PRESS RELEASE

13 December 2001

Scrapping ABM Treaty Highlights 
Unilateralist Arms Control Agenda

President George W. Bush’s decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty dramatically undercuts the international security regime, ignoring ongoing European concerns without technological need.

Brushing aside the ABM is yet another damaging blow to international arms control efforts. In the past month, the Bush administration thwarted progress on strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.  

Yet while the United States clearly welcomes European cooperation with its anti-terrorism actions, it chooses to act unilaterally on global arms control issues. BASIC Director Ian Davis said, “The United States cannot prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction acting alone. Effective arms control requires concerted international cooperation.  The decision to withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty is the latest move in a baffling and dangerous trend of US unilateralism, which is doing much to undermine the post-September 11 coalition against terrorism.”

Preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty, which was created to avert competitive nuclear weapons buildup between Russia and the United States, is still the best way to reign in proliferation that might arise in other countries.  Abandoning the ABM will likely result in China stepping up its own nuclear weapons program, and possibly increase its arsenal, in response.  Washington’s allies are yet to be convinced of Bush’s assurances over these fears. 

• French President Jacques Chirac asserted in August, “There's no single response to this new threat [missile proliferation]. Political means must not be neglected… [M]issile defense capabilities, at the heart of the debate, whose efficacy and consequences must be assessed, are far from constituting a new panacea.”
  
  

• U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in September expressed concern for the future of controlling nuclear weapons, noting that “plans to deploy national missile defenses threaten not only current bilateral and multilateral arms control agreements but also ongoing and future disarmament and non-proliferation efforts.”

Scientific experts assert that the United States can continue to test a missile defense system without breaking the ABM Treaty for many years to come.  Philip Coyle, former director of Operational Test and Evaluation, said in August, “For the testing that has yet to be done for many, many years the ABM system will not be a problem.  Kwajalein is a test range that is permitted under the ABM treaty, so is White Sands missile range in New Mexico, so we can continue to test there.” 

For more information, please contact:
Mark Bromley at +44 (0)20 7407 2977
or Christine Kucia at +1 202 347 8340

International Reactions to the US Decision to Withdraw from the ABM Treaty  

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