NEW YORK -- The Clinton administration seems determined to squander the best chance the world has seen in years to reduce the number of nuclear warheads by the thousands in favor of a the costly, unworkable promise of a National Missile Defense system.
And it's ironic that such a commitment should come so closely on the heels of an international conference that saw world leaders commit "to pursue negotiations in good faith" towards a nuclear weapons-free world.
At a conference to review the status of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called the treaty the "most important international agreement in the field of disarmament since the start of the nuclear age" and a "major success for the cause of peace."
Although the world still has far to go in achieving the treaty's goal of nuclear abolition, significant progress has been made since the treaty went into force in 1968. Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan, South Africa, South Korea and the Ukraine have either given up their nuclear weapons or abandoned projects to develop them. And while it was generally assumed in the 1960s and 70s that by the turn of the century dozens of countries would have nuclear capabilities, only three nations -- India, Pakistan and Israel -- have joined the nuclear club.
Meanwhile, the United States and Russia have made significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals since the signing of the NPT. Russia's recent ratification of START II promises to reduce the number of its strategic weapons to 3,500, with an equal number being held by the United States.
Yet, even with this progress, the United States is pushing for modifications to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and insisting that it will deploy a National Missile Defense system.
The U.S. plans have sparked concerns not only in Beijing and Moscow but also among its allies in Europe. These nations worry that the pursuit of NMD and changes to the ABM could jeopardize, or even unravel, recent modest progress.
Russia has linked START II implementation to the preservation of the ABM Treaty, while the U.S. has linked nuclear reductions to changes in the ABM treaty. The mere prospect of a missile defense system has prompted Russia to revise its nuclear doctrine to include the possibility of first nuclear use "if all other means of resolving a crisis situation have been exhausted or turn out to be ineffective."
Russia has also indicated it would deploy more Topol-M missiles in order to overcome any U.S. anti-missile system. All of which reinforces the U.N. secretary general's warning that deployment of even a modest NMD system "could well lead to a new arms race."
With more than $70 billion spent since former president Ronald Reagan's 1983 push for a missile shield that would render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete," and with an annual sticker price of $4 billion, NMD has yet to demonstrate any workable models. Tests of the proposed system so far have been plagued by cost overruns and technical glitches. Many experts believe that the tightly scripted tests are not representative of real-world threats where countermeasures and decoys would accompany attacks by a rogue state.
The continued pursuit of NMD will have far reaching consequences for the future of arms control and the eventual goal of nuclear abolition. It means a false sense of security for Americans and an increased threat of nuclear war for the world. It represents the weakest line of defense against nuclear missiles with the greatest costs, both monetarily and politically.
On the other hand, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, along with other cooperative initiatives such as the START process and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, promise to reduce and eliminate the threat posed by nuclear weapons.
It would seem clear in which direction real security against the threat of nuclear war for the United States lies.
Frida Berrigan and Michelle Ciarrocca are research associates
at the World Policy Institute,
New School University in New York.