Is There a Secret Obama Deal to Limit Missile Defense?

Baker Spring / June 17, 2010

Only in Obama’s Orwellian world can secret negotiations to kill missile defense not mean the White House plans to kill missile defense. These secret negotiations were exposed by Bill Gertz in a June 16 article in The Washington Times. Genuine missile defense cooperation between the U.S. and Russia would be a very good thing. In fact, the U.S. was well down this path in 1992 with the Ross-Mamedov Talks, named for two chief negotiators, in response to Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s proposal for a Global Protection System against missile attack.

The Clinton Administration canceled these talks in 1993 in favor of its policy of preserving and strengthening the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with the Soviet Union. The ABM Treaty prohibited an effective U.S. missile defense development program and deployed capability. The Clinton administration’s policy to preserve the ABM Treaty failed because the Senate was fully prepared to reject this portion of its arms control agenda, even in the face of the Russian Duma’s decision to jettison the START II strategic nuclear arms control agreement. In fact, the Clinton administration did not even bother to submit its agreements for preserving the ABM Treaty to Senate because it knew that rejection was the likely outcome. START II never entered into force. The courage and forthrightness of the Senate in the face of both Clinton administration and Russian Duma defiance is why the U.S. has a robust missile defense program today and an open path to strengthening its overall missile defense capabilities in the future. (more…)