“The administration claims that the treaty has no effect on any American missile-defense program. Surely it knows better. Paragraph nine of the preamble establishes a bias against missile defense. It accepts our “current” defenses while implying that future U.S. defensive systems might undermine the “viability and effectiveness” of Russia's strategic nuclear force.
With this unfortunate paragraph, New Start returns to the old Cold War “balance of terror” and assumes that attempts to defend the U.S. and its allies with missile defenses against strategic attack are threatening to Russia and thus destabilizing.
Limiting missile defenses to preserve U.S. vulnerability to Russian strategic nuclear strikes (as defined by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev or their successors) will result in less effective defenses against any and all countries, including Iran and North Korea.”
The article is a good antidote to the Kissinger et al piece.
“The article is a good antidote to the Kissinger et al piece.”
Why anyone should listen to Kissinger is beyond me. His entire rationale was that the USSR was no more evil, no more an agressor, no more a “destablizer” (or however they put it), than the U.S. His false idol was the “balance of power” of the post-Napoleonic era. If he could go back that far, it’s kinda ironic he didn’t go just a little further to realize what worked after Napoleon wouldn’t have meant anything to Napoleon (or Hitler, or Stalin, etc.)