BY JIM GREEN
The United States government formally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty on June 13. The withdrawal is part of the US government's broader plans to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, enhance its nuclear "first-strike" capabilities and to militarise space.
The US is upgrading its nuclear arsenal, developing a more "flexible" nuclear force that will include smaller "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons. One minor component of the restructuring is the deactivation (but not destruction) of ageing and redundant nuclear weapons in both the US and Russia. Long-range nuclear arsenals will be reduced to 1700-2200 weapons on each side.
The US government is dressing up this minor adjustment as the main game. President George Bush claims the agreement to deactivate some weapons will "liquidate the legacy of the Cold War".
The formal Russian response has been to acquiesce to US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty — partly because of the determination of the US government to withdraw regardless of Russian objections, and partly because of vague promises of future Russian involvement in the missile defence program.
Nevertheless, on June 14 Russia pulled out of the 1993 START II nuclear arms treaty. "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin does want to show that two can play at this game", Jon Wolfsthal, from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the June 15 Washington Post. "This is a signal to the US, and it is also Putin consolidating support with the military and the hard-liners, telling the conservatives: 'We aren't going to let them roll all over us'.".
Space race
The US is planning to militarise, commercially exploit and control space. According to Professor Dan Cornwell from the US think-tank, the Madison Institute, "For decades, the [US] military has been designing weapons for dominance of space — powerful lasers and projectile launchers in orbit, capable of wreaking devastation anywhere on the surface of the Earth at the command of the president. The ABM Treaty has stood in the way of testing and deploying these weapons, as they could arguably be part of a missile defence system. ... [It] is naive not to foresee that other nations would eventually succeed in putting weapons into space. From that moment on, we would face a new balance of terror."
Dimity Hawkins, consultant to the Australian Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW), said in a June 13 statement, "The US has made it quite clear that they see the gap between the rich and the poor widening and their solution to this is not economic readjustment, but to suppress poor and frustrated countries by military domination. The US Space Command states this quite clearly in nearly those exact words. This is what the withdrawal from the ABM is leading towards."
The Australian government has supported the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and promised practical support, including the use of the Pine Gap military base near Alice Springs for missile defence related activities.
Giji Gya, executive officer of the MAPW, said: "Australia's support of US behaviour [because] we are a 'military ally' is missing the point in today's world. US missile defence plans ... undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and negotiations for a nuclear Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, something which the Australian government says it strongly supports and advocates."
From Green Left Weekly, June 26, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.