Dmitry Litvinovich: US national ABM system is a soap bubble

Some foreign experts think, the US’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty has an economic, not political basis. Washington urges to give up the cold war’s artefact as mismatching the internal and international security standards. These appeals are rather ridiculous, because no protection from terrorists has been invented yet.

Theoretically, the widely advertised American national AMB system is to protect from missile threats from outlaw countries. Creation of the national ABM system will cost America more than Reagan’s “star wars”. It will be difficult for George W.Bush to assure the American people, who saw the World Trade Center collapse, of safe protection from the state.

And by the way, no safe protection can be spoken about, as only one of the two tests of the national ABM system was a success: the missile hit the target. But it can not be considered the system’s most important characteristic. Any other country can launch missiles to hit targets rather successfully.

A complete picture of the system will outline in 5-7 years only. This is a long period of time, by the way. And it is not clear who is to guarantee protection from terrorists like Ben Laden to the American people.

George W.Bush seems to be a smart follower of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s large –scale strategic defense initiative turned out to be a soap bubble, but, at the same time, it also stimulated high-tech development. George W.Bush aims at the same objective: he expects the military industrial establishment to get millions of orders. Seems to be a good idea, we should say.

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

In the photo: George W.Bush

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2001/12/18/34915.html