That's the upshot, anyway, of what the secretary said at a recent press conference. Neither, for that matter, does the Soviet Union. In view of this, he said, it's time for the United States to get to work building a global missile-defense shield. Gone not only are the times that produced the treaty, and the adversary that made it necessary, but the relationship the treaty addressed.
Reasonable people can disagree over whether it was the correct strategy at the time.
The primary threat to the United States comes no longer from a calculated strategic nuclear attack by the Soviet Union but from accidental or unauthorized missile attacks by established powers or from calculated strikes by rogue states such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea. The Russians charge that an American missile defense will spark a new arms race. They claim to have weapons capable of penetrating such a defense. And the Chinese can't reasonably expect to dissuade America from constructing such a defense while they sell weapons to the very states that pose the most significant threats to American security. Those who think we should retain the ABM Treaty assume the same agreement that stabilized relations with the old Soviet regime somehow will protect us from the fundamentally different dangers now facing the United States.