International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

We clearly say No to the US plans for a National Missile Defense!

Appeal by European Parliamentarians

We call on the governments of European countries to make full use of their political and diplomatic instruments vis—vis Washington to stop the establishment of a US National Missile Defence System before the strategy pursued by the future American administration drags the world into a new round of the arms race.

Do your all to make sure that one-sided thoughts in favour of own invincibility yields to thinking in categories of joint security for all countries and peoples.

Live up to your responsibility and see to it that an international dialogue on disarmament and effective agreements on the reduction of weaponry and conflict potential get under way.

No matter how the election spectacle ends in the US a continuation of plans for building a national missile defense system (NMD) on the part of the US seems most likely from today's perspective. Apart from the strategic interest of the US for absolute predominance in the world many reasons coincide here. Already during research and testing the US spent considerable amounts of money which will hardly make it abandon the programme now. And important economic cycles in the US also demand the implementation of the plans.

The dimensions of some of the disastrous effects these renewed US Star Wars plans will have on world peace are already foreseeable today. It is not only that the complete arms control mechanism of the past few decades will be made to collapse, the ABM Treaty as the system of strategic stability will also be undermined. Military experts have pointed out that NMD would trigger a new arms race worldwide, the efforts of non-proliferation would be thwarted and more instability result from it.

The alleged danger the US sees coming from what it calls problem or villain countries seems rather far-fetched against the background of its existing military supremacy and deterrence capacity vis—vis those countries and lacks any credible realistic analysis of the threat. Irrespective of how the differing internal conditions in such countries are viewed: a missile attack by Iran, Iraq or North Korea, if at all they possess the weaponry, would be tantamount to national suicide and serves the US and possible circles of supporters in some NATO countries as a pretext alone.

It is close at hand that the US missile defence plans are less directed against what they call problematic nations and apparently much more against Russia and China on the one hand, and against any questioning - by whoever - of the American domination in the international security and arms network.

Both Russian and Chinese governments have already warned that they would have to modernise and build up their nuclear forces in order to create a counterweight to NMD. Following the nuclear arms build-up in China would not only be India but also Pakistan. And even in the European Union this will not remain without consequences and foreshadow the danger of an own European System and a conflict with the US. Consequently, there could be the danger of confrontation between the then increasingly militarised EU and Russia.

This beginning of a new spiralling arms race will result in more crisis potentials and armed conflicts and deprive humankind of considerable resources that would otherwise be urgently needed for solving the immense global problems in the interest of social and ecological sustainability.

By March 16, this appeal had been signed by 370 parliamentarians from the European Parliament and from the following 18 countries: Belarus, Cyprus, Czechian Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.