A bipartisan group of Senators—led by Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota—sent a letter Wednesday to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, reminding him that the Nuclear Posture Review set the year 2020 as the earliest the nation should consider giving up its fleet of 500 Minuteman III ICBMs. This is just in case the Rumsfeld Quadrennial Defense Review crowd casts a budget trimming eye in that direction under what the Senate ICBM Coalition calls “the rubric of ‘tailorable deterrence.’ ” The Senators express concern that the Pentagon may be “setting us on a dangerous road to dismantling the nuclear triad.”
The U.K. and the U.S. will continue to enjoy access to the ports, airfield, and workshops at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean for at least another century, under a deal inked between the U.K. and Mauritius May 22.