Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 22, 1993 TAG: 9309220308
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WILLIAM R. HAWKINS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Allison's answer was a welcome surprise. He said that since one of the parties to the ABM Treaty no longer exists (the Soviet Union), it was questionable whether the treaty still had any legal force.
Though couched in the language of international law, Allison's argument reflects an important point of realism: No treaty is or can be considered a permanently binding document. As the world changes, the conditions and the considerations upon which a treaty were originally based cease to pertain. New situations require new arrangements.
In 1494, the treaty of Tordesillas divided the world's oceans between Spain and Portugal. According to its text, not even the pope could absolve the parties from its terms. Yet world events soon rendered the agreement moot. Archives around the world are filled with treaties that are just as dead and of only antiquarian interest.
It is time the ABM Treaty joined them.
When Henry Kissinger negotiated the ABM Treaty, he intended it to be part of a broader effort to cool the arms race. As Kissinger stated in his memoirs: ``It committed us to a firm link between offensive and defensive limitations: we would not limit our ABM ... except in exchange for an end to the Soviet offensive buildup.''
However, the Soviets did not end their offensive buildup. This prompted President Ronald Reagan to suspend de facto the ABM Treaty and embark on the SDI program.
Of course, there are major differences between the simple ground-based ABM systems limited by the 1972 treaty and the far more effective space-based systems being developed by SDI. The technological advances that rendered the ABM's hardware obsolete did the same to the logic of the treaty.
The strategic environment has also changed. Critics of SDI argue that the collapse of the Soviet Empire means SDI is no longer needed. Of course, before the Soviets disintegrated these same critics argued that it was too risky to deploy SDI because it was ``confrontational'' and might provoke a ``reaction'' by Moscow.
As general critics of all defense programs, SDI opponents will always find some argument against anything that improves America's security.
Yet history proved the critics wrong. John Lewis Gaddis, renowned author of ``The United States and the Origins of the Cold War,'' has concluded: ``The Strategic Defense Initiative, which Reagan put forward in March 1983, is now acknowledged by the Russians themselves as having convinced them of the futility of further military competition.'' It was losing the high-tech industrial contest that broke the Soviets and won the Cold War for the United States.
Noncommunist Russia no longer feels ``threatened'' by an America that can defend itself. Indeed, Boris Yeltsin has expressed interest in cooperating with the United States in advancing the SDI concept. This is because Russia f+idoeso feel threatened by the proliferation of weapons technology in the Third World, particularly in Middle Eastern and Asian lands close to the Russian border.
This should be of concern to the United States as well. Two days before Allison's hearing, CIA Director James Woolsey testified to another congressional panel that some two-dozen Third World countries were working on ``weapons of mass destruction'' (nuclear, chemical and/or biological weapons) and over a dozen were developing ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons.
The list includes obvious dangers such as Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya. But it also includes such would-be regional hegemonist as Brazil and India. (India already has a space booster rocket that could evolve into an ICBM.)
Woolsey noted that Iraq was trying hard to protect the core of its programs until the United States and the United Nations lost interest. China is busily exporting technology to countries such as Iran and Pakistan. Poverty-stricken former Soviet scientists are being hired by Third World regimes. And even Japan told American officials at the G-7 Tokyo summit that it reserved the right to develop missiles and nuclear weapons because of the threat from North Korea.
As Saddam Hussein demonstrated with his SCUD missiles, deterrence alone is not enough to prevent an attack. Saddam knew that United States (or Israeli) air power would wreak havoc on his country in retaliation, but he launched anyway. Only an active defense by U.S. Patriot anti-missile systems blunted the attacks.
The people of the United States need to be protected from missile attack. SDI can be deployed before the danger becomes acute, but only if action is taken now.
\ William R. Hawkins is president of the Hamilton Center for National Strategy in Knoxville, Tenn.
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