No Third Way
An easy choice on the ABM Treaty

By NR Editors
From "The Week," December 17, 2001, issue, of National Review

he Bush administration has long said two things about the ABM Treaty: 1) that it won't violate it; 2) that it won't let it stand in the way of necessary testing of a missile-defense system. At his Crawford love-fest with Vladimir Putin, Bush had hoped to forge a temporary Third Way around these two positions by getting the Russians to agree to certain American tests even though they violate the treaty (what, after all, are a few treaty violations between such good friends?). Putin's nyet leaves Bush no way out: He must either forgo progress toward the urgent national goal of protecting American cities from missile attack, or withdraw from a treaty that he has called "useless" and "dangerous." It shouldn't be a hard choice.