 1961) is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, specializing in defense and foreign policy issues. He began his career as a budget analyst in the defense field. O'Hanlon's main areas of work over the years include studies on defense technology issues, such as missile defense and space weaponry and the future of nuclear weapons policy. Arms control and missile defense are once again at the forefront of the American national security agenda. Not surprisingly, the debate has broken down along well-worn lines. Arms control advocates dismiss the idea of missile defense as a dangerous and costly folly. Missile defense advocates argue that the U.S. should move aggressively to defend itself against missile attack. With clear and lively prose free of partisan rhetoric, Defending America provides reliable, factual analysis of the missile defense debate. Written for a general audience, it assesses the current and likely future missile threat to the United States, examines relevant technologies, and suggests how America's friends and foes would react to a decision to build a national missile defense. Lindsay and O'Hanlon reject calls for large-scale systems as well as proposals to do nothing, instead arguing for a limited national missile defense. Derived from a Publishers Weekly article: In a potential blueprint for President George W. Bush's defense team, the authors construct an argument for a limited missile defense system. Such a shield has hovered over U.S. political discourse since Ronald Reagan proposed Star Wars in 1983, but the authors, senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, note that Lyndon B. Johnson first raised the idea in 1967. Lindsay, formerly of the National Security Council, and O'Hanlon, who teaches at Columbia and Georgetown and has worked for the Congressional Budget Office, weigh three possibilities: a complete shield, as proposed by Reagan; no shield; and the limited one they favor. Their plan includes interceptors to shoot down missiles early in their flight, and midcourse interceptors like those President Clinton proposed. They admit their proposal's weaknesses-including possible negative reactions from Russia and China-but ultimately decide that such a system is both feasible and secure enough to defend the U.S. against attacks from "rogue nations" such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea. They include appendixes of past weapons treaties and U.S. intelligence estimates of threats posed by other nations. Policy wonks will devour this thorough, academic book; other readers seeking a conservative, interventionist treatment of a hot topic will also benefit. This is a rigorous study that will receive attention and enter into public debate.