United States National Missile Defence System
Motion Recommending that the Government
Not Support Development-Debate Adjourned
Hon. Douglas Roche, pursuant to notice of February 6, 2001, moved:
That the Senate of Canada recommends that the Government of Canada avoid
involvement and support for the development of a National Missile Defence
(NMD) system that would run counter to the legal obligations enshrined in
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which has been a cornerstone of strategic
stability and an important foundation for international efforts on nuclear
disarmament and non-proliferation for almost thirty years.
He said: Honourable senators, does Canada want a new nuclear arms race? Does
Canada want the carefully built structure of disarmament and
non-proliferation treaties now to collapse? Does Canada want the unity of
NATO to be shattered?
Of course, the answer to these questions is a resounding "no," but the
development and deployment of a national missile defence system by the
United States will produce these unfortunate results.
The thrust of the motion I am presenting today is that Canada must exercise
all its diplomatic and political strength to convince the U.S.
administration not to proceed with NMD, as the system is known. Canada will
not be alone in expressing this view, for many NATO allies, along with
Russia, China, as well as nuclear disarmament and legal experts and NGOs,
are trying to stop NMD.
This NMD system, initially projected to cost $60 billion, is intended to
provide a defence for all 50 states in the United States against small-scale
attack by intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.
The primary argument made for immediate deployment is the possibility that
emerging missile states hostile to the U.S., such as North Korea, might soon
acquire ICBMs and use them to attack U.S. territory. The proposed NMD system
would use ground-based interceptors deployed initially at one site and
eventually at two sites, supported by an extensive network of ground-based
radar and space-based infrared sensors. This system uses impressively
advanced technology. It is precisely the deployment of such a system that
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, known as the ABM treaty, signed by the
U.S. and the former Soviet Union in 1972, was designed to stop. The ABM
treaty was constructed to establish stability and confidence between the
nuclear superpowers by disallowing the development of defensive systems in
order to prevent the building of more offensive weapons to overcome these
defences. The U.S. readily admits NMD contravenes the ABM treaty and is
pressuring Russia to amend it or to abrogate it entirely.
The ABM treaty is widely recognized as a lynchpin of international stability
and security. Consider the words of French President Jacques Chirac speaking
last October in his role as President of the European Union:
The European Union and Russia have an identical viewpoint. We have condemned
any potential revision of the ABM Treaty, believing that such a revision
will invoke a risk of proliferation that will be very dangerous for the
future.
Documents concerning the ongoing U.S.-Russian negotiations on ABM amendments
were published in the New York Times several months ago.
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These documents show that not only is the U.S. retaining its core stock of
nuclear weapons but is actually encouraging Russia to do so as well so that
Russia will know that it can always penetrate NMD and thus not be afraid of
it.
If NMD does go ahead, the U.S. cannot then credibly argue that it is
fulfilling its legal obligations to the non-proliferation treaty. Yet at the
NPT Sixth Review in the year 2000, all 180 signatories, including the United
States made:
....an unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of their
nuclear arsenals.
This pledge was inserted into a program of 13 practical steps to implement
the commitment in legal and very final processes. The NPT obliges nations to
pursue negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The famous 1996 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice
states that nations must conclude such negotiations. NMD flies in the face
of the efforts the world community has been making for 30 years to contain
arms races and set the world firmly on a path to the elimination of nuclear
weapons.
Honourable senators, the opponents of NMD know what they are talking about.
They know that we can only obtain security through cooperative efforts based
on legal instruments. A unilateral breakout from the disarmament regime
jeopardizes everyone's safety.
To say that the international community is in an uproar over U.S. intentions
puts it mildly. There is consternation. The issue has not only split the
U.S. from Russia but has virtually isolated the U.S. from the world
community. Even the nuclear partners and strongest allies of the U.S. are
publicly trying to dissuade the U.S. from proceeding because of the
irreparable harm it will do to the nuclear disarmament agenda.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently stated:
There is widespread skepticism that such systems could ever work
effectively, and real concern that their deployment could lead to a new arms
race, set back nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation policies, and
create new incentives for missile proliferation.
Last December, when Russian President Putin was in Ottawa, he said he
believed that "deployment of the National Missile Defence system will damage
significantly the established systems of international security" and
undermine arms control progress over several decades.
It was interesting that in a joint statement Canada and Russia issued on
that occasion, they agreed:
The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is a cornerstone of strategic
stability and an important foundation for international efforts on nuclear
disarmament and non-proliferation. The two countries hope for...far-reaching
reductions in strategic offensive weapons while preserving and strengthening
the ABM Treaty.
Chinese leaders have argued with considerable justification that NMD
deployment is tantamount to seeking unilateral, absolute security. The
Chinese have stated that by no means will they accept any kind of ballistic
missile defence system, as it poses a severe threat to global strategic
balance and stability, warning that the international nuclear disarmament
process would come tumbling down if the U.S. proceeds with NMD. NATO
countries, while circumspect, are also deeply concerned, seeing the threat
that the fallout from NMD will create.
Despite the opposition so widely expressed, the arrival of the Bush
administration has stiffened U.S. resolve to proceed. U.S. officials are now
saying that the system will proceed even though the technological ability
has not been demonstrated. For a while, the U.S. used North Korea's missile
program as a reason why NMD was needed.
Now that the North Korean threat has receded, the U.S. has said that
unspecified threats in the future force the development of NMD. In short,
the threat from other countries is diminishing as Canada's newly established
ties to North Korea illustrate. Yet the proponents to NMD say an enemy is
lurking, precisely because they must be able to depict an enemy somewhere in
order to generate the support of U.S. taxpayers.
Frances Fitzgerald points out in her book Way Out There in the Blue, NMD is
the successor of the discredited Strategic Defence Initiative of the 1980s
known as Star Wars, and is driven by the ideologically-based extreme right
in the U.S. that seeks an impossible unilateral security. The motivation of
this group, which has captured control of the U.S. administration, is to
prepare the way for the U.S. military dominance of outer space. The spectre
of a puny North Korea as a rationale for NMD is but a subterfuge for the
real goal, which is the development of weapons in space and preparation for
space-directed wars in the 21st century, and total U.S. military dominance
in all possible theatres of conflict.
In all of this, the profits for the military industrial complex, already at
historic highs because of the $280-billion annual defence budget of the U.S.
will be spectacular.
Honourable senators, this is the dilemma in which Canada finds itself. Our
government, with many others, is clearly concerned that NMD will have
deleterious consequences on strategic stability and spark a new nuclear arms
race, but it is afraid of wrecking Canada-U.S. relations if it pushes too
hard against the Bush administration. Yet in the late 1980s, when Canada was
invited by the U.S. to join the Star Wars program, the Canadian government
of the day said no. If Canada could say no to missile defence madness during
the Cold War, why can we not do so in the post Cold War era?
U.S.-Canada defence has been intertwined for decades. The NORAD agreement
developed during the Cold War to warn of Soviet missile attack is an
expression of the structural relationship between the U.S. and Canada.
However, the structural agreements of NORAD and NATO certainly do not
contain a basis for NMD. It is a dangerous assumption to argue that Canada's
participation in NORAD would require us to enter into an NMD relationship.
To do so would involve Canada in the wreckage of the disarmament
architecture that NMD represents.
I appeal to the government not to be taken in by the propaganda offensive
the U.S. has launched - that everyone should get in line because the NMD
train has left the station. How could the train have left the station when
NMD technology does not even work yet?
The U.S. is actually seeking from Canada the political legitimization of NMD
through Canada signing on now. We must not sign on. If Canada throws over
its principles of upholding international law just to please an
ideologically based demand of the current occupants of the White House, we
will be forfeiting the best interests of Canada and jeopardizing the
security of the Canadian people themselves. A Canadian government that
acquiesces to NMD will go down in history as having overturned decades of
good, solid work that Canada has done to build the conditions for peace.
What then is the way out of this dilemma for Canada? We must participate
vigorously in efforts to uphold and implement the non-proliferation treaty
with its "unequivocal undertaking to the total elimination of nuclear
weapons" through the 13 practical steps. Time does not permit me to list
those steps now. Canada should work closely with the new agenda countries in
advancing the nuclear disarmament agenda. As this agenda is implemented, any
rationale for NMD that seeks to be credible will be diminished.
The alternative to NMD is the maintenance of international legal norms
backed up by a properly funded verification regime, arms control, economic
incentives, cooperative programs and export control systems. The nuclear
posture review the U.S. is about to undertake provides an excellent
opportunity for Canada to put forth its views on a bilateral basis to the
United States on the full range of interrelated offensive and defensive
issues. Canada should encourage the U.S. to delay its final decision on
missile defence architecture and deployment until that review has been
finished and absorbed.
Also, Canada should support the Russian proposal for the creation of a joint
Russian-American data centre on missile launches, a "global control system,"
to stop the proliferation of missile technology.
Multilateral efforts to freeze and reduce the military missile capabilities
of all states will be the most effective tool to address real or perceived
new ballistic missile threats.
For their part, the Canadian NGO community could buttress Canada's efforts
by working closely with the U.S.-based Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers,
which has laid out a program of action to influence the political decision
makers.
Canada is by no means impotent in the NMD crisis. We can - and we must -
work creatively to reduce nuclear dangers throughout the world.
Source: Senator Douglas Roche |