Let's not militarize the heavens
Seattle PI.com
Opinion
Thursday, December 27, 2001
By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- By abandoning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, are we going to live in a safer world? I think
not. Just the opposite, I fear.
President Bush wants to build a nuclear anti-missile shield
in the heavens someday to protect us. The idea may not be
far-fetched, but he is living in a dream world if he thinks
there will not be other ways to endanger us.
I hark back to the words of physicist Albert Einstein, the
brilliant scientist whose work contributed to the invention
of the A-bomb -- and later regretted it.
Einstein said: "I know not with what weapons World War III
will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks
and stones."
What a sad commentary on the future of civilization and
human progress.
Bush is taking us back to ultra-nationalism, to go-it-alone
thumbing the U.S. nose at the rest of the world after all we
have been through together. Since World War II, collective
security has been the goal, and it has worked.
Unfortunately, Bush tapped John Bolton, an ardent activist
against arms control accords, to be undersecretary of state
for arms control and international security affairs.
In an article Bolton wrote for the University of Chicago's
Journal of International Law last fall, he divided the world
into "Americanists" and "globalists." He scoffed at the
"globalists," declaring that "they want to bind the United
States into a web of treaties on everything from arms
reduction to the environment to human rights."
He said Americanists, which I read as isolationists, seek to
preserve U.S. sovereignty and flexibility in foreign policy.
Bush has now informed Russia that in six months we are
pulling out of the ABM Treaty, which has helped keep our
two nations in a nuclear standoff for three decades.
The ABM Treaty was ratified by the Senate, but Bush did
not seek approval of the lawmakers to withdraw from the
accord. He didn't have to since the pact includes a clause
permitting either party to withdraw after due notice.
Nevertheless, he should have consulted with Congress as a
courtesy in the democratic process.
The nuclear arms control treaties in the post-World War II
era were based on what Winston Churchill called "the
sublime irony of mutual destruction."
This is the first time in the modern era that the United
States has broken off an international agreement. Bush
apparently came into the White House with the premise
that the only good treaty is a dead treaty. His obsession
with militarizing the American skies is well known.
Surely the president realizes we live in one world, and,
given today's rapid communications and transportation, it's
an increasingly smaller one.
Both Russia and China -- and many European allies as well
-- are unhappy with Bush's decision, even though he has
tried to reassure their leaders that our "Star Wars" defense
would not be a belligerent act against them. Bush has said
it would protect against terrorists and rogue nations
seeking to launch a nuclear attack. And U.S. officials have
made vague comments about sharing technology in its
missile defense system with Europe and Russia.
But certainly that system would not work against terrorists
like Osama bin Laden, who used relatively low technology
and turned hijacked planes into deadly missiles in the
Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.
Our European allies are wary because they don't think the
system will work or that it could be extended to protect
them, and they definitely see it as an example of U.S.
unilateralism leading to a new arms race.
The ABM pact is only one of several treaties that Bush
wants to scrap. Despite the taste of bio-terrorism the
American people have had with the recent anthrax scare,
the United States last week sabotaged efforts to salvage the
1972 Biological Weapons Convention by creating an
international inspection system to enforce it. The United
States, in scuttling discussion of the plan for a year, said it
would be counter to American business and defense
interests.
What can they be thinking of in the White House?
Since the president wants to forge ahead in testing the
missile shield, the administration has no interest in
reviving the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, which
the Senate rejected a couple of years ago. That was a victory
for Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., former chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is another foe of
international agreements.
Helms' successor as chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.,
wrote in an article for The Washington Post that walking
away from the ABM treaty was a "serious mistake." He
added that "a Star Wars Defense ... would address only
what the Joint Chiefs of Staff consider "the least likely
threat to our national security."
Furthermore, Biden said, "Nothing could be more
damaging to global non-proliferation efforts than to go
forward" with missile defense. He said that it would cost a
quarter-trillion dollars and that Russia still has enough
offensive weapons to overwhelm any system we could
devise.
Biden also said that terrorists who are determined to do
harm "can employ a wide variety of means" and that
"weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological or even
nuclear -- need not arrive on the tip of an intercontinental
missile ..."
If those in power believe they can guarantee the safety of
the United States alone while the rest of the world is in
danger, we are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Have we forgotten the lessons of two centuries of American
history?
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.
E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Copyright 2001 Hearst
Newspapers.
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