ABM Treaty I:  Bush Announces Withdrawal

U.S. President George W. Bush announced this morning that the United States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in six months (see GSN, Dec. 12). 

“Today I have given formal notice to Russia, in accordance with the treaty, that the United States of America is withdrawing from this almost 30-year-old treaty,” Bush said.

Bush said U.S.-Russian relations would not be harmed.  “[Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin and I have also agreed that my decision to withdraw from the treaty will not in any way undermine our new relationship or Russian security,” Bush said (MSNBC, Dec. 13).

Russian Response

As of this morning there was no official response from the Putin administration, but other Russian officials yesterday criticized the then-planned withdrawal announcement.

“I can explain it only by two things: either it is absolute deafness or urgent internal demands, a desire to convince the public of the United States that President Bush is faithful to his election promises,” said Vladimir Lukin, vice speaker of the Russian Duma.  “I don’t know why [Bush] does it.  He is popular even without it.

Many Russia analysts believe the Bush move undermines domestic political support for Putin, according to the New York Times.  Putin has moved toward a cooperative relationship with the United States, despite a lack of public support, the analysts said (Michael Wines, New York Times, Dec. 13).

“My assessment is negative, but not from the strategic point of view, rather from a psychological point of view of relations between the two countries,” Lukin said.  “It is a bad sign for us.  It is a bad sign for our leadership.  It is a bad sign for our public opinion which started to shift gradually towards trusting [the United States] more” (NTV/BBC Monitoring/European Internet Network, Dec 12).

Russia will probably “preserve and develop its heavy strategic rockets which will be loaded with multiple warheads, something that had been banned by START II,” said Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dmitry Rogozin, referring to the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty—not formally in force—which would prohibit the United States and Russia from deploying multiple-warhead, land-based nuclear missiles.

“Russia’s hands are now untied concerning START I and START II,” Rogozin said (Agence France-Presse, Dec. 13).

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ABM Treaty II:  Experts Say Congress Cannot Block Bush Withdrawal

By David Ruppe

Global Security Newswire

Congress has little ability to block President Bush’s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, arms control experts said today (see related GSN story, today).

Legislators could, however, constrain funding for missile defense tests and construction that might violate the treaty, and a prominent Democratic senator has said he might introduce legislation next year to do that.

“There’s some legal dispute, but the prevailing view is Congress cannot block withdrawal from the treaty,” said John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World.

Legal precedent suggests legislators would be unable to block the withdrawal, John Rhinelander, a former legal advisor to the U.S. Strategic Arms Limitation Talks delegation that negotiated the ABM Treaty, said this morning.

Rhinelander noted that congressional Republicans successfully took former President Jimmy Carter to court after his 1979 announcement that the United States would unilaterally abrogate the 1955 Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and Taiwan.  The case was thrown out by the Supreme Court without a ruling, however, based on a technicality involving the standing of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, Rhinelander said.

“Congress has no role in the Constitution in this, they have a role at the beginning,” Rhinelander said.  The president must get the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate to ratify a treaty, but “the president alone can withdraw and the federal courts will not get into it,” he said.

“There is no doubt in my mind, as much as I disapprove of what the president is doing, the president has the absolute power under the Constitution to decide.”

A law passed even over a president’s veto saying the United States does not withdraw from the treaty “would be ineffective,” he said.

Have the Withdrawal Criteria Been Met?

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.), however, said yesterday that Congress may have some legal recourse, arguing the administration may not have met the treaty’s terms for withdrawal.

The treaty says a party may pull out six months after notification if it decides that “extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.”

“I would argue, as a lawyer and as someone who teaches constitutional law and separation of powers, that there is the potential legal argument that the president has not stated anything that meets the criteria,” said Biden.

Blocking Funds

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said yesterday he might introduce legislation early next year to deny future funding for missile defense activities that are prohibited by the treaty today, but would be allowed once the U.S. withdrawal takes effect, the Los Angeles Times reported today. His measure would deny funding for any such activity until Congress voted to approve it.

Levin introduced similar language, added by the Senate Armed Services Committee in September to a defense spending bill, that would have given Congress the right to approve ad hoc funds for testing that might violate the treaty. Levin agreed to have the language rescinded after Sept. 11.

No Recent Precedent

No country has withdrawn from a major arms control treaty at least since World War II, said Rhinelander.  Germany’s withdrawal from the Treaty of Versailles “was the most important one” during that era, but Rhinelander noted that treaty was imposed on the country.

In 1993, North Korea announced it would pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but, facing massive international pressure, ultimately did not do so.

“This is the first time, with any kind of arms control pact,” Rhinelander said, though he said the United States, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, terminated many other treaties, such as agreements restricting trade of tea and cotton.

Bush administration officials have called the ABM Treaty a “Cold War relic,” constraining defenses against potential ballistic missile threats from states like North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

The defenses, they have contended, would not harm Russia’s nuclear deterrence capability.

Is the Treaty in Force Anyway?

University of Virginia national security law scholar Robert Turner questioned whether the ABM Treaty was even in force today.

Turner said the 1997 Memorandum of Understanding—which redefined the treaty’s parties to include Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia—superseded the original treaty.  The memorandum has never been approved by the U.S. Senate, however, so it has not entered into force.

The president’s decision to give six months’ notice, therefore, was technically unnecessary but politically wise, Turner said.

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ABM Treaty: United States to Withdraw

As soon as today or tomorrow, the United States will announce its intention to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, according to Bush administration officials.  The decision followed U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to Moscow (see GSN, Dec. 11), where he reached no agreement on the treaty after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.  U.S. President George W. Bush apparently concluded that Powell would have little success and told Putin of his intentions in a phone call last Friday, according to the New York Times.

Russia had expressed a willingness to allow the United States to conduct missile defense tests that could be interpreted as violating the treaty, but it wanted the right to approve each test, according to the Times.

That was “something we couldn’t live with,” said a senior administration official.  “It would mean subjecting each test to separate scrutiny, and sooner or later they were going to say ‘no,’” a senior official said.

“In a way, the bigger question is how the Chinese will react,” another official said yesterday.  China, with only about 20 nuclear weapons that can reach the United States, fears that its deterrent capability could be affected by even a limited U.S. missile defense system, the Times reported.

The End of an Internal Battle

The decision to withdraw marks a major policy defeat for Powell, according to the Times.  He had argued that continued testing was still possible under the treaty (see GSN, Nov. 29).  Powell’s efforts were countered by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who argued that the treaty was too limited today and could not be amended to allow the type of testing the Pentagon wants to pursue, according to the Times.  National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice sided with Rumsfeld in the end, several administration and congressional officials said yesterday (Sanger/Bumiller, New York Times, Dec. 12).

Little Inkling From Bush

Speaking at the Citadel military academy yesterday, President George W. Bush gave no specific indication of his decision to withdraw from the treaty, but reaffirmed his interest in developing a national missile defense.

“The attacks on our nation made it even more clear that we need to build limited and effective defenses against a missile attack.  Our enemies seek every chance and every means to do harm to our country, our forces and our friends, and we will not permit it.  Suppose the Taliban and the terrorists had been able to strike America or important allies with a ballistic missile.  Our coalition would have become fragile, the stakes in our war much, much higher.  We must protect Americans and our friends against all forms of terror, including the terror that could arrive on a missile,” Bush said.

“We must move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty that was written in a different era for a different enemy,” he added (transcript, New York Times, Dec. 12).

Withdrawing From the Treaty

Although the treaty is of unlimited duration, treaty Article XV allows a party to withdraw “if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.”

The withdrawing party can withdraw six months after giving formal notice and must provide an explanatory statement (treaty text, U.S. State Department release).

Russian View

On Monday Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov allowed for the possibility of a U.S. treaty withdrawal.  “In our forecasts, we’re not excluding the possibility that the U.S. may be withdrawing from the ABM Treaty,” he told reporters after meeting with Powell.  “Therefore, in our programs for ensuring national security we are forecasting such an option” (U.S. State Department release, Dec. 10).

Nevertheless, a former adviser to Russian President Boris Yeltsin criticized the U.S. plans to withdraw.  “It is bad for America.  It is bad for the rest of the world.  It is bad for Russia,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov, adding that Russia could respond by putting multiple nuclear warheads on its newest ICBMs (CNN.com, Dec. 12).

Response in the United States

U.S. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Bob Stump (R-Ariz.) praised the administration move.  “There’s all these questions about Russia upholding their end of the treaty anyway, and I just don’t think we should penalize ourselves,” Stump said.  “We shouldn’t delay our ballistic missile defense.  If it takes withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, that’s fine.”

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) criticized the withdrawal decision, saying, “It’s not a good idea.  It would be a real setback for defense and foreign policy to violate the ABM Treaty.”  He added that “it’s a slap in the face for many people who have committed years if not decades” to arms control (Ron Fournier, Associated Press, Dec. 12).

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) issued a statement cautioning that “unilaterally abandoning the ABM Treaty would be a serious mistake.  The administration has not offered any convincing rationale for why any missile defense test it may need to conduct would require walking away from a treaty that has helped keep the peace for the last 30 years” (Biden release, Dec. 11).

John Isaacs, of the Council for a Livable World, said, “Withdrawing from the ABM Treaty now is both unnecessary and unwise….Unnecessary because virtually all scientific experts believe that the U.S. can continue to test a missile defense system without breaking the ABM Treaty for many years to come.  Unwise because it could start a chain reaction that jeopardizes the three decades of progress the United States has made in reducing the threat from nuclear weapons” (Carol Giacomo, Reuters, Dec. 12).

Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, praised the Bush decision.  “President Bush is to be heartily commended for taking the only step vis-…-vis the ABM Treaty that is compatible with his declared purpose of defending the American people against the real and growing ballistic missile threat” (Frank Gaffney, National Review.com, Dec. 11).

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ABM Treaty: Disagreement Remains, Powell Says

While the United States and Russia have made progress toward an agreement to reduce nuclear weapons (see related GSN story, today), little progress has been achieved in the U.S.-Russian dispute over the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, according to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (see GSN, Nov. 29).

“There is still this disagreement with respect to our missile defense programs,” Powell told reporters en route to Moscow for a meeting today with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Increasingly the ABM Treaty constrains what the president feels we must do in order to get our missile defense systems.  We haven’t found yet a way to get through that by their accepting the testing we have to do,” Powell said (Alan Sipress, Washington Post, Dec. 10).

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