Treaty's End

It may be no accident that the Bush administration timed the release of the bin Laden tape on December 13 to coincide with the announcement later that same day of the administration's intention to junk the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the first abrogation of an arms control treaty since the end of World War II.

Of course, Bush's desire to withdraw from the arms accord and move forward with his Star Wars scheme was an open secret. But in the non-stop spasm of coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the media gave it scant attention, despite the fact that in the long run these nuclear machinations may have much more dire consequences than the war on terror.

Even when Russian President Vladimir Putin ventured to the Bush ranch at Crawford, Texas, in November for a back-slapping pow-wow with the president, the emphasis of the press coverage was on the cozy new relationship between the two leaders, eliciting Putin's persistent warnings that any move by the US to abrogate the ABM Treaty risked jump-starting a new nuclear arms race. Similar cautionary missives have been regularly sent out by the other nuclear states, including China, Great Britain, and France. But the Bush team simply shrugs its shoulders at international critics. With the war in Afghanistan nearly complete, the need to court a multi-national coalition is over and the unilateralists in the administration, ranging from Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz to John Negroponte and Condee Rice, are firmly in the ascendancy.

The ABM Treaty was signed in Moscow on May 26, 1972, and was ratified by the US. For the past 30 years the ABM Treaty has served as a hallmark of arms control measures, limiting the development of a ballistic missile system that would give one superpower a decisive nuclear advantage over the rest of the world. The Treaty, which has been extensively amended over the years, requires that each nation may have only two ABM deployment areas, and that those are restricted so that they cannot provide a nationwide ABM defense system or become the basis for developing one in the future.

In the end, the Russian response was curiously muted when Bush finally made the announcement that the US would abandon the treaty. Why? A top Bush official told the New York Times' Daniel Sanger, "It's not like Putin is going home empty handed." The implication is that the pullback from the ABM Treaty is only the beginning of a move to unravel other arms agreements, such as START II.

"Russia may now withdraw from the START II treaty, freeing itself from the ban on the development of missiles with multiple warheads," said Ret. Lt. Gen. Vasily Lata, the former deputy chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces. "It would serve Russia's security interests well."

Under START II, signed in 1993, both countries agreed to cut in half the number of their strategic nuclear weapons from 6,000 warheads each allowed under START I. By abandoning START II, Russia could turn to its single-warhead Topol-M missiles in MIRVed weapons, packing three nukes in each missile.

"It would have been in US interests to preserve the ABM," warned Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information, a DC-based liberal think tank. "By renouncing it, the United States gives Russia an opportunity to take back some of its earlier concessions."

Even though the trashing of the ABM treaty has been near the top of the Pentagon's agenda since his inauguration, Bush couched his move in language that invoked the events of September 11. "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," Bush said. Typically, the president refused to answer any questions from the press about the decision.

One would have thought that the September 11 attacks, where box-cutter knives were used to transform commercial aircraft into flying bombs, would have ended all talk about the efficacy of a missile defense system--no matter how many billions are spent on it--to counter the threat from "rogue nations" or "terrorists." It's unlikely that bin Laden possessed nuclear weapons, beyond the so-called dirty bombs. But if he did, they weren't going to be launched from rockets, but delivered in suitcases or backpacks. And those "rogue nations," such as Iran and Pakistan, that possess primitive ballistic missile capabilities in recent weeks have been acting as US allies in the current war.

On the very day the Bush administration announced its plans to pull out of the ABM Treaty, the Pentagon conducted another test of its Star Wars system. It ended in a spectacular failure, with an interceptor missile veering wildly off course before it was destroyed. Of course, each failure--and there have been many--is an excuse for yet another test and new round of contracts to defense firms. And here we arrive at the crux of the matter. At $60 billion, the Bush Star Wars scheme represents the biggest Pentagon gravy train to come along in decades. And this administration has let it be known that it won't allow any treaty, no matter how venerable, to stand in the way of that big of a feast at the public trough.