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Bush's Nuclear Gambit
By Mike Bayham
April 4, 2002

There is an interesting dichotomy in the way Americans view their leaders. When it comes down to choosing a president, the electorate tends to focus almost exclusively on domestic issues while paying only marginal attention to a candidate's foreign policy.

Conversely when these celebrated politicians become "statesmen" (i.e., when they die), history tends to focus on their foreign policy achievements. FDR would have been one of the few exceptions with the controversial, albeit popular, way he handled the Great Depression had World War II not happened. This phenomenon has been the bane of former President Clinton whose record on foreign policy can most charitably be described as "better than Jimmy Carter's" with little else to show.

It is apparent that George W. Bush is shaping his page in future high school history books with the way he is conducting the "War Against Terrorism." The images of American soldiers wiping out the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan has been a very visible demonstration of what he will be remembered for years later. However President Bush's most significant foreign policy initiative was launched shortly after September 11th, and though it is in the blind spot of national attention, it is a move that will forever change America's military defensive posture.

In mid-December 2001, President Bush stated his intention to withdraw the United States from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. The treaty stipulated that the United States and the Soviet Union could not build weapons systems that would be used to shoot down nuclear missiles aimed for their country.

In a speech discussing the need to scrap the treaty, the president accurately described the treaty as "written in a different era for a different enemy."

Democrats and Russian politicians bemoaned the withdrawal as a move that could lead to an arms race in Asia and something that would be a setback for Russo-American relations. Media anointed foreign policy "experts," those being members of the same brain trust that gave us 8 years of declining stature in geopolitics, echoed Russia's protests stating that abandoning the pact will contribute to global political destabilization.

As for as global political destabilization goes, the world can thank Yasser Arafat and Osama Bin Laden, not Bush's abandoning of the ABM treaty, for the current state of affairs across the globe. If anything, the current instability in the world is the best argument to rid ourselves of this diplomatic relic of detente.

Despite Russia's adamant opposition to this new and significant shift in American nuclear policy, Russia remains on cordial terms with America. In fact the nations most displeased with our dumping of the ABM treaty are the ones that hope to possess the capability of lighting up the West Coast in the next few years. Also of note, none of the rogue nations screaming about Bush's ABM policy are signatories of the ABM treaty.

American participation in the ABM ban has lasted longer than it should have, assuming that signing the treaty was ever a good idea. Prior to the nineties, only a handful of countries possessed missiles with a long enough range to hit the United States. Of the few nations that had these missiles, only the Soviet Union was a credible threat.

For decades the threat of global destruction via a nuclear war was kept in check by the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine, also known as MAD. Basically the theory worked that because a nuclear attack would be met with a similar retaliatory strike, the incentive to launch nuclear missiles in a first strike offensive would not exist. However it joined other political theories that became obsolete with the tumbling of the Berlin Wall.

First of all, one of the participants of the ABM treaty, the USSR, no longer exists. Some have argued that the dissolution of the Soviet Union legally voided the treaty. The once centralized Soviet state was replaced by 15 plus "republics" some of which inherited the nuclear weapons of the USSR and most of which had unstable governments. One of unpleasant effects of the quick dissolution of the Soviet Union were the security breaches of military installations in some of the former republics.

In a rather tardy confession, Russia has grudgingly admitted that some of the Soviet nuclear weapon technology has disappeared from certain facilities. So out of one strong nuclear power, we now have many minor nuclear states.

Secondly, the time factor has finally caught up with the United States. Third World nations have been spending considerably more of their resources on military and nuclear expenditures than on the general welfare of the people. Even though these countries are technologically and economically decades behind the US, many of them have spent the past thirty years investing in a nuclear arms program. Because the nuclear bomb is in essence a 47 year old invention, it was only a matter of time that even the most backwards, though determined, nations were able to develop weapons of their own.

MAD went out the door the second when "MAD" dictators were able to secure nuclear weapons of their own. MAD does not work when dealing with autocrats who do not value the value of their own people's lives let alone those of his enemies. The goal of some of these leaders is to engage in nuclear blackmail with not only their neighbors but with the United States. America's ability to intervene in conflicts that affect our national interests.

It has been reported as of last week that it is likely that Communist North Korea already has nuclear weapons constructed and hidden in bombproof bunkers. In the eighties, the state of Israel did the world a favor by making a surprise air raid on Iraq destroying their weapons facility and setting Saddam Hussein's government back many years in their nuclear program. Iraq has likely regained much of the ground they lost in their nuclear weapons development over the past ten years.

Iran, the regional powerhouse in the Mideast, has increased their military budget at an alarming level over the past few years. India and Pakistan, two nations enveloped in ethnic turmoil, have both successfully detonated nuclear weapons in tests.

Red China has also been a vocal critic of Bush's plan to take America out of the ABM treaty yet it was not long ago that one of their highest ranking military leaders bragged that Chinese nuclear missiles can take out Los Angeles. Though China is a superpower, it has made many threatening moves towards American ally Taiwan in addition to their antics regarding the American spy plane that was flying over international waters.

With the development of nuclear weapons by Third World nations with unfavorable governments an eventuality instead of a possibility, the United States needs to adopt a policy that allows for implementation of a system that can protect the nation and our allies from nuclear attack. However in order to actively work on the development and deployment of such a network, it is necessary to remove the nation from the anachronistic ABM treaty.

Though there could be some diplomatic saber rattling over America's departure from the ABM treaty, the risks are far greater for the United States to remain complacent in an ever changing world by sticking with an agreement that ties America's hands behind her back and leaves us open for a nuclear version of September 11.

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Much appreciation goes out to Captain David "Coach" Barker, USAF for contributing to this column.