Fission and confusion

摘要

For a president who a year ago set himself the laudable aim of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons for its defences, George Bush has generated a lot of angry fallout. He stands accused by his critics of looking to America's security at the expense of others, of reducing to rubble the familiar landscape of treaties and agreements that helped manage past dangers. He is developing new missile defences, giving notice of America's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. He has abandoned the quest for new treaty-limited weapons cuts with Russia in favour of unilateral ones. He refuses to ratify a nuclear test ban, accepting only a self-imposed (and more easily lifted) moratorium. Since confidential bits' of his "nuclear-posture review" leaked out last week, he has been criticised for abandoning America's long-standing reticence over the use of nuclear weapons, adding instead to the list of potential targets (see page 51).