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Letter of April 2000. Issue #5. COMMENTS ON THE BILL ON RATIFICATION OF THE
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE 1972 ABM TREATY

Ivan Safranchuk

PIR ARMS CONTROL LETTERS
LETTER OF APRIL 2000, ISSUE #5.
©PIR CENTER. April 14, 2000

Unlike the law on ratification of START II, the Federal Law "On Ratification
of the Documents Relating to the Treaty Between the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics and the United States of America on the Limitation of
Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems of May 26, 1972" doesn't provide for any
conditions for its ratification and implementation. Hence, Russia ratifies
the set of amendments to the ABM Treaty without any reservations or
conditions.

On the one hand, the lack of reservations and conditions is a positive step
facilitating the further fulfillment of the signed agreements. On the other
hand, a law containing one sentence only, even quite a long one, doesn't
clarify the motivation of the Russian executive branch and the legislature
for taking the decision on ratification, especially why such decision is
taken now.

The objective of this brief commentary is to reveal these motives and de
facto terms (not provided for in the law) of ratification of the ABM
amendments by Russia.

Above all, it is worth noting that the reservations and conditions have been
omitted on purpose. In the process of elaborating the bill on START II
ratification, the legislators refused even to consider a bill containing
just one sentence, and worked out their own draft bill, including a number
of terms for the ratification and implementation of START II. However, in
the case of the ABM agreements, the Duma's Committee on International
Affairs and Defense concurred with the President, accepted the one-sentence
bill and praised it in their final statements:

- "The Committee on International Affairs finds it possible to recommend the
State Duma to adopt the law […] without reservations…"
- "The Defense Committee recommends that the State Duma adopt, without any
conditions, the law on ratification of the set of documents concerning the
demarcation of strategic and non-strategic missile defense…"

The common understanding was that the ABM Treaty is the cornerstone of
strategic stability and nuclear disarmament. Under these circumstances, the
Defense Committee emphasized in its records that this document is "the most
significant condition for strategic offensive arms reduction". The two Duma
committees realized that the set of amendments to the ABM Treaty must
precede START II, and they recommended passing the appropriate bill before
the START II ratification.

The legislators agreed to ratify the demarcation agreements on the following
terms (and this is stated in the records of the Committees on International
Affairs and Defense):

- "The 1972 ABM Treaty has played and continues to play an important part in
maintaining strategic stability."
- "The ratification of the agreements on the eve of the international NPT
conference will assure the world community of Russia's continued policy
aimed at maintaining strategic stability through creating the conditions
that will rule out the circumvention of the 1972 ABM Treaty." It is
interesting that in these official parliamentary documents the NPT Review
Conference is incorrectly named.
- "The agreement attributes a multilateral character to the 1972 ABM Treaty,
since Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine become States Parties to the
treaty."
- "The confidence-building in the area of missile defense is strengthened."
- "This will eliminate the Ukrainian claims to possess (instead of Russia)
one of the areas covered by the strategic missile defense system."
- "The 1972 ABM Treaty is strengthened, since the USA is no longer able to
develop strategic missile defense systems disguised by the work at TMD
systems not prohibited under the 1972 ABM Treaty."
- "This will impede the attempts of the proponents of the US withdrawal from
the 1972 ABM Treaty, who are active in the USA and strive for the
implementation of plans to develop the NMD system banned by the treaty."
- "Russia is enabled to develop its non-strategic missile defense system
without breaching the 1972 ABM Treaty, since due to the geographic position
of the other nuclear weapon states and threshold states, including those
with unstable political regimes, the Russian territory is more vulnerable to
non-strategic missiles than the US territory."
- "The agreements on the missile defense issues are aimed at enhancing the
sustainability of the ABM Treaty in the current conditions and to strengthen
it… Thus, they impede the negative developments concerning the treaty and
caused by the US plans to deploy the NMD system and to amend the ABM Treaty
for that purpose."

In fact, such understanding of the set of amendments to the ABM Treaty can
be regarded as unofficial terms for the implementation of the aforementioned
agreements.

By ratifying the ABM documents, Russia presumes that this will hamper the US
decision to deploy the NMD system and to withdraw from the treaty for that
purpose, as well as will impede the US attempts to modify the 1972 ABM
Treaty.

By adopting the law on ratification simultaneously with START II and without
any reservations, Russia tries to strengthen the positions of its diplomats
in the US-Russian dialogue on START-ABM-NMD issues. At the same time, Russia
strives to ensure effective dialogue with the international community, since
the strategic stability is portrayed not as a matter of US-Russian nuclear
balance but as the cornerstone of global stability.