-Caveat Lector-
Alamaine Ratliff wrote:
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> From
> http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/International/19991106/UABMMM.html
>
> e-mailable
>
> {{<Begin>}}
> Canada not essential to missile defence, U.S. hints
> Detect-and-destroy system capable of protecting North America likely to go
> ahead even if Ottawa, Moscow, Beijing disapprove
>
> PAUL KORING and JEFF SALLOT
>
> The Globe and Mail
> Saturday, November 6, 1999
> Washington and Ottawa -- PAUL KORING in Washington
> JEFF SALLOT in Ottawa
>
> The United States is capable of deploying an antimissile system that would
> protect nearly all of North America even if Ottawa were to refuse to allow an
> early-warning radar site in the Canadian Arctic, according to a senior U.S.
> official.
>
> "I'm not sure that Canadian co-operation is absolutely essential," Walter
> Slocombe, U.S. defence undersecretary for policy, said yesterday. "We would
> like it," he added, saying that talks are under way between the two
> governments.
>
> Current U.S. plans call for upgrading early-warning radar installations,
> including several in Canada, which, along with space-based satellite detection
> systems, would be integrated to identify, track and target incoming ballistic
> missiles.
>
> Interceptors would then be launched from a new site to be built in Alaska to
> down the incoming missiles before they could reach their targets.
> Such a system, designed to protect the entire United States, including Hawaii
> and Alaska, would also put most of Canada, and all of its major cities, under a
> defensive umbrella.
>
> Ottawa, which fears that the plans could unravel the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
> Missile Treaty, has never formally opposed Washington's interest in the matter.
> It has, though, expressed concern that such a system could upset the
> international arms-control regimes.
>
> Canadian policy depends on the outcome of U.S.-Russian talks on modifying the
> ABM treaty, Foreign Affairs spokesman Michael O'Shaughnessy said yesterday.
> Canada abstained on a contentious Russian-sponsored resolution on nuclear arms
> control at the United Nations yesterday, despite recent impassioned warnings by
> Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy that nuclear annihilation is the
> greatest threat facing humanity.
>
> The resolution called for the preservation and strengthening of the Anti-
> Ballistic Missile Treaty, a 27-year-old agreement that Mr. Axworthy has praised
> as a "cornerstone of strategic stability in the world."
>
> By abstaining, Canada avoids widening the public split between Ottawa and
> Washington on nuclear issues that first appeared a year ago.
>
> The United States opposed the resolution yesterday because it wants to
> renegotiate the ABM treaty as a prelude to deploying its national missile-
> defence system.
>
> Both Russia and China have warned that deploying such a system could reignite a
> Cold War-style nuclear arms race.
>
> The ABM treaty was designed to preserve the Cold War's strategic equilibrium of
> mutually assured destruction by outlawing the development of antimissile
> systems that, by thwarting massive nuclear attacks, could have upset that
> balance.
>
> Although the ABM treaty allowed both sides to deploy a defence system over a
> small area (the U.S. set one up near missile sites in North Dakota and the
> Soviets put theirs around Moscow), the pact was based on the premise that both
> sides remained vulnerable to a massive barrage of nuclear-tipped
> intercontinental missiles.
>
> Washington claims its current national missile-defence policy is consistent
> with the ABM treaty because it is designed only to detect and destroy a handful
> of incoming missiles, the kind of attack that could be launched by a "rogue
> state." It has said that such a system would be incapable of preventing the
> type of attack that is within Russia's capability.
>
> "The purpose of the program is to defend against limited attack," Mr. Slocombe
> said yesterday in a speech to the Centres for Strategic and International
> Studies. "Over the next 15 years [the United States] will most likely face ICBM
> [intercontinental ballistic missile] threats from North Korea, Iran and
> possibly Iraq," he said.
>
> While Washington insists that it remains committed to the ABM treaty, it wants
> Moscow to agree to reopen the pact and modify it to allow for antimissile
> missile systems designed to protect against small-scale nuclear, biological or
> chemical attacks.
>
> So far, Moscow has refused. U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen has confirmed
> that Washington will pull out of the ABM treaty if it fails to get Russian co-
> operation in modifying it.
>
> A decision is required next year and the new system could be deployed by 2005.
> {{<End>}}
>
> A<>E<>R
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've been busy the past four months with a strike and have been unable to keep
abreast of all the international news I usually read. Please excuse me for
anything repetitious.
The subject of the above article grabbed my attention and prompted me to ask a
question: Considering that the 1972 ABM Treaty involved the now defunct
Soviet Union, is the treaty still valid to the US?
The US could say they are in compliance with a treaty which they may no longer
privately consider to be valid. I suppose that's why there are discussions
between the two parties. BTW, I like the Camus quote. Not much integrity
visible today in politics, is there?
--
Mark McHugh
Duck and cover!
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