t the 1972 ABM treaty, which governs defenses against attacking missiles, be scrapped. (Knickerbocker 2001) According to Knockerbocker, in Rumsfelds Senate confirmation hearings, the Secretary referred to the ABM Treaty as ancient history. So why is this a problem for other NATO members? According to Knockerbocker:European countries in the 19-member NATO worry that this could provoke another arms race in a post-cold-war era that has become more complex. Theres also concern that a unilateral move by the US to construct a national missile defense could decouple the US from its European allies, weakening a body that has helped protect much of the world for half a century. (Knickerbocker 2001)The European NATO members fear that a US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty could cause another weapons build-up race between the United States and another nuclear-capable state such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea. Why would a development of a Na-tional Missile Defense system cause a second major arms race? It is because defense becomes offense when your adversary cant be sure of his ability to retaliate against a nuclear first strike. Stability depends on both sides being vulnerable (Schorr 2001) There are a number of reasons why the National Missile Defense program should be abandoned. First, the program is much too costly. Since 1962, as of 1999, the United States has spent over $99 billion dollars on ballistic missile defense systems. (Cirincione and Von Hippel 1999, 2) After signing the NMD act of 1999, President Clinton ordered another $6.6 billion dollars to be set aside for NMD program research. According to Jack Mendelsohn, another $28 billion of the taxpayers money will need to be spent by the year 2006 to have one NMD site set up and operational. (Mendel-sohn 1999) This totals almost $134 billion dollars in missile defense alone. The second fault of the NMD system is its ineffectiveness. Proponents of an NMD system argue that a shiel...
