The Salt I Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, signed in 1972, comes up for its third five-year review on October 3. This would be a good time to withdraw from the Treaty according to the procedure set forth in its own terms.
For two centuries, our Federal Government’s highest responsibility has been to provide for the common defense. Yet the 1972 ABM Treaty prohibits our government from providing for the common defense. Explicitly and specifically, the ABM Treaty prohibits our building any anti-missile defense to shoot down enemy missiles coming at us. It ordains that our policy be Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), the perverse notion that the American people must be absolutely undefended against missile attacks. Article XV states: “Each Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.”
We would merely have to give six months’ notice and state how our supreme interests are jeopardized.
Certainly our supreme interests are gravely jeopardized by the tremendous buildup of Soviet offensive and defensive weapons since the Treaty was signed. Since SALT I, the Russians have deployed a whole new generation of “heavy” missiles and mobile missiles, plus their reload capability based on their cold-launch technique, plus a defensive system prohibited by the Treaty.
The U.S. negotiator of the 1972 ABM Treaty, Henry Kissinger, used a graphic expression to describe its effect; he said it gives Russian missiles a “free ride” into our country. An even more colorful expression was coined by Lt. General Arthur G. Trudeau, former Army Chief of Research and Development. He said America is “the world’s greatest nuclear nudist colony.”
Since 1969, the United States has had a demonstrated ability to produce a workable system to shoot down enemy missiles. Throughout the 1960s, we successfully tested the intercepting of a missile, which is the most difficult part of any anti-missile defense. Our rate of progress in the development and testing of all elements of the ABM system was consistently impressive and ahead of schedule.
The chief reason why the Soviets were so eager to negotiate and sign the ABM Treaty was to stop deployment of a U.S. ABM system. They knew that our ABM system was designed to protect our Minuteman missile force, and the Soviets didn’t want to lose their $30 billion SS-9 and SS-18 missiles whose only rational investment in “heavy” use would be to destroy U.S. Minuteman missiles.
The 1972 ABM Treaty put the United States in an ABM Freeze. The treaty stopped dead in its tracks the one system which could have protected American cities and civilians from massive nuclear destruction.
How were the Soviets able to persuade the United States to accept an ABM Freeze that would prevent our government from defending our people? More importantly, how were U.S. officials able to persuade the American people to accept an ABM Freeze that would keep our cities naked and defenseless to attacking nuclear missiles?
The 1972 ABM Freeze was put over on the American people primarily because they believed that our government must have some way to shoot down enemy missiles. A survey made in 1964 by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, and published by Missiles and Rockets on August 16, 1985, revealed that 80% of Americans believed that we should have a system to shoot down missiles attacking our cities (which is what an ABM would do); but that 66% believed that the United States already had an anti-missile system (which, of course, we did not).
A similar public opinion survey conducted by Singlinger and Company in 1982 showed that 66% of the American people were still unaware that the United States has no means of defending ourselves from incoming ballistic missiles; that 86% were in favor of deploying an anti-missile defense; and that 73% would not even consider cost as a major factor in that decision.
For the last fifteen years, we have remained in the ABM Freeze that was mandated by the 1972 treaty. There has been no change in public awareness or attitudes, largely because the liberal media has never adequately reported our vulnerability.
It’s time that the American people come out of their cocoon and face the facts of life in the nuclear-space age. When we achieve public awareness that America has absolutely no way to shoot down enemy missiles coming at us, the people will demand that our government fulfill its constitutional duty to provide for the common defense.
