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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Security Experts Say Bush Missile Defense Plan Will Decrease Overall Security |
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by Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers
(No verified email address) |
03 May 2001
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WASHINGTON - May 1 - An alliance of 16 leading nuclear non-proliferation organizations said President Bush's call for a massive and expensive, air-, sea-, and space-based national missile defense system will decrease, rather than increase, overall American and international security and undercut the value of possible reductions in U.S. offensive nuclear weapons and standing-down U.S. weapons from hair-trigger alert. |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MAY 1, 2001
CONTACT: Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers
Daryl Kimball 202-546-0795 x136
\"The Bush Administration is unwisely betting our nation\'s security against nuclear dangers on unproven and costly missile defenses,\" said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, a Coalition member organization. \"Instead of deploying a technologically questionable defense against missile attacks, the President should focus on minimizing the most urgent nuclear dangers by reducing the Russian nuclear arsenal, securing excess nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, and convincing North Korea to end its long-range missile program,\" said Isaacs.
\"The cost of the Bush national missile defense plan would be high, and the benefits to security very low. National missile defense deployment would cost well over $100 billion and would not provide any significant protection from weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, it would set off a dangerous action-reaction cycle, involving the U.S., Russia, and China,\" said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers.
\"Before the President commits the U.S. to this risky course of action, he must demonstrate that national missile defense will be effective and reliable, that it will be a cost effective use of taxpayer dollars, that it will not adversely affect other nuclear-risk reduction goals, and that diplomatic efforts to curb or freeze missile programs of concern have been exhausted,\" said Kimball. Earlier this year, the President said he was not ready to resume talks with North Korea on the verifiable elimination of their long-range missile program.
\"There is no quick, easy or cheap national missile defense technology. The Bush administration should be careful not to give the false impression that it can develop an effective national missile defense in the near future,\" said Kimball. A recent independent Pentagon audit and reports from the General Accounting Office underscore the dangers of ignoring the limitations of NMD technologies for the purpose of meeting arbitrary, politically-driven deadlines. Contrary to the claims of sea-based and \"boost-phase\" national missile defense proponents, such technologies will not be available for over a decade or more.
\"Contrary to Bush\'s goal of eliminating the mutual-assured-destruction policies of the Cold War, Bush\'s formula will make it more difficult to deal with lingering Cold War dangers and create new proliferation problems. U.S. national missile defense deployment would prod Russia into keeping a larger number of its strategic weapons on hair-trigger alert, thus perpetuating the dangerous nuclear standoff and risk of accidental nuclear war,\" said Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
If the U.S. deploys NMD, Russian officials have said they may equip its road-mobile SS-27 long-range missiles with multiple nuclear warheads, extend the life of its SS-19 missile, and build a new multiple-warhead submarine-launched missile. China, which now possesses 20 long-range, nuclear-armed missiles may respond by modernizing its arsenal for hair-trigger launch, and increase its strategic nuclear arsenal to as many as 250 warheads or more.
\"Contrary to President Bush\'s assertion that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is irrelevant, the agreement continues to stabilize the strategic nuclear balance and does not impede research and early development of national missile defense systems planned in the near future,\" noted John Rhinelander, of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security.
\"The ABM Treaty remains essential to arms control as well as nuclear non-proliferation because it promotes stability and facilitates offensive nuclear weapons reductions. We must work with Russia, China, and others to accomplish our global security goals and not act unilaterally,\" added Rhinelander, the former U.S. legal advisor for the Nixon Administration\'s ABM Treaty negotiation team.
Today, President Bush hinted that the U.S. should reduce its deployed nuclear weapons arsenal from its current level of 7295 bombs and remove some U.S. nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert. The U. S. retains another 600-700 tactical nuclear weapons and another 2500 \"reserve\" nuclear bombs.
\"Unilateral nuclear reductions and the standing down of some U.S. nuclear weapons would be a long-overdue and very welcome initiative that could jump-start the stalled arms reduction process,\" said Ira Shorr, director of the organization, Back from the Brink. \"Unfortunately a spoonful of sugar can\'t make the NMD medicine go down,\" he said.
\"The ultimate goal of any unilateral initiative by the Bush administration is to get Russia to reciprocate. U.S. NMD deployment will only encourage Russia to keep a larger number of its strategic nuclear forces on a high level of alert to preserve their ability to respond to a U.S. first strike. This perpetuates the danger of a nuclear war by accident or miscalculation,\" said Shorr.
\"Rather than rush towards deployment of an unproven NMD system, President Bush should pursue verifiable, U.S. and Russian nuclear arms reductions, elimination of dangerous, Cold War launch-on-warning and targeting plans, and nuclear proliferation efforts, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and a verifiable freeze of North Korea\'s ballistic missile program,\" Kimball concluded.
The Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers is a non-partisan alliance of 16 national nuclear non-proliferation organizations dedicated to the pursuit of a practical, step-by-step program to address the threat of nuclear weapons. For further information on national missile defense and nuclear reductions, see:
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See also:
http://www.crnd.org
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