Waal, senator, that's certainly setting up the choices in a way that shuts up Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill in one sweep, they who spoke about the fruits of individual allocations of economic energy. He might as well have observed that the man dropping from the mountain ledge, if asked in mid-air whether he'd rather have stayed in place, would have answered conventionally. One demurral doesn't deserve very much time, though it is the fault of some conservatives that it was given any time at all. There is the school of thought that says the ABM Treaty is no longer binding on the United States for the very simple reason that it was negotiated with a national entity now dead. The Soviet Union, with which the pact was signed in 1972, does not exist.
Some people argue that therefore there is no surviving treaty.
Treaties with the government of Louis XVI were no longer inhibiting in Europe after Napoleon took over. But the problem with that glib line of reasoning is that various treaties with Moscow have in fact continued in place since 1991, and we are on record as having recommended to President Yeltsin that it should be so. But that is an ephemeral question because the treaty clearly gives to either government the authority to cancel it on six months' notice. Bush and his team have in mind. And here is an important aspect of the approach Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld have in mind.