| Axe ABM - Improve US-Russian Relations? | |
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Relations between the U.S. and Russia would actually be improved by elimination of the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, according to a Defense Department policy official.
In an Aug. 30, 2001 DoD press release, J.D. Crouch, assistant defense secretary for international security policy, expanded on President Bush's desire to see the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) abandoned, an that would require the approval of both nations.
According to Crouch, the continued existence of the treaty unnecessarily perpetuates an atmosphere of distrust between the two former Cold War adversaries.
"President Bush wants to move beyond the treaty," Crouch said. "We'd prefer to do it in cooperation with Russians. The ABM Treaty ensconces an adversarial relationship rooted in the Cold War. It's based on the idea that there is stability in the ability of the United States and Russia to blow one another up. We think that is not an appropriate relationship for a new relationship with Russia."
Whether the ABM Treaty establishes an "adversarial relationship" or not, it clearly prohibits either the U.S. or Russia from building limited ballistic missile defense systems, and is considered the foundation of U.S.-Russian relations by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ABM treaty also prohibits the U.S. from sharing its missile defense technology with its allies.
Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. defense planners have started to view "rogue" states, like Iraq, North Korea and China, rather than Russia as the top potential sources of nuclear missile attacks. According to President Bush, the sole purpose of the missile defense system now being developed by U.S. military planners would be to protect the U.S. and its allies from attacks from such countries.
Amending ABM not an option, says DoD
Due to the uncertainties remaining in the detailed design of the U.S. missile defense system, amending the ABM Treaty is not an option, according to Crouch. "One of the issues we're dealing with is that we don't have an architecture [for ballistic missile defense]," Crouch said. "We don't have a set number of missiles we want to deploy. We don't have a set series of technologies that we definitely know we're going to implement."
Amending, rather than abandoning the ABM Treat could deny U.S. planners the flexibility needed to design the most effective missile defense system. "We can't say today whether we're going to be defending with ground-based interceptors, airborne lasers or sea-based systems," stated Crouch.
Crouch noted that the first U.S.-Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty took a decade to negotiate and contains hundreds of pages of detailed technical requirements and limitations. According to Crouch, given the ever-changing nature of the modern nuclear threat, the ABM Treaty, no matter how it was amended, would severely limit the capabilities of both the U.S. and Russia to defend themselves.
"There's a sense ... that this [amending the ABM Treaty] will not allow us to make the kinds of adjustments to our own forces and, that we think the Russians would want to make to their forces, in the timeframes required," said Crouch.
Crouch also addressed opposition by some European governments to the U.S. National Missile Defense program by pointing out that the Russians, as well as U.S. European and Asian allies were as much, if not more at risk of attack by the rouge nations than the United States.
"The threat doesn't know borders," Crouch said. "In the near term, it is more focused overseas."
