US Withdrawal
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 the status of the treaty became unclear, debated by members of Congress and professors of law. In 1997, a memorandum of understanding between the US and four of the former USSR states was signed and subject to ratification by each signatory, but it was not presented to the US Senate for advice and consent by Bill Clinton.
On December 13, 2001, George W. Bush gave Russia notice of the United States' withdrawal from the treaty, in accordance with the clause that required six months' notice before terminating the pact—the first time in recent history that the United States has withdrawn from a major international arms treaty. This led to the eventual creation of the American Missile Defense Agency.
Supporters of the withdrawal argued that it was a necessity in order to test and build a limited National Missile Defense to protect the United States from nuclear blackmail by a rogue state. The withdrawal had many critics as well as supporters. John Rhinelander, a negotiator of the ABM treaty, predicted that the withdrawal would be a "fatal blow" to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and would lead to a "world without effective legal constraints on nuclear proliferation." The construction of a missile defense system was also feared to enable the US to attack with a nuclear first strike.
Reaction to the withdrawal by both the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China was much milder than many had predicted, following months of discussion with both Russia and China aimed at convincing both that development of a National Missile Defense was not directed at them. In the case of Russia, the United States stated that it intended to discuss a bilateral reduction in the numbers of nuclear warheads, which would allow Russia to reduce its spending on missiles without decrease of comparative strength. Discussions led to the signing of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in Moscow on May 24, 2002. This treaty mandates cuts in deployed strategic nuclear warheads, but without actually mandating cuts to total stockpiled warheads, and without any mechanism for enforcement.
The American Missile Defense Agency started a no AMD treaty with Russia, Europe and the USA in July 2003. There was much dispute about the questionability of the reason why there was another AMD treaty when one had failed not many years before. There were union conferences about this matter held in August 2009 which reached the conclusion to keep the treaty until pending investigation.
Read more about this topic: Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
Famous quotes containing the word withdrawal:
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—Roger Gould (20th century)
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—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)