A Different Kind Of Climate Change
President Bush's visit with Vladimir Putin last week did nothing to smooth out the wrinkles in US-Russian relations. Mr. Putin still doesn't want the US missile defense program ringing his nation, and it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Bush visit wasn't going to change his mind. More is involved than the placement of those missile systems, however. Ilya Kramnik, the military commentator for Russia's RIA Novosti, provided some insight into just how the US moves are viewed in Russia, especially amongst the military.
On par with NATO's expansion, deployment of a U.S. missile defense system has already become the most sensitive issue in Russia's relations with the West.
When discussing the political side of this issue, many forget about its military-technical and operational aspects, which override everything else. ...
U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Soviet-American ABM Treaty, which imposed a direct ban on national missile defense, and the start of its deployment, has caused the worst crisis in Russian-American relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian military and diplomats have serious grounds for concern because this treaty was the main guarantee of nuclear missile parity. [Emphasis added]
Mr. Kramnik then proceeds to describe in rather technical detail just what the US program involves in terms of the hardware and its location under the plan and, more importantly, what that could mean to Russia and, for that matter, all of the rest of world.
If a potential U.S. enemy wants to ward off such a scenario, its only option would be to launch a pre-emptive strike itself, while destroying the missile defense systems. Thus, missile defense can take the world back to the 1960s, when war was seen as an exchange of major nuclear strikes.
Moreover, other nuclear powers are bound to take part in such a conflict. Today's warheads are much more precise and have a smaller yield than in the sixties, and therefore humans could survive such an exchange, but living under the permanent threat of nuclear war is very uncomfortable. [Emphasis added]
Uncomfortable? How about down right frightening, which is how I recall that threat as a child.
The fact is that the treaty from which the US so brazenly withdrew without any real warning worked, and worked well. If the Bush administration was really so worried about the potential of attack from nations not signatory to the pact, or from nations who were going to go rogue on the pact, a far more sensible (and less expensive, both in terms of dollars and of national credibility) approach would have been to draw those nations into the treaty diplomatically, making sure they understood the benefit of such a treaty and the cost of breaking it.
But that's not how the neocon White House does things. As the "lone superpower", the US can do what it likes when it likes, including withdrawing from promises made in good faith by previous administrations. And what is so absolutely astounding about this dangerous foolishness is that the White House did so on a program that still has not been proven to be an effective deterrent to missile attacks, even after billions of dollars have been poured into it.
282 days.
On par with NATO's expansion, deployment of a U.S. missile defense system has already become the most sensitive issue in Russia's relations with the West.
When discussing the political side of this issue, many forget about its military-technical and operational aspects, which override everything else. ...
U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Soviet-American ABM Treaty, which imposed a direct ban on national missile defense, and the start of its deployment, has caused the worst crisis in Russian-American relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian military and diplomats have serious grounds for concern because this treaty was the main guarantee of nuclear missile parity. [Emphasis added]
Mr. Kramnik then proceeds to describe in rather technical detail just what the US program involves in terms of the hardware and its location under the plan and, more importantly, what that could mean to Russia and, for that matter, all of the rest of world.
If a potential U.S. enemy wants to ward off such a scenario, its only option would be to launch a pre-emptive strike itself, while destroying the missile defense systems. Thus, missile defense can take the world back to the 1960s, when war was seen as an exchange of major nuclear strikes.
Moreover, other nuclear powers are bound to take part in such a conflict. Today's warheads are much more precise and have a smaller yield than in the sixties, and therefore humans could survive such an exchange, but living under the permanent threat of nuclear war is very uncomfortable. [Emphasis added]
Uncomfortable? How about down right frightening, which is how I recall that threat as a child.
The fact is that the treaty from which the US so brazenly withdrew without any real warning worked, and worked well. If the Bush administration was really so worried about the potential of attack from nations not signatory to the pact, or from nations who were going to go rogue on the pact, a far more sensible (and less expensive, both in terms of dollars and of national credibility) approach would have been to draw those nations into the treaty diplomatically, making sure they understood the benefit of such a treaty and the cost of breaking it.
But that's not how the neocon White House does things. As the "lone superpower", the US can do what it likes when it likes, including withdrawing from promises made in good faith by previous administrations. And what is so absolutely astounding about this dangerous foolishness is that the White House did so on a program that still has not been proven to be an effective deterrent to missile attacks, even after billions of dollars have been poured into it.
282 days.
Labels: Foreign Policy
posted by Diane at 3:14 PM
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