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ABM Treaty: Some Europeans Withdraw Criticism Some European leaders have retreated from their earlier criticism of the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. When U.S. President George W. Bush visited Europe a year ago, European leaders expressed serious concern that plans to develop a missile defense system and a U.S. withdrawal from the treaty with Russia would lead to a nuclear arms race. Some of those leaders now say Bush’s decision to nullify the treaty might have been correct (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001). Rather than increased tensions and an arms race, U.S.-Russian relations have improved, according to the Washington Post, and both presidents are expected to sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty this week (see related GSN story, today). “We were worried a year ago that Bush’s position would create a terrible confrontation,” a senior German diplomat said. “Maybe we underestimated Putin’s creativeness and farsightedness.” Bush supporters say his administration understood that the old paradigm of East versus West has changed. “What keeps Russia and the United States from going to war today is not the number of nuclear weapons that they have on either side or the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty or some outdated notion of strategic stability,” U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said. “It’s that they have nothing to go to war about.” Some analysts who have criticized the treaty withdrawal, however, stood by their previous statements. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said he supports his earlier statement that U.S. missile defense development and the treaty’s demise would “set off a dangerous action-reaction cycle, involving the United States, Russia and China.” “The potential for dangerous action-reaction remains, especially because the Bush administration has failed to lock in verifiable reductions of Russia’s nuclear forces,” he said (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, May 22).
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