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ABM,
R.I.P.? August 22, 2001 5:10 p.m. |
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Or at least the predicate for a deal. Because the Russians will never talk seriously about "moving beyond" the treaty (in the administration's phrase), unless they know we are determined to leave it. Otherwise, the Russians will count on some combination of the Putin Democrats in Washington — Levin, Biden & Co. — the Europeans, and Colin Powell, to keep the administration from ever pulling the trigger. At work here is a variant of the principle Donald Kagan outlined in his brilliant book, On the Origins of War: "It is a paradoxical truth that for a nation to lead a coalition into risky actions it needs to show its willingness to act alone, while an unwillingness to act without prior agreement encourages hesitation." In a similar way, there will never be a deal unless the U.S. shows it doesn't much care whether there's a deal. And, in fact, it shouldn't matter too much whether there is a new and improved ABM treaty. The treaty deserves to be treated the way fraternities at my alma mater treated old furniture during the annual "Potlatch" rite: tossing it out of a second-story window, smashing it to bits, and burning it, while standing around laughing and drinking Milwaukee's Best. Assuming this is politically unrealistic, the best alternative would be for the administration to unilaterally withdraw (lurching us definitively into the post-ABM treaty world), and then hammer out a minimal follow-on agreement with the Russians: — providing that our system won't be built with the Russian strategic force as its object; — keeping open all technical avenues so that a system can change to deal with emerging threats, and with those "countermeasures" the missile-defense skeptics always talk about; and — stipulating that the agreement will lapse in ten years — both to avoid another confrontation between a parchment relic and new strategic realities, and in recognition that, by then, the U.S.-Russia relationship will have moved beyond its MAD-phase. To make it all go down easier, President Bush can assure the world that Putin is the warmest-hearted leader Russia has ever had, and also has a soft voice and deep, mysterious eyes. But let's hope the administration is serious this time (discerning NRO readers were aware of a shift in tone last week). It may be that the Bushies just don't have any choice, if they want to continue with a robust testing program. Liberals like Sen. Biden have talked about the desirability of a "boost-phase" defense, which would knock down a missile before it really got started. But the ABM Treaty bans mobile interceptors, making boost-phase defense — which would be based on ships — illegal. Indeed, even testing boost-phase capabilities is banned. The treaty says that a system not explicitly designed for missile-defense can't be tested for the purpose of missile defense (this rules out tests with the AEGIS radar). It's amusing to watch liberals demand more and more testing before we withdraw from the ABM Treaty, when the very testing they demand is foreclosed by it. Thomas Friedman recently provided a sterling example of this impulse at work, in a column that was either willfully contradictory or simply ill-informed. So there's another reason to dispatch with the ABM treaty: It will save Friedman and Co. from many unnecessary contortions over the coming months. |
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he
sound you hear amid the hue and cry over John Bolton's remarks in
Moscow — in which he said the U.S. would withdraw from the ABM Treaty
if there isn't progress on revising it with the Russians by November
— may be the beginnings of a deal.
