The Trump administration announced Friday that it would suspend its obligations under a decades old Cold War arms control pact with Russia on Saturday, citing Moscow’s violations of the treaty.
The White House announced the decision to stop complying with the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in a statement from President Trump early Friday, just before Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed the move in remarks from the State Department.
“Russia has refused to take any steps to return to real and verifiable compliance over these 60 days,” Pompeo said.
“The United States will therefore suspend its obligations under the INF Treaty effective Feb. 2, and we will provide Russia and the other treaty parties with formal notice that the United States is withdrawing from the INF Treaty effective in six months pursuant to Article 15 of the treaty,” he continued.
In his statement, Trump pledged the United States would “move forward with developing our own military response options” to Russia’s violations and work with allies to “deny Russia any military advantage from its unlawful conduct.”
“For arms control to effectively contribute to national security, all parties must faithfully implement their obligations,” Trump said. “We stand ready to engage with Russia on arms control negotiations that meet these criteria, and, importantly, once that is done, develop, perhaps for the first time ever, an outstanding relationship on economic, trade, political and military levels. This would be a fantastic thing for Russia and the United States, and would also be great for the world.”
The U.S. has publicly accused Russia of violating the treaty since 2014 during the Obama administration by fielding a cruise missile known as the 9M729. The agreement, signed by then-President Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, bans nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
Russia has repeatedly denied violating the treaty, leading to an impasse in diplomatic talks aimed at bringing Moscow back into compliance.
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While current and former officials broadly agree Russia has violated the treaty for years, the U.S. move has nevertheless triggered concerns about the impact on the global strategic environment.
Arms control advocates in particular worry withdrawing from the INF Treaty could trigger a Cold War-style arms race, thereby upending stability in Europe and elsewhere.
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- Discussion
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: "Russia has jeopardized the United States' security interest, and we can no longer be restricted by the treaty while Russia shamelessly violates it." https://t.co/CTHoAIPbQi pic.twitter.com/TYtuzxxtJ0
— The Hill (@thehill) February 1, 2019
This is bad, and since many of you are asking me what I think, I'll tell you. Lots of blame to go around, but once again, the Trump administration figured out the worst way to do something that needed a response. /1 https://t.co/vHlW6qPvl5
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 1, 2019
The Russians have been playing cute with this issue, because they're not really trying to renuclearize Europe; they'd prefer for us to stay in INF while they make conduct weapons tests that are really meant to intimidate the Europeans and put distance between the US and NATO. /3
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 1, 2019
Instead of just dumping the treaty, the U.S. and NATO should have gotten completely on the same page about a common Russia policy, including *conventional* reinforcement of NATO, hard push-back in Ukraine, a reaffirmation of Article V, a public case about Russian cheating. /5
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 1, 2019
Worst yet, Trump's guys want to cover the theater-range nuclear capability with nukes on submarines – as though the enemy will double-check to make sure a submarine missile launch falls under "theater" rather than "strategic" attack. This flunks Nuke Strategy 101 in every way. /7
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 1, 2019
For more, see my piece in @TheNatlInterest from October:https://t.co/am1hUl9n3S
/9x
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 1, 2019
Just so we’re clear, Putin has wanted to withdraw from the INF Treaty for a long time. Withdrawing from INF therefore isn’t the best way to punish Russia for its non-compliance. Rather, sticking with it is still the best way to keep a lid on Russian threat https://t.co/bl3wTt0RkU
— Ivo Daalder (@IvoHDaalder) February 1, 2019
The problem centers around "extended deterrence." How do you convince your opponent you'll respond to an attack on your allies as you would an attack on yourself? You can *say* that you will treat invading Bonn like it's an invasion of New York, but how do you make it stick? /2
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
We had a gap. We had"battlefield" nukes for affecting the course of battles (like tank engagements) and "strategic" nukes for US vs USSR strikes. We needed something in between, which would strike Soviet forces in Eastern Europe as a step toward all-out war./4
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
In the 1970s, the Soviets (as usual) tried to get the upper hand in this competition and fielded a much more accurate, mobile version of these weapons, a strategically insane move that was even opposed by the Soviet diplomatic establishment. But Moscow's generals got their way /6
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
By the 1980s, war in Europe could go to all-out nuclear war in minutes. But here's what was *different*: We put those weapons in Europe *in the path of a Soviet invasion.* We told the Soviets: "If you come in, we'll have no choice. It'll be your doing, not ours." /8
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
This was a good move, because it made the link from war in Europe to the end of the USSR a lot more credible. Deterrence was, in a way, taken out of our hands, and nuclear war would be the fault of the Soviets for invading, whether we wanted it or not, and they knew it./10
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
Today, there's no "Warsaw Pact" to fight this out on. If we use INF, we'll be hitting inside Russia. If you think that this is a good idea, well, te salud, Don Corleone, because there's no way the Russians will sit around and just take a nuke strike inside Russia. /12
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
Or, put another way, the Russians and the Chinese will have to *assume* these are strategic strikes, especially if we do something ludicrous like put the new INF on submarines. "Oh, that launch? Just a theater strike. Don't overreact." Sure. Good luck with that. /14
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
Without the trigger of INF placed in the way of advancing Russian armies – and no one's going to do that, unless you think we should line the Polish and Baltic borders with nukes – we're left with a *discretionary* force that relies solely on our promise to go nuclear. /16
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
And trying to replicate the 1980s in Europe by doing it again in Asia is mindless and ahistorical, the kind of thing wargamers come up when they treat nuclear weapons like a big game of Risk. You want to worry China? Build more ships, not more nukes that you won't use./18
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
In sum, we don't know what we're doing. We're not thinking about why we would go to war, what scenarios we're trying to defeat. We're just playing tit for tat, without even knowing why. We're just flailing around, alienating our own NATO allies, then pretending we're tough. /20
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
Worse, we've come to believe that everything worked out fine in the 1980s, when in fact guys on both sides had to change their shorts when all that was over. We got by that with careful leadership and some basic luck. I guess now all that's left is to buy stock in Vault-Tec. /21x pic.twitter.com/qXkqrZ7iQp
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 2, 2019
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