Word: abm
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Washington influence peddling is that rare arena in which Gates is a legitimate underdog. Sun, Oracle and Netscape--the ABM (Anybody But Microsoft) coalition's holy trinity--have emerged as a potent force with an unlikely assortment of top-drawer allies, from Nader on the left to the Progress and Freedom Foundation's Jeff Eisenach on the free-market right. Senate majority leader Trent Lott is an old college buddy of Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale's. House Speaker Newt Gingrich cooled on Microsoft after a private dinner in 1995 during which he was rebuffed by the notoriously apolitical Gates...
...with the Russians, congressional SDI-niks hope to expand Grand Forks into a $35 billion nationwide network of 700 interceptors. But a second leak last week could chill those plans: a draft Pentagon report now concludes that even the proposed national-defense site at Grand Forks would violate the ABM treaty. And that, says Federation of American Scientists space policy director John Pike, is what all the urgency is really about. "They're trying to get rid of the ABM treaty before the magic of Desert Storm fades," observes Pike. "They'll work out the bugs later...
...made. Arms control should make an attack by a Third World country on the U.S. less plausible rather than more so. To fend off scores or even hundreds of warheads, the U.S. needs not SDI but a network of ground-based interceptors at perhaps three to five sites. The ABM treaty allows only one site, but it could be amended to permit more. At the same time, the ban on testing and deployment of space- based systems should be strengthened, since those are what could undermine the purpose of the treaty and the viability of deterrence itself...
...calls a "limited-protection system." Last week the Senate endorsed that goal. The gung-ho SDI enthusiasts don't like the scheme because they believe, correctly, that Nunn doesn't want Brilliant Pebbles to get off the ground. On the other side are arms-control purists who see the ABM treaty as holy writ and fear it can't survive any tinkering...
...they made clear last week, Bush and Gorbachev already realize that their countries have a lot more to worry about than each other. Perhaps, before their next summit, they could acknowledge a shared interest in easing the terms of the ABM treaty while preserving its essence...