Produced by the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Updated December 2005

The Debate Over the ABM Treaty. Russia traditionally has opposed the deployment of U.S. missile defenses because of their possibly destabilizing effects on the current nuclear balance. For this reason, during negotiations with the United States, from the late 1990s to 2001, to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, Russia expressed concern that a decision by the United States to alter or withdrawal from the treaty would weaken strategic stability and undermine the framework of other international arms control agreements.

Russia worried that even though U.S. missile defenses might begin on a small scale, they could grow more robust over the years. Expanded U.S. defenses could require Russia to build more offensive missiles to overcome them in order to retain a credible nuclear deterrent. Russia is also concerned that a U.S. BMD system might prompt China to expand its own strategic nuclear force, making China more of a threat to Russia.

The  ABM Treaty limited each side to defending one site with only 100 interceptor missiles. The ABM Treaty prohibited the development of systems that could defend all of Russia or all of the United States. The United States Congress voted to close down its ABM system in 1975, only a day after it became fully operational. The system was costly to operate and deemed to be ineffective against new Soviet multiple-warhead missiles. Russia's ABM system, on the outskirts of Moscow, is still technically operational.

In 2001, President George W. Bush argued that the ABM Treaty should be modified or dissolved to allow the United States to develop small-scale defenses that could protect all of the United States from a limited number of missiles launched from countries like North Korea or Iran. The President claimed that such missiles pose a new threat to the United States and its allies. Bush also said that the ABM Treaty was a "relic" of the past and was no longer needed because the United States and Russia were no longer enemies.

Rather than simply withdraw from the ABM Treaty, however, President Bush stated in mid-2001 that he wanted to develop a new "framework" with Russia. In this framework, the ABM Treaty would be modified or scrapped by mutual agreement and both sides would agree to significant reductions in their existing nuclear arsenals.

Russia, however, rejected the U.S. proposals to end the ABM Treaty by mutual agreement. This led the United States on December 13, 2001, to announce its intention to withdraw from the ABM Treaty in six months (as permitted under Article XV of the treaty) in order to pursue the testing of missile defense systems and components that would have been banned by the agreement. Russia, which said that its nuclear arsenal would be sufficiently large to overwhelm the missile defenses that the U.S. intended to deploy in the next decade, if not longer, reacted in a restrained manner to this announcement. It appears that this step by the United States has not seriously injured U.S.-Russian relations or the prospects for significant nuclear weapon reductions by the two countries.

On December 17, 2001, two weeks after the U.S. announcement of its intended withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would accept the proposal by President George W. Bush to reduce over the next 10 years the number of warheads each country deploys on strategic delivery systems to between 1,700 and 2,200.  The United States officially withdrew from the ABM Treaty on June 13, 2002.

Consequences of BMD Deployment. One consequence of the U.S. decision to deploy missile defenses is that Russia decided to keep its multiple independently-targeted warhead (MIRV) ICBMs, which would have been eliminated under START II—a treaty that for Russia was linked to the continued existence of the ABM Treaty. START II was terminated by Russia after the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty in June 2002. By maintaining multiple warheads on its ICBMs, Russia theoretically retains a capability to saturate U.S. missile defenses in the event of crisis. In this regard, it is argued, U.S. BMD ensures the continuity of Russia's large strategic nuclear arsenal.

Small-scale U.S. missile defenses, on the other hand, are likely to have little if any impact on Russia's ability to inflict unacceptable damage on the United States in response to a U.S. first strike. From the Russian point of view, the traditional logic of deterrence, in this instance, remains intact, limiting its concern about U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. However, Russia and China both oppose U.S. plans to expand its missile defenses and to deploy weapons on space.