By Lisa Macdonald
Peace activists around the country have condemned the federal government's decision, announced on May 18, to collaborate with the US in the development of new ground-based anti-ballistic missile technology.
Australian defence officials have been meeting with Pentagon officials about this project, the theatre missile defence (TMD) system, since 1992. Research on the TMD system began under former US president Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative program (popularly known as Star Wars), which also involved Australian scientists, and under current plans will be ready for use by 2001.
Ballistic missile technology is the fastest growing military hardware area and is now the focus of the international arms race. In the wake of the Gulf War, the TMD project is being justified by the US Congress as a "necessary protection" against the threat of "missile proliferation among the rogue states including Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea".
Rather than strengthening arms control, the TMD will in fact provoke an escalation of the arms race according to Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition spokesperson Hannah Middleton. "Ballistic missile proliferation is not prevented by the development of new defence systems. The systems do not provide an effective defence but they provoke the development of more sophisticated ballistic missiles", she said.
US and Australian peace activists argue that the TMD forces could undermine and even destroy the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, to which Australia is a signatory. The treaty, currently under review by the US and Russia, bans the development of national missile defence programs such as Star Wars, but does not specify when a TMD system becomes so powerful that it can destroy incoming strategic missiles, thereby breaching the treaty's rules.
The government's agreement to cooperate with the US on this "expensive and destructive project" is "yet another example of Labor's greater commitment to maintaining good relations with their war mongering allies in Washington than to the goals of peace, justice and meeting the needs of the majority of people in this country and around the world", said international secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party Reihana Mohideen. "The development of even more military hardware by imperialist nations will only exacerbate the problems of inequality, exploitation and injustice which are the causes of war."