BRUSSELS -- The argument for missile defense is based on a series of misunderstandings and exaggerations. The claimed threat is neither real nor credible. Yet U.S. President George W. Bush is using it to underpin the United States' deployment of MD in the interests of the arms industry and to the detriment of world peace.

The idea is to erect over the United States an impenetrable umbrella of antiballistic missiles, giving the U.S. immunity from intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads from any of the world's current list of rogue states.

While for a minority in the Bush administration it is payback time for the $3 billion that the military-industrial complex chipped into the presidential election campaign pot, others have bought the technical and political arguments.

Under close inspection, however, these arguments crumble. First, the claim that there is uncontrolled proliferation either of weapons of mass destruction is woefully exaggerated. In fact, the bulk of proliferation comes from the activities of one country, North Korea. It is the only "rogue" state that will have the capability of delivering weapons of mass destruction by ICBM in the foreseeable future. However, North Korea's own capabilities and intentions are overstated.

Pyongyang has the Rodong 2 rocket, with a claimed range of 1,500 km, and the Taepodong series of missiles and Space Launch Vehicles with U.S.-estimated ranges of up to 10,000 km, capable of hitting Washington with a 100-kg warhead. No other "rogue" state has an indigenous capacity.

Iran's Shehab missiles are based on incremental innovations to North Korea's Rodong. Pakistan's Ghauri is the same, and its promised Ghaznavi is a clone of Taepodong 1. Both countries are almost entirely dependent on North Korea for technology and expertise. Syria is standing pat on an earlier North Korea missile, the Hwasong 6, which, with a range of 500 km, acts solely as a deterrence in its standoff with Israel. While Libya has its own Al-Fatah missile, the fact it is buying elements of Rodong technology indicates quite how badly it is trailing in the missile race.

And North Korea's missiles are untested and unreliable. Despite Rodong's published range of up to 1,500 km, the only North Korea launch, in May 1993, achieved a mere 500 km. A Syrian test proved no better, while an Iranian test in 1998 saw the missile self-destruct after 1,000 km. The only Taepodong launch was the attempt to put the satellite Kwangmyongsong into orbit on a three-stage Taepodong platform on Aug. 31, 1998. The third stage failed and scattered debris across the Pacific.

It is not even certain that the North Koreans plan to use ICBMs for delivery. The 1994 Framework Agreement signed by the U.S. and the North Koreans was for them to close their Russian-built nuclear reactor and to stop work on the construction of a second reactor in exchange for the U.S. putting together a consortium to construct two light water reactors.

The reason for Washington's enthusiasm was the suspicion that the original reactor had been tapped for weapons-grade plutonium. Both the KGB and the CIA believe the North Koreans had diverted enough plutonium to produce between one and five crude first-generation nuclear weapons. It is always claimed by the U.S. that these are to be nuclear warheads for missiles. Yet we know from North Korea's earlier nuclear work that their priority development was for free-fall airdrop weapons. And North Korea has never tested any nuclear weapons.

So what do we have? At worst the North Koreans have the possibility of firing a couple of ICBMs at the U.S. using an unreliable missile carrying an untested warhead. At best it is an unusable deterrent rather than the claimed pre-emptive threat. Yet Bush believes the best way to neutralize this threat is to spend at least $40 billion on MD.

North Korea has between one and 10 Taepodong 1 missiles and two Taepodong 2 prototypes. They are currently available on the market at $6 million each. Thus for $72 million the U.S. could buy the lot, less than 0.2 percent of the initial budget for MD. But Bush won't pay.

There is a way out. Since the visit to Pyongyang in May by Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, the European Union has unprecedented good relations with North Korea. Simultaneously Bush has changed the Sino-U.S. relationship from a "strategic partnership" to a "competitive relationship."

China now judges that the security environment is deteriorating, particularly given the U.S. aim, after the next South Korean elections, of the creation of a U.S.-Japan-South Korea axis, and the strengthening of the U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines.

China is concerned that North Korea is being used as an excuse to start a new arms race designed to force them to shift funding from civil to military, abandoning the civil R&D race with the U.S. and instead spending tens of billions of dollars in the development and deployment of hundreds of new ICBMs to gain a capacity to swamp MD.

China, therefore, sees a nuclear North Korea with intermediate and long-range missiles as a threat to its security interests because it provides an excuse for Washington's anti-Beijing policies. This was illustrated by China's pressure on North Korea to halt missile testing. China would like to see North Korea's exports of medium- and long-range missiles negotiated away.

Thus Europe and China share a common interest. A joint Sino-European approach to the North might just work.

It would also suit the Russians, as the U.S. might stand back from MD if its intellectual or political underpinning is stripped away. It would suit the Japanese, as well, as it would avoid the need for its own backdoor MD, i.e., theater missile defense for East Asia. And it would suit the South Koreans as they try to disentangle MD from U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula, creating in its wake an enormous barrier to rapprochement between South and North Korea. It might even suit the North Koreans. While Pyongyang's propaganda department may be in the hands of the hardline fundamentalists, the North Korean Army has a much more moderate approach.

In fact, it could suit everyone apart from the U.S. arms industry. Perhaps this is indeed the moment for a joint Chinese-European demarche.