Implications of US Withdrawal from
the ABM Treaty and Missile Defence

Presentation by Mark Bromley, 16 February 2002
Treaties Day School, King's College, London

1. Introduction

In December 2001 the US Government announced it would be withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, a decision that will become effective as of June 2002.  Given this fact, it may seem somewhat anachronistic to be discussing the ABM Treaty.  However, it is also in many ways a very timely topic to discuss.  The US decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty is a significant and worrying indication of the future of arms control and wider concepts of international law.  It is also demonstrates Washington’s determination to press ahead with its missile defence plans even in the radically altered strategic environment that we currently inhabit.  

It would therefore be useful to reflect on what the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and the ongoing push for missile defence indicate about US strategic thinking, and the wider implications of that decision.  It would also be useful to examine ways in which the impact of these developments might be mitigated and ways of preserving and reinforcing arms control treaties and international security.  

2. History

In 1972 the ABM Treaty between Moscow and Washington entered into force.  The two Cold War enemies agreed not to develop systems to defend their entire country against missile attack.  In the Cold War environment, conventional thinking held that maintaining the deterrence relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States was of primary importance.  The ABM Treaty was seen as beneficial by both countries because it stopped a new and destabilizing element being introduced into the deterrence relationship, one that would further accelerate the build up of nuclear arms. 

In the short term the Treaty had little direct impact as both sides continued to increase the size of their nuclear arsenals, reaching a combined peak of 24,000 deployed strategic warheads in the 1980s.  However the degree of stability brought by the Treaty paved the way for first the SALT and then the START agreements, which succeeded in reducing the numbers of deployed strategic warheads to a combined 12,000 by the end of 2001.

In the late 1990s, the Republican controlled Congress succeeded in pushing missile defence to the top of the US Government’s agenda and forced President Clinton to commit to the deployment of a system “as soon as technologically possible”.  In this new environment missile defence advocates were able to argue that the constraints of the ABM Treaty were preventing Washington from developing an effective NMD system.  In particular, the need for Clinton’s testing programme to stay within the bounds of the Treaty, and avoid testing space and sea based systems, was cited as a crucial cause of a perceived lack of progress. 

The team put together by George W. Bush to challenge for the White House was heavily influenced by this agenda.  According to Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, “[the ABM Treaty] ought not to inhibit a country, a president, an administration, a nation from fashioning offensive and defensive capabilities that will provide for our security.”  After winning power the Bush administration increasingly voiced its opposition to the constraints of the ABM Treaty and entered into protracted attempts to convince Russia to jointly withdraw from the agreement.  However, these efforts proved ineffective and in December 2001 the United States exercised its right under article 15 of the Treaty and gave six months notice of its withdrawal. 

3. What has Changed?

The true measure of the decision’s significance can be seen in the fact that within thirty years we have gone from a situation where a Republican administration negotiated and signed the ABM Treaty, citing it as integral to international stability, to a situation where a Republican administration has unilaterally withdrawn from the Treaty, citing it as a threat to the supreme national interests of the United States.  Two key shifts in Republican thinking that paved the way for this decision are particularly worthy of note.

A reappraisal of the value of binding arms control agreements. 

During the Cold War there was a willingness on the part of Washington to place restrictions on US force flexibility if it guaranteed that the Soviet Union would follow suit.  This was apparent with SALT, START and the ABM Treaty.  However, in the post-Cold War, ‘unipolar’ world there has been a growing belief that there is nothing any other country could offer that would justify the Unite States sacrificing any element of its force flexibility. 

This shift in thinking was apparent under the Clinton administration and came to a head with the refusal of the US Senate to ratify the CTBT in 1999.  With the arrival of the Bush administration the belief that the United States should not be party to any agreement that places restrictions on its ability to develop, augment or reconstitute its military forces (nuclear or otherwise) has become a central plank of government policy.  This can be seen in the opposition to the START II, the ABM Treaty, the CTBT and other agreements. 

The push for a ‘new framework of deterrence’

During the Cold War there was a general consensus amongst military planners that deterrence ‘worked’.  Most importantly, there was a belief that the main reason the Soviet Union never launched an attack on Western Europe was because it feared that NATO forces might retaliate with nuclear weapons, even if it meant sparking World War Three. 

The fear now is that the United States, fearing a nuclear response, might find itself deterred from projecting its conventional forces into areas of strategic importance.  In the future this might involve North Korea or Iraq, but in the short term it certainly involves China.  Senior policy makers are deeply worried that the United States will one day be deterred from projecting force into the Pacific, possibly in order to defend Taiwan, out of a fear that Beijing might be willing to launch a nuclear strike against the United States. 

Guarding against the emergence of China as near power rival was a central concern of the 2001 Quadrennial Defence Review, while Beijing’s ability to deter the United States from intervening in Taiwan is a central concern of Keith Payne of the National Institute for Public Policy.  Keith Payne and the work of the National Institute for Public Policy are believed to have had a decisive influence on shaping Bush’s nuclear policy.

4. Implications 

The US decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and press ahead with Missile defence has many implications but three are of particular note.

Lowering the Threshold for Treaty Withdrawal

Article 15 of the ABM Treaty allows for both the United States and Russia to have “the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests”.  The extraordinary events cited by the United States were that some countries and non-state entities “are actively seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction” and long-range ballistic missiles and that “it is clear, and has recently been demonstrated, that some of these entities are prepared to employ these weapons against the United States.” 

Many commentators, including the former head of the Department of Operations Testing and Evaluation, Philip Coyle, have argued that the United States could have continued with an effective testing programme within the bounds of the ABM Treaty, while Moscow repeatedly offered to amend the terms of the agreement to facilitate US concerns.  The United States has become the first country to withdraw from an arms control agreement since the Second World War, and has done so on very questionable grounds.  In doing so they have set a dangerous precedent which other nations may choose to emulate.  As Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, stated, other countries may be less likely to abide by other international agreements, “thinking, logically, that if one country does not abide, why should we?”

The wider implications for arms control of Bush’s nuclear policy

Missile defence plans represent both a symptom and cause of the Bush Administration’s wider attack on the general principle of binding and verifiable arms control agreements.  The refusal on the part of the United States to allow its military forces to be restricted by international agreements is likely to have an adverse effect on many agreements including the BTWC, the CTBT and the NPT.  While deep flaws exist in these agreements they still represent the best hope the international community has of controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Relationship with Russia and China

While Moscow’s opposition towards missile defence and the abrogation of the ABM Treaty has waned, this continued goodwill is dependent upon the success of the ongoing arms reduction negotiations between the United States and Russia.  It is possible that the United States will refuse to make its reductions binding and irreversible, something Russia sees as essential.  If Russia feels it is not getting the irreversible reductions it seeks it will have more reason to fear missile defence plans and questions about MIRVing its missiles and raising their alert status will re-emerge. 

The effect upon relations with China pose a much graver threat and one that European Governments need to do more to highlight.  While it is likely that China would have expanded its nuclear arsenal regardless of US missile defence plans, Washington’s actions give Beijing justification for its actions and make international opposition hard to sustain.

5. Future Possibilities

Minimising the impact of the abrogation of the ABM Treaty and the development of missile defence is a central concern to the international community.  Given this fact, three possible approaches seem possible.

The United States Re-enters the ABM Treaty

There has been some speculation that Congress might force the Administration’s hand on this issue, given that a failure to consult with them on Treaty withdrawal could represent a violation of the US constitution.  However, any action designed to bring the United States back into the ABM Treaty would have to be instigated by Congress, or possibly Moscow, and neither seems very likely.

Replacement for the ABM Treaty

Another option would be to try and negotiate a new version of the ABM Treaty designed to limit its scope and assure Russia and China that its deterrent capabilities are not at risk.  However, there is a real danger here of talking past the United States, by asking them to return to the Cold War deterrence framework that they are determined to leave behind.  There is also the risk of holding up the Cold War deterrence framework as an ideal to be preserved.  As General Lee Butler said in 1997: “Deterrence was a dialogue between the blind and the deaf, born out of an irreconcilable contradiction.”

A better defence

If a constructive and sustainable argument is to be made against missile defence it will need to be based not on the need to preserve deterrence, but on the principle that waiting until the missiles are fired is the most unreliable form of security that the United States could pursue.  The only way to ensure real security is to take active and engaged steps towards ridding the world of WMD materials and preventing the spread and proliferation of ballistic missile technology.  This can only be achieved through multilateral agreements and these stand to be severely threatened by both missile defence and the wider policies of the Bush administration.  As Jayantha Dhanapala, the Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations, said recently:

“Effective measures against WMD terrorism and on behalf of WMD disarmament simply cannot be accomplished by any single country acting alone. No one country controls all global exports, monitors all transfers of technology, and enforces all legal obligations … multilateral treaty regimes like the BWC, CWC, and NPT serve a triple security purpose -- they serve to prevent the proliferation of such weapons to states; they make it much more difficult for terrorists to acquire significant WMD capabilities; and they promote an equitable, fair, and global public good called disarmament. While subject to improvement, they also serve these ends better than any single state, acting alone, can hope to achieve, and they surely serve these ends better than competitive arms races undertaken in the name of achieving or preserving of military supremacy."

6. Conclusion

The US decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and its ongoing missile defence plans are likely to continue to negatively impact on the health of arms control agreements and international relations.  By pursuing such a narrowly militaristic definition of national security, Washington is willing to fatally undermine existing non-proliferation agreements and destroy the goodwill of the international community.  These effects are only likely to be lessened by US allies engaging with Washington in areas where the United States is willing to support strengthened multilateral controls on WMD and ballistic missile technology.  The outlook is not overly positive but the International Code of Conduct on Ballistic Missile Control and the NPT are both agreements which the United States has given verbal support to in recent months.  Building upon these areas of common agreement offer the best hope of maintaining an effective and meaningful system of arms control and non-proliferation.

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