After three days of meetings in Washington and Texas, George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to reach an expected agreement that would have amended or replaced the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. The administration has promised to abide by the ABM treaty for now despite its still intense fixation on missile defense, but could withdraw (with the required six months’ notice) if talks remain stalled.

In the months leading up to the summit Putin had indicated an increasing willingness to consider Bush’s desired changes, but he did an about-face in final weeks owing to the alarm of his security advisers and domestic hard-liners. Meanwhile, for the United States, getting Putin to sign off on Bush’s attempts to abolish the global arms control structure simply became less important than getting the Russian leader’s cooperation on more immediate issues in Afghanistan. In exchange for Putin’s support of both the Northern Alliance (Russian sent armaments bolstering the Alliance ground war) and U.S. efforts to cobble together a post-Taliban Afghan government, the Bush Administration became far more understanding of other Russian priorities: Putin’s stance on Chechnya, and Russia’s desire to see NATO become a demilitarized alliance.

As a part of the courting of Russia, missile defense tests previously scheduled for October—tests which intentionally and unnecessarily violated the ABM treaty—were first postponed until “sometime in November or December,” and then put on hold indefinitely. (October’s announcement was largely theatrical, coming a week after the Pentagon had already announced test delays for technical reasons.) The ABM treaty explicitly prohibits use of sea-based or space-based radar as part of a missile test; the scheduled tests were to use sea-based Aegis radar to track the U.S. missile launch. Critics charge the tests were planned, not out of any technical necessity, but specifically to break the treaty—thus allowing Bush to point to it as compromising missile defense research.

While the Bush-Putin summit did end in an agreement on a threefold reduction of nuclear warheads (with Bush committing to reducing the U.S. arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 in a decade, and Putin referring to earlier statements offering a goal of 1,500), such levels are nearly identical to those Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to in 1997. As it is, through age and attrition, experts estimate that Russia will have only about 1,100 operational warheads by 2010—but if the Bush administration breaks the ABM treaty, Russia may try to keep as many as 3,800 warheads operational through testing and cannibalizing existing missiles. China, which now only has 20 such missiles, may increase to 200 or more.

The Bush administration remains committed to abolition of the world’s current arms control structure, of which the ABM treaty (between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (signed by 164 nations and ratified by 88, but rejected by the Senate in 1999) are two key parts. But while Bush has repeatedly claimed that structure to be outdated, only days before the summit he began warning of the danger of al-Qaeda obtaining nuclear weapons. Without that global structure, the current risk of Pakistan’s nukes, or those in former Soviet republics, falling into extremist hands could be multiplied countless times.

The Pentagon is continuing to plan for missile defense tests and other apparent violations of the ABM treaty. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remain confident that Putin will agree, explicitly or implicitly, to allow missile defense development, and that such systems are necessary to defend the United States against inter-continental missiles from rogue states. Democratic opposition has centered mostly on technical feasibility and cost. The ABM treaty is still alive, for the moment, but not because of any change in how Bush and the Pentagon view the world’s military threats after September 11.

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