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ABM Treaty: Cheers and Jeers as Historic Pact Expires Today Unless a U.S. federal court intervenes at the last minute (see GSN, June 12), the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty will take effect today, more than 30 years after the United States and Soviet Union signed the pact and exactly six months after U.S. President George W. Bush formally announced his intention to withdraw from it (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001). Construction workers and Pentagon officials are expected to mark the treaty’s end Saturday by breaking ground at a test site in Alaska for a U.S. national missile defense system (see GSN, May 15) previously banned by the treaty (Tom Raum, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, June 13). In Russia, officials have considered the treaty a cornerstone of nuclear arms control and regretted the U.S. decision to scrap it, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said today. Russia plans “to minimize the negative consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty,” Ivanov said. “Thanks to Russia’s efforts, the negotiating process on strategic offensive weapons and missile defense has not been terminated,” he added (Agence France-Presse, June 13). Celebrating … Some observers hailed the treaty’s demise as an opportunity to build a national missile defense system and move beyond Cold War strategy. “Now we can finally develop the kind of robust missile defense program the ABM Treaty prohibited. We don’t have to limit ourselves to a single land-based site — or slow the speed of our interceptors, as we did for years — to avoid violating the agreement,” Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, wrote in the Washington Times. “Most importantly, we don’t have to remain vulnerable in an increasingly dangerous world,” he added (Edwin Feulner, Washington Times, June 10). “At last, the United States is free to accelerate its pursuit of a robust national missile defense system,” a Washington Times editorial said yesterday. “It must pursue this task in the face of rapidly proliferating threats from rogue states whose dictators are capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction via ballistic missiles aimed at the United States, its overseas military bases and its allies,” the editorial said, adding that the treaty’s end comes “not a minute too soon” (Washington Times, June 12). … And Mourning Critics expressed concern that the end of the treaty is unnecessary and will have negative consequences. Several said the U.S. missile defense program is in such preliminary stages that abrogating the treaty is not worth any potential gains in missile defense at this time. “Testing for this [missile defense] system could have continued without violating the ABM Treaty for several more years,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty does not increase the likelihood that the United States will soon deploy effective and reliable missile defense because the technology remains unproven and unreliable,” he said (Arms Control Association release, June 12). The treaty has not been the main obstacle to implementing a national missile defense system, said David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Technology remains the key barrier to building missile defenses that are effective against real-world attacks,” he said. Rather than taking time to resolve technical hurdles, the Bush administration “plans to rush immature defense systems into the field beginning in 2004,” Wright said. The preliminary systems will not provide any real capability to defend against threats and will provide “only the illusion of capability,” he said (Union of Concerned Scientists statement, June 12). Some analysts also expressed concern that unilaterally withdrawing from the treaty might create future problems for nonproliferation and arms control. “President Bush’s unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty sets a dangerous precedent,” said John Steinbruner, director of the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. “If the United States chooses to abrogate formal international agreements in defiance of the legitimate objections of the other parties, they are encouraged to act in the same manner,” he added. “The U.S. withdrawal reveals the Bush administration’s arrogant disdain for world opinion and its own commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). This will make it more difficult for the United States to exercise leadership in organizing the international community to implement nonproliferation measures, and it provides a dangerous precedent for non-nuclear-weapon states to reject their NPT commitments to forgo nuclear weapons,” said Spurgeon Keeny, former deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Arms Control Association release). While much has improved in terms of arms control in the last ten years, the demise of the ABM Treaty is part of an emerging negative trend, Rose Gottemoeller, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said yesterday. The U.S. withdrawal will not lead to the collapse of nuclear deterrence, but it might sow seeds that would lead to negative trends in nonproliferation and arms control in the future, she said. Weak Protests Contrary to some predictions, international protest to the U.S. withdrawal has generally been weak, said Joseph Cirincione, director of Carnegie’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Project and admittedly one of those who predicted such an outcry (see GSN, May 22). A primary reason for the lack of harsh criticism from world leaders is that the United States does not actually have a national missile defense and will not for at least a decade, he said. Russia and other countries that might perceive a U.S. missile defense system as a threat have realized that a world without the ABM Treaty is not necessarily a world with U.S. missile defense, Cirincione said. If the United States develops a way to build a system within the next decade, other countries would have to time to respond before the United States could implement the system, he said. Also, Bush announced the abrogation while the country was at war, and loyal allies did not want to criticize the United States in such a situation, Cirincione said (Kerry Boyd, GSN, June 12). Feulner of the Heritage Foundation said Russian complaints have been fairly muted because “it was clear the treaty was as outdated and meaningless for Russia as it was for us.” “Now, virtually no one in Russia believes we have or ever had any intention of launching a ‘first strike.’ And virtually all realize that the real threat for both countries comes from rogue regimes, such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq,” Feulner said (Feulner, Washington Times). For further information, see: U.S. Fact Sheet on Withdrawal from ABM Treaty U.S. Defense Department Executive Summary
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