Russia has already violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (limiting defenses) by deploying a defensive system to shoot down any attacking missiles. According to our CIA, Communist China is also building one to protect it from attacking missiles. But we don’t have any such defense; yet both Russia and Red China have public relations campaigns (including United Nations appeals) intended to keep America vulnerable to their ballistic missiles.
At present, both Russia (with 25,000 nuclear warheads deployed on ICBMs) and China (with 300 nuclear warheads deployed on 18 ICBMs, 13 of which are targeted on U.S. cities) amazingly can shoot down ours. We are defenseless against such a possible attack, so we could become blackmailed into surrender.
If the U.S. begins to deploy an anti-missile defensive system, Russia threatens that it would damage disarmament accords and spark a new nuclear arms race.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Sun Yuxi, announced last year that if we decided to defend ourselves against missiles carrying nuclear, biological or chemical warheads, it would somehow upset the strategic balance. Sure, such a balance keeps us an easy defenseless target for incineration. Actually, active strategic ICBM defenses are no more destabilizing than aircraft defenses, strategic anti-submarine warfare or retaliatory destroying of enemy ICBMs while still in their silos.
Some American liberals worry that our deployment of such a defensive system will antagonize the Russians to stop their build-down of nuclear missiles and encourage China to boost production of theirs. These congressional doves for decades have locked up all appropriations toward building a missile defense. However, common sense says that our proposed American defensive ABM system is envisioned to shoot down the kind of ICBMs that Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and/or Libya could launch!
Both Russia and China have very good reasons for keeping us defenseless to their ICBMs. They don’t want to see their nuclear arsenals become obsolete. A U.S. ABM defense would make their ICBMs impotent; so although their threats of a nuclear arms race sound dangerous, our development of sea-based and space-based missile defenses would neutralize them.
Lynnwood
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