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What was the purpose of the Anti-Ballistic Treaty signed in 1972 and how has it changed over the years?

FRANK GAFFNEY: The ABM Treaty was originally part of grand experiment. It was hoped that, if ballistic missile defenses could be essentially banned, both the United States and the Soviet Union would agree first to cap, and then dramatically to reduce, their respective offensive nuclear forces.

In fact, the United States initially attached so much importance to this proposition that the American chief negotiator made a formal unilateral statement upon the conclusion of the ABM Treaty to the effect that, if deep reductions were not agreed upon by 1977, the U.S. would consider its supreme interests to be jeopardized and would withdraw from the accord. In the event, 1977 came and went with no reductions agreement. To the contrary, the Russians continued massively to buildup their strategic forces and the United States responded in kind. It is in the nature of arms control, however, that no matter how seriously flawed the assumptions or terms of treaties prove to be -- or, for that matter, how materially they are breached by other parties -- the U.S. government tends to view them as permanent fixtures to which this country must scrupulously adhere for the foreseeable future.

This practice has become especially preposterous, not to say bizarre, under strategic circumstances so different from those of 1972 as to be unrecognizable to the framers of the ABM Treaty. As a practical matter, Russia's dire economic straits are forcing it to make far larger reductions in its offensive nuclear forces than any strategic arms control agreement in history -- or in prospect -- might require. Consequently, the ABM Treaty today is a vestige of the Cold War, no longer binding as a legal matter (see Number 5 below) and incompatible with the United States' requirements to protect its people against the possibility of accidental or unauthorized missile strikes from Russia and the growing danger of deliberate attacks from other quarters.

JOHN PIKE: The primary purpose of the ABM Treaty is to facilitate offensive arms control agreements between America and Russia. When it was signed in 1972, both countries recognized that anti-missile systems available at the time were of limited effectiveness, and that the effectiveness of the defense could be virtually eliminated by simply building up more offensive missiles than the defense was designed to counter. Subsequent efforts to actually reduce, rather than merely limit, the number of offensive nuclear weapons have accentuated the importance of the ABM Treaty, by eliminating the need to build the surplus number of offensive weapons that would be needed to offset an antimissile system.

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Does the missile defense system proposed by the Clinton administration violate the ABM Treaty? Why or why not?

JOHN PIKE: While the ABM Treaty has been modified over the years, as it presently stands the treaty permits the U.S. to deploy only 100 interceptors at a single site in Grand Forks, North Dakota. And it prohibits building any antimissile system that would cover the entire country, or any system that used satellites as the primary means of tracking incoming warheads. In order for the Clinton Administration's proposed system to be deployed, the prohibitions on a nationwide defense and the use of satellite sensors would have to be changed, and if the plan includes an interceptor base in Alaska, the current limit of a single site in North Dakota would have to be modified.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Any territorial defense of the United States -- including the modest one the Clinton Administration seems to have embraced -- would be incompatible with Article I of the ABM Treaty, which explicitly prohibits such countrywide defenses. It is not clear how the Administration hopes to get around this problem by launching new talks with the Russians aimed at securing the Kremlin's permission to modify the treaty in relatively minor ways (for example, so as to accommodate a change of the location of the one allowed missile defense site, an addition of a second site or perhaps other adjustments). Even if such changes could be worked out with the Russians (and, at this writing, there seems little likelihood of that), the Administration would seem to have an insuperable problem reconciling its commitment to continue to adhere to the ABM Treaty with a missile defense program incompatible with its Article I.

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How has the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty (START) impacted the ABM Treaty?

FRANK GAFFNEY: The Clinton Administration has been counting upon Russian ratification of the START II Treaty to breathe new life into the ABM Treaty. Believing that tying the two together may be the only hope for perpetuating a prohibition on nationwide strategic missile defenses, it has connived with the Kremlin to ensure that the Duma's approval of the former is explicitly linked to continued U.S. adherence to the latter.

The combination of Russian legislators' willingness to hold up action on START II in retaliation for American behavior of which they do not approve (in Iraq and Kosovo) and the Administration's newfound interest in modifying the ABM Treaty, however, may spell the end to this stratagem.

JOHN PIKE: The ABM Treaty was signed in 1972 as part of a package deal that also include the first Strategic Arms Limitation [SALT 1] agreement, and ever since that time there has been a close connection between the limitations on antimissile systems contained in the ABM Treaty and the SALT and START offensive arms control agreements. The Russian parliament has clearly indicated that Russian ratification and implementation of the START-2 nuclear arms reduction agreement depends on continued American compliance with the ABM Treaty.

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Would the Clinton Administration's proposal to change the ABM Treaty undermine or enhance national security?

JOHN PIKE: Over the past 15 years the United States has spent over $60 billion on antimissile research, and has yet to demonstrate an effective system. Of the 15 tests of technology similar to that needed for the Clinton antimissile plan, all but two tests were failures and did not intercept the incoming dummy warhead. Deployment of currently available antimissile technology would not provide an effective defense, and would not enhance American security. Our security could be reduced, however, if Russia decided not to proceed with the arms reductions in the START-2 agreement, or if they decided not to agree to further reductions under a new START-3 agreement. Although China currently has only about a dozen nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States, additional concerns would arise if China decided to increase this force to offset American deployment of an antimissile system. These actions by Russia and China would in turn make it more difficult to dampen the nuclear ambitions of other countries such as India and Pakistan, and possibly Taiwan or Japan.

FRANK GAFFNEY: American security is unlikely to be enhanced by any change to the ABM Treaty to which the Russians would agree. In a world in which ballistic missiles are rapidly proliferating into the hands of some of the most dangerous nations on the planet, the United States must be free to develop and deploy the most effective antimissile defenses technology can provide. Perpetuating any of the limits on such development and deployment imposed by the ABM Treaty would be counterproductive and ill-advised.

For example, the United States is now in a position to pursue antimissile defenses that would be far more flexible, readily available and cost-effective than the ground-based approach ostensibly favored by the Clinton Administration. Within roughly three-and-a-half years from a decision to proceed with a wide-area sea-based antimissile system, long-range interceptors could become operational on the Navy's AEGIS fleet air defense ships. American taxpayers have already invested $50 billion in the AEGIS system. For about $2-3 billion more (spent out over five years), 650 of these interceptors could be deployed on 22 cruisers which are already deployed in international waters the world over. Once equipped with such interceptors and data obtained from a variety of space-, air-, sea- and ground-based sensors, these ships could provide a very robust defense for U.S. forces and allies overseas. If permitted to do so, they could begin providing protection to the American people at home, as well -- for approximately a tenth of the price of a single ground-based NMD site.

In fact, the final Bush Administration budget for 1994-1999 proposed to develop just such a sea-based missile defense system. Had that plan been followed and had the Navy been given the freedom and resources to prepare and deploy this capability, it could have been brought online by 1998. Tragically, the Clinton Administration has systematically resisted this promising approach on the grounds that it is utterly inconsistent with the spirit, as well as the letter, of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. In the face of concerted congressional pressure to proceed with AEGIS-based antimissile defenses, it has stretched-out and “dumbed-down” the program. The Nation's security demands that this behavior cease at once and the Treaty that animates it be dispensed with immediately.

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How did the dissolution of the Soviet Union affect the treaty?

FRANK GAFFNEY: A new legal analysis by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and former Justice Department official George Miron being distributed by the Center for Security Policy conclusively demonstrates that, under international legal practice and precedent, the extinction of the Soviet Union caused the ABM Treaty to lapse.

Consequently, the United States has not been legally bound by the terms of this accord since 1991. In light of the ballistic missile threat to this country that even the Clinton Administration now acknowledges is emerging, the nation can no longer afford to continue, as a matter of policy, to constrain its defensive technology and programs in ways not required of it by international law.

JOHN PIKE: Some critics of the ABM Treaty contend that the ABM Treaty was an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, and that when the Soviet Union dissolved the ABM Treaty dissolved as well. In fact, when the Soviet empire broke up, Moscow assumed all the legal rights and obligations of the former Soviet Union. The ABM Treaty remains in force just as the other treaties and agreements signed by Moscow before the breakup of the Soviet empire remain in force.