Dropping ABM Treaty A Big Win For U.S. Right-Wing

by Jim Lobe

President George W. Bush's announcement sets the stage for the development and deployment of a national missile defense (NMD) system. It has long been a top priority for the U.S. extreme right, which tried to scuttle the treaty even as then President Richard Nixon was negotiating it.

The move follows a string of unilateralist actions -- ranging from the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming to gutting the UN Conference on Small Arms -- since his administration took office 11 months ago.

"President Bush is doing his best impression of Scrooge, telling the rest of the world 'Bah humbug,'" said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, who warned that Washington's action will encourage other countries to spurn their international obligations in pursuit of narrow national interests.

"Unilateralism harms U.S. standing and credibility in the world," said Isaacs. "When we need the rest of the world to cooperate in the war on terrorism, stem proliferation, enforce sanctions on law-breaking countries, prevent environmental degradation from spreading across borders, limit the flow of refugees, the rest of the world may tell the U.S., 'Bah humbug.'"

The announcement itself came as little surprise. Bush had made NMD one of his top campaign pledges and has spent much of his time in office warning that the United States was determined to go ahead with or without the acquiescence of Russia and other powers.

When he and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met last month at Bush's ranch in Texas, proved unable to work out an agreement to amend the ABM treaty so Washington could pursue NMD, U.S. officials warned they were likely to move ahead anyway.

A last-minute effort by Powell, who has long been skeptical of the wisdom of an NMD system, to negotiate an accord in Moscow earlier this month proved fruitless.

"I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks," said Bush, who was flanked by Powell, in a brief appearance in the White House Rose Garden.

"Defending the American people is my highest priority as commander in chief and I cannot and will not allow the United States to remain in a treaty that prevents us from developing effective defenses," he declared.

NMD supporters in the administration reportedly decided to act now not only because of Putin's refusal to amend the ABM treaty in a way that Washington wanted but also because public opinion has been much more favorable to NMD -- as to Bush himself -- since Sep. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon.

According to one recent poll, support for immediate NMD deployment -- still far beyond the Pentagon's technological capacities -- rose from 14 percent last summer to about 50 percent after Sep. 11. The increase was particularly marked among women.

"This was a calculated political maneuver," said one Democratic Congressional aide who opposes NMD.

Others, however, argued, that the timing was likely to raise serious problems with U.S. allies in its "war against terrorism," beginning with Russia and China.

"It shows that despite the willingness to help the United States and to cultivate long-term international stability, the U.S. will retain a narrow view of its own interests and ignore the legitimate security needs of its partners," said J. Peter Scoblic, editor of Arms Control Today, a monthly published by the Arms Control Association.

Scoblic warned that Russia and China might not only curb their cooperation with Washington's anti-terrorist efforts but also react by building up their own nuclear arsenals and blocking non-proliferation efforts against precisely those "rogue states" which Bush hopes to defend against.

His view has backing from the U.S. intelligence community, which reportedly warned in a 2000 study that Washington's abandonment of the ABM treaty and deployment of an NMD system would spur Beijing to quickly expand its current force of only about two dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to a far more massive arsenal capable of overwhelming any NMD that Washington could build with existing or over-the-horizon technologies.

Moreover, any build-up by Beijing of its strategic forces likely would set off arms races in both East Asia and South Asia, if not beyond into the Middle East and Russia, according to the intelligence study.

"Unilateral withdrawal will likely lead to an action-reaction cycle in offensive and defensive technologies, including countermeasures, and that kind of arms race would not make us more secure," Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Los Angeles Times this week.

Negative results also may play out within the Kremlin and among European allies who have voiced growing frustration that Washington has ignored their advice in the war against Afghanistan.

"Russians were beginning to believe they could have a strategic partnership with America, and now this happens," said Vladimir Lukin, a former Russian ambassador to Washington and now a top foreign policy figure in the Duma. "The U.S. has shown that it will always do exactly what it wants, whenever it wants, without ever taking our opinion into account."

Arms-control groups here stress that there was no practical need for Washington to withdraw now.

"Complete testing of the centerpiece of the administration's missile defence program -- the Ground-based Midcourse system -- is allowed under the ABM Treaty," noted the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Other types of missile defence systems are still in the early stages of research, it said, adding, "there is no compelling technical reason to conduct any tests that would violate the treaty."

"The ideologues within the administration -- the same group that last week helped scuttle the Geneva conference to review and strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention -- have won another battle to destroy arms control and permit the United States to act unilaterally abroad against the views of the rest of the world," said Isaacs.