Brownback rightly fights: that all human lives, including embryonic human lives created by cloning, should be protected in law. But neither would a moratorium violate that principle, as Specter’s bill would by creating, for the first time in federal law, a class of human beings whose destruction is mandatory. A moratorium would also give everyone time to reconsider his position. Perhaps research without ethical drawbacks would bear fruit during the interim. That’s something Brownback, Specter, and we would all welcome.
Signed 30 years ago, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was a dubious piece of diplomacy from the start. It placed severe limits on the deployment of antimissile defenses and banned the testing of new ones, on the theory that if both the Soviet Union and the United States lay naked before each other, neither would risk a first strike. Its advent caused the Hudson Institute’s Donald Brennan to coin the phrase “Mutual Assured Destruction,” the acronym of which reflected his view of it. But arms-control devotees were deeply committed to the treaty, even after one of its two signatories collapsed and a handful of rogue nations started building weapons of mass destruction against which the treaty rendered us defenseless. Treaty supporters predicted a rupture with Russia and a new arms race if we pulled out. Six months ago, President Bush announced that we would indeed withdraw from the ABM Treaty, exercising an option outlined in the treaty itself. In the meantime, U.S.-Russian relations have grown as warm as they’ve been at any time since the Second World War and both countries’ nuclear stockpiles are now set to decrease dramatically. On June 13, the ABM Treaty finally lay down on the ash heap of history, dying a quiet death, and not a moment too soon.
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