The new US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, has made it clear that the Bush administration intends to go ahead with the costly and controversial National Missile Defence (NMD) programme. NMD is opposed, not only by previously hostile nuclear powers such as Russia and China, but also by the United States' allies in NATO. It would, its opponents argue, entail the militarisation of space and endanger the entire structure of agreements for the reduction of nuclear weaponry.
What it could certainly do, would be to inject vast sums of state money into industries linked to the US military-industrial complex. In short, it could become a back-door method of providing subsidies against international competition.
There is little doubt that to proceed with NMD would entail a breach of the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, but Secretary Rumsfeld sees little difficulty in overturning this agreement. It would, he told the Munich Conference on Security Policy at the weekend, be "Cold-War-Think to elevate that treaty as something that is central to a relationship today."
His statement may signal the beginning of a tendency towards unilateralism anticipated with apprehension by America's friends and foes alike upon the election of President Bush.
Countries such as Russia should not, Mr Rumsfeld said, be worried about NMD which would only work against states deploying small numbers of missiles. In other words, Russia, with its vast nuclear arsenal could, if it wished, attack the United States with impunity. This will hardly instill a greater sense of security in an American public whose support for the initiative is extremely doubtful.
It is claimed that the system will work only against countries such as North Korea or Iran or Iraq, formerly known as "rogue states", a term which has now been softened to "states of concern." Their nuclear arsenals at present range from minimal to nonexistent. None of them has the rocketry to deliver warheads anywhere remotely close to the continental United States.
Despite its current weakness in other spheres, Moscow wields a vast array of nuclear weapons capable, several times over, of wiping out all forms of life on this planet. At present there are no differences, ideologically or economically, which might lead to confrontation between Russia and America. But geopolitics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. There are extremely influential people within Russia's military-industrial complex who would welcome another arms race and who see NMD as an opportunity to get started.
Mr Bush has threatened to pull the plug on international aid to Russia should this occur. The result, at all events, could lead to the estrangement of a Russia that will not be weak forever. While NMD may serve American interests, an agreement between Washington and Moscow for the further reduction of weaponry would be in the greater interest of humankind.