The New York Times said in an editorial Monday, April 11:
The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty outlawed the testing and deployment of nationwide defenses against missile attack. By limiting defenses it made it possible for the United States and Russia to agree to reduce their nuclear arsenals.
The Clinton administration now wants to test and deploy new anti-missile defenses to give American forces on the battlefield some protection against missiles like the Scud. And Russia is willing to accept a ``clarification'' of the ABM treaty to allow the U.S. to test a new heat-seeking interceptor, the THAAD, that could shoot down Scuds.
But that is not good enough for the Pentagon. It wants to keep the option of testing other anti-missile defenses, both sea-based and air-launched. The trouble is, that would open a far more dangerous option that the ABM treaty was intended to close: the testing and deployment of nationwide defenses against ballistic missiles. Such defenses, in turn, could block progress in reducing the size of Russian and American arsenals. That is one option this administration should not want to open.
To its credit, this administration has rejected the course of its predecessors, which wanted to violate the ABM treaty unilaterally by conducting prohibited tests. Instead, it is trying to clarify the treaty by agreement with Russia.
The treaty, as understood when it was ratified by the U.S. Senate, barred tests of interceptors that could shoot down incoming missiles traveling faster than two kilometers per second. Longer-range missiles - the sort that nationwide defenses are designed to counter - travel much faster.
Late last year the administration proposed a more permissive standard, allowing tests of interceptors that can attack targets moving at five kilometers per second. Interceptors with that capability, however, might also be able to defeat submarine-launched ballistic missiles traveling at six to seven kilometers per second, the heart of the U.S., British, French and Russian deterrents.
That capability could be used in nationwide defenses; and the easiest way for countries to counteract it would be to retain more warheads, which would slow further missile cuts.
Russia, which lies within reach of shorter-range missiles fired from Iran, Iraq or other places on its periphery, responded to the U.S. initiative by proposing parameters that permitted tests of the THAAD. But that did not satisfy Pentagon officials, who persuaded the administration to reject the Russian proposal and offer a dangerously permissive alternative: no posted speed limits at all.
If Washington does not set strict limits on tests, it may find it has opened not just options, but a gaping hole in the ABM treaty. That could persuade military hard-liners in Russia to block further missile cuts and leave America a lot less secure.