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CNN Live Sunday

Rumsfeld Will Talk With Russia About Missile Defense

Aired August 12, 2001 - 17:12   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: News out of Russia today, where arms talks with the United States are on. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is in Moscow now. He is scheduled to meet tomorrow with his Russian counterpart. They will focus on U.S. attempts to scrap the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in favor of a missile defense plan.

For more on this now, we are joined by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute. He's in our Washington bureau. Mr. O'Hanlon, thanks for joining us again, good to see you again.

MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTE: Nice to be here. Thanks, Stephen.

FRAZIER: What do you expect this meeting to produce? Is this the kind that would yield an agreement?

O'HANLON: I don't think so. I think Mr. Rumsfeld is in trying to give Russia some sense of two things: One, how we see the threat, the growing threat of long-range ballistic missiles and why Russia should therefore allow us to renegotiate or simply abandon this ABM treaty; and then secondly, to give Russia some incentives, perhaps to talk about technology that Russia could help us develop that would be useful to defeat ballistic missiles in the future.

So, it's both to share information on the threat and then perhaps to look for some new kinds of cooperation between the two countries.

FRAZIER: Is it the cooperation that the secretary would really like to see happen?

O'HANLON: I think so, but the main thing Mr. Rumsfeld really wants, he wants a missile defense for the United States. He's made that very clear, it's one of his top priorities as secretary of defense. He wants to get beyond this Antiballistic Missile Treaty, but he knows that if we simply walk away from it without trying to reassure Russia, most of the world will object pretty strongly, including most of our allies.

So, he has to at least make the effort to show Russia that we are open minded about working together. Whether Russia ultimately accepts or not, I'm doubtful, frankly, but Rumsfeld at least has to try before we can walk away from this treaty in good faith. FRAZIER: Surely, he can understand the fear that Russians might have. I'm sure you saw Jack Hit's (ph) piece last weekend in "The New York Times" about the weaponization of space, and he called it "the ultimate high ground for the military," and said: "If we think that the anxiety we all felt during the Cold War was something, wait until one of us has the idea of weapons in space that can just rain down from orbit."

O'HANLON: Well, that's right. It's a funny time, because Russia knows two things: One thing it knows is we are way ahead technologically and economically, but it also knows we really shouldn't have to be enemies. There's no particular thing that I could imagine United States and Russia fighting over.

So you have this paradox. On the one hand, they are afraid, they are a little paranoid, they see NATO getting larger, coming up to their borders, they see NATO's strength, bombing Serbia, putting pressure on them over Chechnya, wanting to move away from the ABM treaty toward missile defense.

On the other hand, they know we really shouldn't be adversaries and we should be able to get beyond some of these distrustful patterns of the Cold War. So, the question is, how do you wrestle with this paradox. I think it's going to take time to get all the way to where Bush and Rumsfeld want to go, and therefore we should do it carefully and propose a limited defense at first, but I'm not sure the administration agrees with me, so I think there'll be some tough roads ahead.

FRAZIER: We will be watching closely the events in Moscow, and thank you, Michael O'Hanlon, for that sense of what we should be watching for. Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.

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