MOSCOW. Jan 31 (Interfax-AVN) - The U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty destroys the frame of international agreements in the sphere which took so much money, efforts and time to establish, Andrei Nikolayev, chairman of the defense committee in the State Duma lower house of Russian parliament, told a news briefing on Thursday.
Practically, it will be necessary to revise some 30 treaties and agreements, Nikolayev said in response to a question from Interfax-Military News Agency. "As a result the old security methods of nuclear states are disabled and no new ones are created. Meanwhile, the number of member nations of the "nuclear club" has increased dramatically, and we will have to develop the legal framework of relations between them from scratch," Nikolayev added.
Obviously the treaty hindered military and space ambitions of the United States, that is why the country considered it to be outdated. "I am absolutely sure that the United States is once again pursuing a utopian dream that is similar to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)," Nikolayev stressed.
"Of course, the work of the U.S. defense industry will not be utopian in the 15 to 20 years of the National Missile Defense System's establishment," the defense committee chairman pointed out. He cited famous American political analyst George Kennan, who said during the Cold War that the U.S. defense industry always needs a foreign threat and it will always create one even if the Soviet Union sinks down to the bottom of the World Ocean with all its tanks and missiles.