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.
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