--- "John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In fairness, the Russian Federation is regarded in > almost every other arean > as the successor to the USSR. > > While the above argument was used by many > conservative commentators, I > never found that particular argument to be truly > serious. > > JDG
IIRC, the two countries actually signed an agreement saying that all previous treaties would remain binding. The point, though, is that the political circumstances that gave rise to the Treaty had changed so drastically that the necessity of maintaining its shackles seemed nonobvious. I found the argument that dropping it would engage us in a new arms race to be particularly hilarious. The people who made it never seemed to clue in on the idea that you need (at least) two countries to have an arms race. Or, for that matter, that any country we were likely to race with now or in the future would not normally consider itself bound by treaties it had signed. Not that any of this should be taken to mean that I think leaving the treaty was a good idea. Dan has managed to convince me (absent classified evidence otherwise, at least) that the technology for missile defense is so unready that there's not really any point to the exercise - so why pay the price if you're not getting any benefits? Gautam __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
