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US Senator Says Missile Defenses Unlikely to Be Fielded in Bush's Term
Carl Levin, next chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday it was highly unlikely that missile defenses would be fielded in President George W. Bush's current term, The New York Times reported Friday.
Senator Levin, Democrat of Michigan, predicted that diplomatic battles over the Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the scientific hurdles meant "the odds are against" deployment by the end of 2004, the paper said.
"I don't think the technology is likely to develop fast enough, even if he decided to violate the treaty," Levin said, referring to Bush, in an interview with the Times.
On May 11, Levin said in a speech at the National Defense University that there is serious possibility that if "we take the wrong approach, it would decrease our security and increase the risk of nuclear proliferation."
"I think we could even start a second cold war, Cold War II," he said.
Levin repeated the core Democratic view that the 1972 ABM treaty brought stability and predictability between the United States and the former Soviet Union, and continues to establish " agreed rules of the road" with Russia today.
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