Rumsfeld’s Review Should Honor Treaties

Re “Russia Resists Rumsfeld on Scrapping ’72 Arms Pact,” Aug. 14: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he is conducting a complete review of U.S. nuclear policies. Hopefully, the government will choose to honor existing treaties instead of unilaterally breaking them. For example, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, originally signed in the 1970s and renewed last year, commits countries with nuclear weapons to complete nuclear disarmament; in return, the nonnuclear countries are committed to not developing their own nuclear arsenals. Total nuclear disarmament is the only feasible and practical course available to the world, if we are to escape global nuclear catastrophe.

Also, Rumsfeld needs to look at the policy that keeps thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. With the stroke of a pen, Presidents Putin and Bush could take their missiles off alert, by taking the bombs out of the missiles or other simple means, and buy some time for the world in a future moment of crisis and confusion. No one ever voted for a foreign policy that threatens the death of hundreds of millions of people as the bottom line of U.S. policy. The Cold War has been over for 10 years. Now is the time to end the threat of nuclear war for all nations, for all time.

John Owen

Los Angeles

Apparently, some 1,000-plus Minuteman III missiles may not detonate as desired within 360 feet of their intended targets (“Upgraded Missiles Found Less Accurate,” Aug. 9). Are we supposed to be worried? Most nuclear weapons will utterly destroy anything within 20 miles or more, so why should we worry about 360 feet? The real concern is that even today, 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of nuclear weapons remain poised and ready to be launched to destroy the populated world. The safeguards of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty are about to be lost in President Bush’s foolish rush to build an unproven missile defense system. Our real concern should be that the safety and security of the American people are increasingly at risk from our misguided missile policy.

William E. Perkins

Pacific Palisades

Re “Inside Out at the Pentagon,” editorial, Aug. 13: There are unstated assumptions behind your editorial favoring reduction and or elimination of “outmoded heavy weapons” in a redesign of our military forces. The first is that these weapons and their successors are outmoded. If you’re in the field and they’ve got ‘em and you haven’t, they are anything but outmoded.

The second is that the American people endorse a foreign policy that includes policing world trouble spots that pose no clear and present danger to us. The Constitution, after all, requires only that the federal government “provide for the common defense.”

By all means, let us have the foreign policy debate with full civil and military input and then do the force planning.

Walt Meares

Burbank

Let’s hope that other national leaders don’t adopt Bush’s attitude toward outdated and “flawed” treaties that are no longer in the national interest.

England might want to reconsider the Treaty of Paris (1783) that released its interest in the American colonies, and I’m sure that Bush’s friend, Mexican President Vicente Fox, will want to renegotiate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave Texas, California and everything in between to the U.S. The French government will not hesitate to return our money for the rights to the Louisiana territory, and Russia will do likewise for Alaska.

Let’s not even think about all of those treaties with Native Americans over the past four centuries. And finally, what if our friends in Germany or Japan were to begin to go over the fine print in the treaties that ended World War II? Does our word mean anything, Mr. Bush?

Donald Kerns

Garden Grove