ABM System

Published in: The Washington Post, December 17, 1995, page C2
Off to a Bad START II
In Both the U.S. and Russia, Hopes for the Strategic Arms Pact Are Fading
By Rodney W. Jones and Yuri K. Nazarkin

Dr. Rodney W. Jones, now president of Policy Architects International, served on the U.S. START delegation. Ambassador Yuri Nazarkin headed the Soviet delegations to the START I talks and participated in the preparation of START II. Both are senior advisers to the Moscow-based START II Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

AFTER MONTHS of delay, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee moved last week to bring the START II treaty up for a vote on the Senate floor. The pact would reduce U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons to 70 percent of Cold War levels and also eliminate land-based multiple-warhead missiles, the most threatening of Russia's weapons. Unfortunately, while a favorable Senate vote on the treaty is virtually assured, ratification of the pact by Russia has become increasingly uncertain in recent months. As Russians go to the polls today, many will be voting for politicians who question whether START II is still in Russia's best interest.

The prime cause of Russian second thoughts, according to parliamentarians and defense experts in Moscow, is the Republican-led effort that began this summer to mandate the deployment of a multi-site strategic anti-ballistic missile, or ABM, system by the year 2003. This system was called for originally in the Senate version of the defense authorization bill and endorsed last week by a House-Senate conference committee. Yet is would violate the 1972 ABM Treaty, which for more than two decades has helped curtail a costly buildup of defensive nuclear weapons and countervailing offensive weapons.