The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty after the Cold War, responding to a changing role for arms control in a new global security context

• Main Author: Levesque, Shane C.
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/1855

The inevitable proliferation of ballistic missile technology and weapons of mass destruction, as well as the growing reliance of great power states on space-based technology for their economic well being and security needs, and the vulnerability of those systems to ballistic missile attack may have serious implications for the continued utility of the ABM Treaty in the post-Cold War era. As the trends toward the enforcement of non-proliferation regimes and the need to periodically deploy international intervention forces into unstable regions continue, the need to defend against the use of ballistic missile technology by so-called "rogue" states will grow. The need to protect intervention forces from ballistic missile attack has already been established by the 1991 Gulf War. Wit in the next twenty years, the vulnerability of critical satellite constellations to the strategic detonation of a nuclear warhead in space, delivered by a ballistic missile, will also need to be addressed. For this reason it is necessary to examine the origins of the debate over ballistic missile defence and the ABM Treaty, as well as to explore the limitations of the Treaty's relevance in the post-Cold War era. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)