Baker Spring, a national security research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, specializes in assessing the threat of ballistic missile strikes from Third-World countries and other U.S. national-security issues. On Thursday, Feb. 19, I called him at his office in Washington, D.C., to talk about general defense issues and the status of the ballistic missile defense installations that the United States wants to place in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect Western Europe from missile strikes from countries like Iran:

Q: President Obama's advisers are saying that they have no plans to carry out President Bush's plans to put up a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

A: I think that's a little bit of an overstatement. I think what they are doing is signaling that they may under certain circumstances be willing to modify the program. What "modify" means is undefined.

Q: How far along did the Bush administration get with this plan?

A: Quite far along. The basic agreements for fueling the systems in both the Czech Republic and Poland have been signed. The agreement does not require Senate advice and consent on this side, but there are what would be the equivalent of ratification procedures that would pertain to the Czech Republic and Poland. It is perceived to be no political problem insofar as both the opposition and the ruling party in Poland are now on board . with the agreement. The Czech parliament -- because there is a very, very close division between the opposition and the ruling party -- is a little more problematic. In fact, they are delaying a little bit because there are issues about which party could ultimately end up being in control if one vote or another switches direction.

Q: The Russians are said to be infuriated by the plans of this missile defense installation, right?

A: Indeed they are, for reasons, in my judgment, that are not related to the system itself. ... Basically what they want to do, in my judgment, is drive a wedge between the United States and the newer members of the NATO alliance -- and any reinforcing bilateral arrangement, of which this missile defense program is one -- to get the United States to effectively concede that the Czech Republic and Poland and other states as well are within their sphere of influence and not NATO's.

Q: Why is it so important that this missile-defense installation go in?

A: There are obviously several reasons, but let's start with the one that I think is most immediate, which is the political one: That is that the United States and Poland and the Czech Republic have all arrived at the conclusion that it is important for them on a bilateral basis to reinforce the basic alliance commitments that are present in the NATO structure and that anything that could be seen as breaking those bonds, either in the NATO context or in the bilateral context, would be very, very damaging and I think would invite more aggressive behavior on the part of Russia and other states.

On the military side, the United States has long-range missile defense interceptors located in Alaska and California. They are more ideally suited to protecting the United States from a launch that would occur from North Korea. That system has some capability but is not ideally located to counter a missile that could be launched by Iran, particularly toward the eastern portion of the United States.

The final thing is that the United States missile defense plans are to provide protection to our friends and allies as well as to U.S. territory. Against intermediate- to longer-range missiles, ones that were to fly out of a place like Iran or Pakistan or somewhere else in the greater Middle East in the direction of Western Europe, there is no protection there at the moment. Until these interceptors go in, that will remain the case. These interceptors in Poland would be for the defense for the United States as well as the defense of Western Europe against missiles of that range.

Q: Does this missile defense system really work?

A: Absolutely. Let's look at this: All of the missile defense systems that are in the field today . use the same basic technology, which is "hit-to-kill" technology. That means it doesn't contain an explosive warhead. The interceptor missile actually directs itself into the path of the incoming missile and destroys it by the force of collision at incredibly high speeds. . According to the Missile Defense Agency, as of December, when there was a successful ground-based mid-course defense-intercept test over the Pacific, hit-to-kill technology's record is basically 37 for 47, going back to 2001.

Q: Will we ultimately see an anti-missile system installed in Poland and/or the Czech Republic?

A: I think it will go in. Does that mean it will go in necessarily in exactly the configuration that we have now? It might, it might not. I suspect that it is almost a certainty that the politics surrounding the deployment will change. I think in the context of other things regarding our relationship with Russia that there could be greater missile-defense cooperation between the United States and Russia, particularly if the missile proliferation problem continues along the path that it currently is in South Asia and the greater Middle East because the Russians will have an interest in defending themselves as much as we will. You've got to remember, they have a missile defense system that goes all the way back to the Soviet era around Moscow. So I think the United States is going to continue to engage with Russia on questions of missile-defense cooperation between those two countries that could pave the way for also at least reduced objections from Russia regarding the fueling of the systems in the Czech Republic and Poland.

Q: What is your current general assessment of defense spending right now? Is it too high, too low, just right?

A: If you take the last formal budget presentation of the Bush administration, which was released roughly a year ago -- and we look at it in terms of the core program, those things that are really meant to build our military, as opposed to the supplemental appropriations that are meant to fund ongoing operations, largely speaking -- we think that the core defense program that was presented by the Bush administration was in fact too low to fund the program that we need.

We think the United States cannot build the military it needs on the basis of only the specific operational requirements that we have today. In other words, the focus today is on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, but tomorrow we may be facing an organized army in some way or another -- maybe North Korea, for example. We believe the United States has to build a balanced force, one that will give it the basic building blocks to respond to any operational requirements that may not be in the end predictable.

We think when you look at that -- and as well as you look at it from a fiscal policy standpoint, from the overall budget of the United States -- that we ought to spend for the core defense program no less than 4 percent of our gross domestic product. That means we recognize to a certain degree that if the U.S. economy is hurting -- that at least as you look at long-term defense spending patterns -- that you may have to scale back at the margin. But clearly the U.S. economy, in my judgment, will still be robust enough to field a very credible military at that 4 percent benchmark.

Q: For the average citizen out there, they often hear that defense spending is really, really high. Is that true?

A: It's not true. Let's use the broadest comparisons. Back in World War II we were over 40 percent of GDP at its peak for defense. In the early stages of the Cold War, the 1950s and the 1960s, we were at roughly 10 percent. In the years of the Reagan buildup we were at about 6 percent. Even in today's context, including the supplemental appropriations, you are only slightly more than 4 percent.

Q: Is that counting Iraq and Afghanistan?

A: Yes. Absolutely. It's slightly more than 4 percent.

Q: That dropping percentage of GDP is testimony to the great economic growth of the United States, in part, right? Continued...