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The following letter to President Bush and the governments of NATO and US allies is to be sent by fax on June 12 in Washington, London, and Sydney. Please consider signing and also sending to your newspaper. This action is being sponsored by Friends of the Earth, Sydney - Nuclear Campaign Dear Presidents, Prime Ministers, Secretaries and Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense: We, the undersigned organizations, representing millions of people world-wide, write to express our opposition to current US plans to deploy a national ballistic missile defense network. We urge instead that the United States proceed with deep cuts to the US arsenal and de-alerting of nuclear weapons -- promised by President George W. Bush during his campaign -- in order to move toward the total and unequivocal elimination of nuclear arsenals, to which the United States, Russia, and other nuclear weapons states are obligated under binding and repeated international commitments. The deployment of missile defense will undercut these measures, making the fulfillment of those commitments more difficult. In our view, the deployment of a National Missile Defense (NMD) network is deeply-flawed and reckless, decreasing rather than increasing overall international security. President Bush says that the United States will propose modifications to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for US national missile defenses. If Russia does not agree to the US proposals, the Bush Administration has said the United States is prepared to withdraw from the ABM treaty. President Bush may decide as soon as this year whether to begin construction of a key NMD radar site in Alaska, which could violate the treaty. Russia has stated clearly in the recent session of the Conference on Disarmament that its offer of deep reductions in warhead numbers is conditional on the integrity of the ABM treaty. Russia's ratification of START-II was also conditional on the maintenance of the integrity of the ABM treaty, and therefore the non-deployment of US missile defenses. It is our strong view that the deployment of even so-called limited missile defenses will undercut the possibility of deep reductions in US and Russian nuclear weaponry, and could foreclose the possibility of removing US and Russian missiles from their current, dangerous hair-trigger alert status. Military planners react to capabilities rather than intentions. The deployment of even limited missile defenses could lead to Russian re-deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and multiple warhead missiles. It also may accelerate a Chinese build-up of strategic nuclear weapons, which could include deployment of multiple nuclear warheads on long-range missiles, and a dramatic increase in the now limited number of those missiles. A Chinese build-up could easily result in a dangerous acceleration of Indian, and in turn, Pakistani nuclear weapons deployments. This escalation of offensive capabilities is likely to lead to nuclear arsenals poised at even higher levels of alert. Furthermore, missile defense systems, particularly the NMD network now being contemplated by the United States, are extraordinarily expensive and have not been proven to work in an operational environment. No NMD system, even a limited one, can be deployed for at least six to 10 years. Two out of three US NMD flight tests so far have failed, yet in order to be effective, NMD (or TMD) must intercept incoming nuclear warheads with close to 100% reliability. Even if an NMD system could be designed to defeat countermeasures, could be engineered to be operationally effective, and would not prompt a state to build additional offensive missiles to over-saturate missile defenses, neither NMD nor TMD can guard against less sophisticated and more reliable means of delivering weapons of mass destruction. Likewise, various systems of proposed Theatre Missile Defense, possibly to be deployed in Taiwan, Japan, Europe or the Middle East, suffer from many of the same technical problems, and may have the same effect as NMD in creating a dangerous action-reaction cycle leading to offensive missile build-ups. The deployment of missile defense/TMD in Taiwan is particularly likely to result in a Chinese build-up. The problems associated with missile defenses require that the international community work together to make effective use of diplomacy, trade and assistance, and new mechanisms to control and reduce existing and potential ballistic missile proliferation. Near-term efforts should be focused on securing a lasting and enforceable framework agreement freezing the North Korean missile program. Further efforts to enforce and strengthen the Missile Technology Control Regime, and control and reduce missile stockpiles on a global and regional basis, should be pursued on an urgent basis. In light of the above: --We respectfully urge the United States not to seek to deploy such missile defenses, and to support more effective methods to prevent missile proliferation. --We urge governments of NATO and other US allies not to enable US deployment of such missile defense systems by allowing the upgrading of joint facilities at Menwith Hill, Fylingdales, Pine Gap, Thule, or elsewhere, for NMD- or TMD-related purposes, and to use their diplomatic influence to continue to dissuade the US government from the pursuit of missile defense. To address the most immediate and dire missile threat: --We urge that the United States and Russia remove all nuclear weapons from hair-trigger alert as part of a policy of eliminating launch-on-warning from their strategic war plans. This will serve as the most immediate step to increase global security and stability, and reduce the risk of unintended nuclear attack. --We urge the United States and Russia, with the support of other states, to proceed toward immediate, verifiable and irreversible reductions of strategic and tactical nuclear stockpiles to less than 1,500 warheads each through implementation of START-II, START-III, and/or by other means. The above measures would help fulfill their solemn commitments as expressed in the final declaration of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 2000 Review Conference to "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all states parties are committed under Article VI." The undersigned organizations believe that these measures, and not the deployment of missile defense, constitute the way forward to the elimination of nuclear arsenals to which the nuclear weapons powers are committed, and which the overwhelming majority of the world's peoples and governments expect. ( Signed by almost 500 organizations / parliamentarians including Lovearth.net ) Say No Star Wars Organizations can sign this letter by forwarding it to John Hallam, Friends of the Earth, Sydney, Australia. Please include your name, position, organization, and location, (including country). Individuals are encouraged to forward this to Organizations and copying and sending it as a letter to the editor to your local newspaper.
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