Testing of the actual interceptor rockets of the ABM missile system already being energetically deployed at Fort Greeley, Alaska, has been deferred until next year, even though 16 interceptors, one-third of the planned total, are to be deployed and operational - while still wholly untested - by the end of this year.

But across the Pacific, for all of the Bush BMD programs' woes at home, it is a very different story: Three great Asian nations with immense financial, industrial and scientific resources have signed on fully to the president's vision this year, giving a huge boost to its long-term prospects.

In the past week alone, America's BMD program has dodged a major political bullet in Taiwan and received a huge boost in Japan.

The boost in Japan came with the triumphant reelection of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi with an increased majority, and with a radically reshaped Liberal Democratic Party at his back in the Diet, the main chamber of the Japanese parliament.

The staunchly pro-American Koizumi has moved systematically and with great determination over the past few years to make Japan a major partner in BMD development with the United States.

He has changed the command and decision-making structure of the Japanese Defense Forces to allow fast, decisive and flexible decision-making to launch anti-ballistic missile interceptors against possible attacks. He has pushed through major purchases of BMD systems and co-production agreements with the United States.

These deals gave America's high-tech industries urgently needed infusions of capital. And they also gave Japanese industry, which has long been stagnant in cutting-edge electronics and software development, the prospect of shots in the arm to jump-start these sectors.

Had Koizumi lost the election, or suffered a seriously decreased majority his old arch enemies, the so-called "gray men" of the LDP Old Guard, might well have forced him out and either gone slow on or entirely repudiated his commitment to a long-term BMD partnership with America.

But that did not happen. Instead, Koizumi's sweeping election victory confounded expectations and gave him a secure year ahead in power to push through his programs and complete his mandated five-year stint.

And when he has to step down a year from now, far from being a lame duck, he will have the popularity and political clout to continue to continue dominating the LDP as no former prime minister has done since Kakuei Tanaka in the 1970s. That means, he will be in a position to ensure the BMD partnership with America stays strong too.

In Taiwan, President Chen Shui-bian is in a far weaker state than Koizumi. But he dodged a major political bullet this week and reaffirmed his commitment to BMD too.

Chen has committed Taiwan to major purchases of at least six Patriot PAC-3 ABM missile batteries from the United States. He wanted to go ahead with a huge $11 billion conventional arms purchase too, but this week his two main opposition political parties successfully blocked the conventional arms package.

That won't affect the Patriot purchases, however, as Chen had prudently pulled them out of the overall package and folded them into the general upcoming budget appropriation, which he is expected to push through.

Taiwan has arguably an even more pressing need for BMD than Japan does. Over the past decade, China has deployed at least 730 missiles capable of striking the offshore island along its own coasts opposite it. The current Patriot purchase at best could only knock down a small fraction of them, even if it could operate at 100 percent efficiency. But it's a start.

Taiwan also has huge financial resources. At a time when the U.S. federal budget is feeling the pinch as never before, therefore, President Chen's continued commitment to the Patriot and the entire ballistic missile defense concept is of vast importance to President Bush's BMD programs.

Finally, there is the striking irony that the most far-ranging U.S.-Indian strategic cooperation agreement in history was reached by two governments from the political parties historically least likely to make it.

In the United States, ever since the days of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles half a century ago, Republican administrations have held India at arms' length. And in India, Congress governments since the days of Jawarlhalal Nehru and his Defense Minister Krishna Menon have lectured the United States and expressed suspicions about its policies and motives.

Yet this year, it was the Bush administration and the United Progressive Alliance-Congress coalition of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi that concluded the historic agreement to push ahead with joint development of BMD programs.

India now has more software engineers in Bangalore than the United States does in Silicon Valley, and at a time when the number of hard scientists graduating from U.S. colleges has been falling for nine years in a row, America's need for India's world-class hard scientists and software wizards is greater than ever.

For their part, even Indian policymakers and opinion-shapers traditionally critical of the United States have welcomed the new partnership as giving them the chance to catch up at last with China's long-established lead in home-produced military hardware and advanced technology.

President Bush can therefore face his BMD critics armed with more than his natural optimism. The governments of three of the most important and powerful countries in Asia in the past few months have committed themselves in money and deeds, not just words, to helping make his ballistic missile defense vision a reality. That means a lot.

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