WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
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Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together. |
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Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
... in Afghanistan or at home.
Why Do They Hate Us?
It has everything to do with U.S. policy.
Qatar stops making sense.
Creeping Authoritarianism.
Back Talk
Y'all enjoying the war?
Appall-o-Meter
With "economic stimulus," Republicans reward their most loyal constituents.
Arms reduction doesn't mask race toward missile defense.
Arrested Development
Brits crack down on civil liberties.
Truth Before Freedom
Death Row inmate turns down state's attorney's offer
In Person
Diane Wilson: An unreasonable woman.
Art and lies.
Words for an Afterlife
Tahar Djaout's Last Summer of Reason.
Art and Shadow
Death and painting in Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul.
Salman Rushdie does New York.
Lost in Transit
V.S. Naipaul's comic journey.
The Corrections of Jonathan Franzen.
The Lonely Tribune
Victor Serge's revolution.
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November 21, 2001
Missile Mania
Arms reduction doesn't mask race for missile defense.
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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WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
