start

The hot news item of the day is the “START” treaty which is designed to reduce the number of nukes that the US and Russia can have and most people see this as a good thing since both sides have enough to obliterate the other side many times over. All these excess nukes increase the probability that one or more could disappear which offers the second reason to eliminate some. So why are some Republican senators opposed to this treaty? In 2001 Bush withdrew from the ABM treaty which the allowed the US to further develop an anti ballistic system, the concept that Reagan proposed and was ridiculed as “Star Wars”. Since that time technology has advanced to the point where the US has used such missiles to shoot down incoming rockets but the US is the only country to have such know how and the US is improving the reliability of such systems.

Recently it was brought to the attention of some senators that The Obama state department people have been negotiating in private with Russia and some suspect that they have agreed to some kind of limitation on the US’s ability to continue the development of the anti ballistic system and these senators want us to have the ability to knock down incoming missiles. These senators have asked the state department for copies of the private meetings and they have been refused. In the past when treaties were negotiated in this manner the secret papers were handed over to the senators. Thus the senators refuse to approve the treaty until such time that they are assured that we have not given up our right to continue to develop anti ballistic missiles.

This can be very important since in the future other countries like North Korea will have long range missiles and nuke warheads and our only defense against an attack would be an anti ballistic missile.