IPPNW Response to the US Decision on Missile Defenses in Eastern Europe

IPPNW has long opposed the concept of a Star Wars-type missile shield as an inherently flawed technology that would merely provoke the development of larger and more dangerous nuclear arsenals, and as a cynical diversion from good faith diplomatic efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It was President Reagan’s stubborn insistence on pursuing the original Strategic Defense Initiative, in fact, that resulted in the failure of the Reykjavik summit in 1986, after he and President Gorbachev had agreed in principle to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely.

We welcome the immediate positive response from President Medvedev, and see this bold decision as paving the way for the denuclearization of NATO (and, eventually, all of Europe), and for even deeper strategic reductions by the US and Russia than those already proposed for the new START agreement.