National Missile Defense: a new dynamic and new responses

Abstract

In his speech to the National Defense University in Washington, DC on 1 May 2001, President George W. Bush laid out his vision for national missile defence. He made it clear that this is to be directed, not at the ‘thousands of ballistic missiles in [Russian] hands but in the hands of … states for whom terror or blackmail are a way of life’. He called for ‘a new policy, a broad strategy of active non-proliferation, counter-proliferation and defences’. He stressed the need to work with allies and friends, and to ‘move beyond the constraints of the 30-year-old ABM Treaty’. A number of high level missions have since been despatched to principal allies, to Russia and to China, to explain in very general terms what is involved and to try to win people over. This is a good moment to reassess some of the arguments earlier advanced against an American National Missile Defense (NMD) system.