When America dishes up hypocrisy, it uses a very big spoon. Secretary of State Colin Powell has expressed his deep regret that India has tested and launched an Agni missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. At the very moment that he made this statement, Powell’s aides were busy ignoring Russian protests at the fifth test launch of a rocket in the National Missile Defense shield, a test made in flagrant contravention of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which the United State signed in 1979.
Most states have echoed Powell’s condemnation of the Indian rocket test. The fact that New Delhi chose to launch a short-to-medium range rocket at this moment is significant. The only purpose was to threaten Pakistan and so ratchet up the tension between the two countries even further. India’s brinkmanship was originally designed to leverage the US-led anti-terrorism campaign into isolating Kashmiri militants from their backers and sympathizers in Pakistan. But though President Musharraf has done much to clamp down on suspected terrorists, New Delhi appears determined to maintain the high state of tension and belligerence.
Are there not here valid parallels with the equal determination of the Bush White House to press ahead with the development of America’s National Missile Defense Program? Despite the protests of allies and the rising concern of fellow signatories to the ABM treaty, the United States continues to work on a system, which, if successful, will represent a sea change in the "balance of terror", which kept the world at peace for over 50 years. The White House makes two arguments in favor of what it is doing. The first is that the missile defense system is precisely that — a defense. It threatens no one. The second is that, unlike the original, hugely ambitious Star Wars concept of the Reagan years, which would have had hundreds of anti-missile missiles or lasers stationed in space, the current plan is to have a fairly limited deployment of nuclear missile-hunting missiles. The reason for this, says Washington, is that its new system is designed only to protect the United States from limited missile attacks launched by rogue states — North Korea and Iraq are the favorite countries cited. Both these arguments are false. Once the technology is proven and the defensive network established, there is no reason why the number of rockets could not be increased to allow the United States to ward off a major attack by hundreds intercontinental ballistic missiles. Washington would be able to strike first or strike back without the danger of America itself being hit.
Russia, Beijing and US allies in Europe all know such arguments are nonsense; yet, the US continues to develop and test the system. Bush may think for the moment that he is getting away with this seriously destabilizing maneuver. But the world can change and change suddenly, as we know all too well. Bush’s tearing up of the ABM treaty and his determination to raise the international nuclear stakes is highly dangerous. Whatever criticism that Colin Powell may launch against India for its nuclear saber rattling, applies with even greater effect and vigor to Washington’s own dangerously destabilizing National Missile Defense Program.
