About a year ago, as the campaign was going strong and Bush raised ABM defenses, everyone was aghast at the thought of violating the ABM treaty. Then several talking heads pointed out that the treaty was between the USSR and the USA; the former no longer existed, and it is established practice in international law that when a state dissolves, so do all treaty obligations.
True, false, or somewhere in between?
I think it’s a moot point, what with the same guys having the same nuclear weapons.
I’ve heard that this is false. Russia is internationally recognized as the sole successor to the USSR so it inherits all treaties, agreements and debts.
The ABM treaty has a clause in it that permits either party to withdraw from it with six months’ notice, in case of “extraordinary events”. It’s anybody’s guess what constitutes an “extraordinary event.”
This thread has a pretty good discussion of how a countries obligations are handled after an internal upheaval. All the treaty issues relating to the fall of the USSR were handled years ago. Russia is considered to be the successor state to the Soviet Union.
You have to wonder about the motives of these supposed experts who told you this story about ABM being null and void. Were they trying to imply that the whole country had simply forgotten about START, and SALT and ABM and the space treaty for the last decade whilst we waited for Russia to get its act together ? Not likely. What else were they trying to get you to believe and why ?