Facts about U.S. Proposals on ABM Treaty

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published papers recently that it said U.S. negotiators handed to Russia in January at talks on amending a Soviet-era pact so Washington can build a National Missile Defence (NMD). The NMD plan has sparked huge controversy among critics who fear it will lead to a new arms race, states who suspect it of trying to neutralize their strategic deterrent, and non-nuclear countries who want to focus on disarmament and containment instead of blasting "rogue" missiles out of the sky. 

The bulletin, whose history is entwined with the top secret "Manhattan Project" that developed the atom bomb during the Second World War, said Russian and English language experts had checked the translation back from Russian. Though U.S. officials would not say whether the documents were the genuine article, U.S. Ambassador to Russia James Collins confirmed draft proposals had been handed over by negotiators and did not dispute their basic premise, which involves amending the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty of 1972. 

THE ORIGINAL ANTI-BALLISTIC MISSILE TREATY 

Signed in Moscow on May 26, 1972, by President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, it agreed that each side could have two ABM deployment areas, "so restricted and so located that they cannot provide a nationwide ABM defence or become the basis for developing one". "Each country thus leaves unchallenged the penetration capability of the other's retaliatory missile forces." One limited ABM system could protect the capital and another was to protect an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launch area at least 800 miles (1,300 km) away so as to prevent the creation of the beginnings of a nationwide system. No more than 100 interceptor missiles and 100 launchers could be put at each site, the two sides agreed. 

Brezhnev and Nixon, in Moscow on July 3, 1974, signed a protocol to the treaty limiting each side to one ABM site only, with the Soviet Union choosing Moscow and the United States choosing its ICBM site in North Dakota, which has since gone out of use. The protocol allowed each side to reverse its original choice of site, but only with advance notice in a year of review, or every five years since the document's inception. 

DRAFT PROTOCOL PUBLISHED  DOCUMENTS. 

The draft published April 28 2000 recognizes the importance of the treaty to strategic stability but says changes as a result of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles among other states must be taken into account. It says the NMD will "neither threaten nor allow a threat to the strategic deterrent forces of either party" and that it will be done on a "basis of cooperation and transparency." 

The document continues as follows: "The United States of America and the Russian Federation shall be permitted to deploy a missile defence system for purposes of limited defence of their national territory against limited long-range ballistic missile strikes." It allows no more than 100 ABM launchers and no more than 100 antimissile missiles within one deployment region, with a radius of no more than 93 miles (150 km). It also allows existing strategic ballistic missile attack warning radars to support the system and allows one extra ABM radar to be deployed at any site. By March 1, 2001, negotiations to review the protocol will take place since proliferation might require deployment of more effective defence systems, the document added. 

U.S. STATEMENT LEAVES OPEN DOOR TO FURTHER AMENDMENTS 

The draft protocol only addresses phase one of the ABM, but the journal published a U.S. statement saying: "If the threat created by ballistic missiles in countries such as North Korea and Iran will grow, as we think it will, it will be necessary to deploy more anti-missile missiles, more radars and another deployment region later." Any such expansion would be subject to further talks, it said, and would still not threaten Russia's deterrence. "Ultimately, when a second deployment position is added, there will be 200 or so interceptor missiles. This will be enough to knock out several dozen warheads accompanied by advanced defence penetration aids, but inadequate to counter a larger Russian counterstrike," the document argued.