What is your thought about my interpretation of Putin's motivation...

[BBA]

See, it's the whole ABM treaty thing that both bothers me and makes me very happy.

On one hand, Russia opposes our withdrawel of it. The only reason I can gather publicly is they just don't want us testing a defense system.

On the other hand...is there more to it? I say that from looking at the big picture...you have China and some other comunist controlled nations developing nuclear weapons with total disregard to the ABM treaty anyway, which only really directly binds the US and Russia.

Well, just take that for instance, some comunist secret strategy ( Putin's for example... ) is to have the US at a stand still for weapons development while the other countries develope weapons outside the limitations of Russia as per the treaty.
So now, the treaty should prevent the US from developing weapons and defense systems while the comunist countries develope a huge advantage...for what purpose being the only question...

Obviously, the US abandoning the treaty would ruin any such strategy. Hence the 'big deal' Putin is making out of it.

Something to think about isn't it?

[Toadman]

Could be Russian pride as well. It's a win-win for all of Eastern Europe for us to develop/deploy such a global ABM defense, but possibly Russia is not comfortable under the US "protectorate"umbrella. Make no mistake in assuming Vladimir Putin, once head of the KGB, is a moderate or democratically-inclined. A big concern is whether we can deploy such a defense in numbers to keep up with ABM development. Quantity has a quality all it's own, whether it's troops or warheads.