June 12, 2002: Conservatives Celebrate US Withdrawal from ABM Treaty

The Heritage Foundation sponsors a celebration of the US’s impending withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (see May 26, 1972 and June 14, 2002). The invitation reads: “ABM: RIP. For 30 years, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has served to bolster the policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD) and impose crippling restrictions on the nation’s missile defense programs (see March 23, 1983). President Bush, recognizing the inappropriateness of MAD and the policy of vulnerability to missile attack, announced on December 13, 2001 (see December 13, 2001) that the United States is withdrawing from the treaty.” Several hundred conservatives, including senators, House representatives, generals, policy makers, and academics, gather in the caucus room of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, taking part in what one participant calls “a cheerful wake for a flawed treaty.” Author J. Peter Scoblic will write: “The mood was, not surprisingly, buoyant, for ‘flawed’ was really too mild a description for the loathing the assembled crowd felt for the agreement. To the right wing, the ABM Treaty had symbolized everything that was wrong with American foreign policy during the Cold War: negotiating with evil, fearing nuclear war instead of preparing to win it (see Spring 1982 and January 17, 1983), and abandoning faith in American exceptionalism and divine superiority.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 157]