U.S. withdraws from the ABM Treaty; a Cold War arms bargain expires at midnight

Arms control architecture built at the height of the Cold War rested on a grim but stable logic: if neither superpower could defend itself from nuclear missiles, neither would dare launch them. On June 13, 2002, the United States formally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — the first time in the nuclear age it had walked away from a strategic arms agreement. President George W. Bush had given Russia six months' notice on December 13, 2001, citing the threat of nuclear blackmail from rogue states. Vladimir Putin, inheritor of the Soviet side of the original bargain, responded by abandoning the START II treaty and, eventually, by ordering the development of new nuclear weapons…