Over last weekend, President Donald Trump said the United
States will withdraw from the Cold-War era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
(INF) Treaty that eliminated a class of nuclear weapons due to what he called
Russian violations, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow.
(“Trump Says US to Exit Nuclear Treaty, Russia Vows Retaliation, Telesur, 21 October 2018;https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Trump-Says-US-to-Exit-Nuclear-Treaty-Russia-Vows-Retaliation-20181021-0005.html)""
data-href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Trump-Says-US-to-Exit-Nuclear-Treaty-Russia-Vows-Retaliation-1021-
"Russia has not, unfortunately,
honored the agreement so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going
to pull out," Trump said, adding the United States will develop the weapons
unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow. Russian
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Sunday that a unilateral U.S.
withdrawal would be "very dangerous" and lead to a
"military-technical" retaliation. “We will, of course, accept no
ultimatums or blackmail methods," Interfax news agency quoted him as
saying.
US National Security Advisor, John Bolton, repeated Trump’s
warnings at a meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterparts on Tuesday. (https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000006176776/bolton-says-russia-is-in-violation-of-nuclear-treaty.html)
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated by
then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987,
required elimination of land-based short-range and intermediate-range nuclear
and conventional missiles by both countries.
China is not a party to the treaty and has invested heavily
in conventional missiles, while the INF has banned US possession of
ground-launched ballistic missiles or cruise missiles of ranges between 500 and
5,500 km (311 and 3,418 miles).
This
announcement by Trump at a political rally in Texas, came a year after Mikhail S.Gorbachev
(the final President of the Soviet Union, 1985-91) wrote in the Washington Post,
“The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, however, is now in
jeopardy. It has proved to be the most vulnerable link in the system of
limiting and reducing weapons of mass destruction.There have been calls on
both sides for scrapping the agreement.”“Mikhail Gorbachev: My plea to the presidents of Russia and the United
States,” Washington
Post, October 11, 2017; https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mikhail-gorbachev-my-plea-to-the-presidents-of-russia-and-the-united-states/2017/10/10/36225a60-ade2-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?utm_term=.c98688da1e3d)
Trump’s announcement drew sharp criticism from the now frail 87–year old Gorbachev, who called the decision “reckless”
and not the work of “a great mind” and a “ threat to peace.”
(“Gorbachev Calls Trump’s
Nuclear Treaty Withdrawal ‘Not the Work of a Great Mind’” by Andrew E.
Kramer, New York Times, 21 October
2018; https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/world/europe/mikhail-gorbachev-trump-russia.html)
Defence secretary Gavin
Williamson told the chairperson of the Defence Select
committee, Conservative MP Dr Julian Lewis, who had asked in defence questions:
“What assessment have [the minister] and his Department made of whether that
intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty [INF] treaty, which has been
successful for so long, has now been violated by Russia?” that “It has been our
clear and consistent view that Russia has been in breach of that treaty. We
urge Russia to comply with the [INF] treaty.”(Hansard, 22 October 2018, column 16)
But German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that for 30
years the treaty had been a pillar of Europe's security architecture. "We
now urge the United States to consider the possible consequences," of
quitting the pact, Maas said in a statement issued on Sunday.
Professor Malcolm
Chalmers, deputy director at the London-based Royal United Services Institute observed:
“This is the
most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s.If the INF treaty
collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in
2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of
nuclear states for the first time since 1972.”
Dr Patricia Lewis,
Research
Director for International Security at Chatham House, another
London-based think tank on international affairs, told Channel Four News on 23
October that some arms control experts believe the US has also been in
violation of the INF treaty.
As Russia expert Abigail
Stowe-Thurston, a
research assistant for the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of
American Scientists, pointed ou tin August: “The 2019 [US]
defense bill renews calls for the development of a new missile system that will
not only violate the INF Treaty but also put the United States on a poor
footing with its European allies,”
(“The wrong response to Russia’s INF Treaty violation,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 31, 2018; https://thebulletin.org/2018/08/the-wrong-response-to-russias-inf-treaty-violation/)
US commentators have also suggested that the Trump
administration does not want to develop new nuclear nuclear–armed cruise
missiles, but to equip them with advanced conventional weapons.
President Trump’s predilection to unilaterally withdraw US membership
from both bilateral (such as INF) and
multilateral ( such as the Paris Climate Change
accord) treaties means other
states will be much more cautious in future in signing international agreements
with the United States.
Ambassador Bolton announced after his Moscow meetings that the US and
Russia have agreed to a new bilateral meeting on nuclear arms control next month, on
November 11th, when the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World
War is commemorated in Paris.
We will see what happens soon.
In his opening remarks to Mr. Bolton on
Tuesday, Mr. Putin joked that the olive branches seemed missing from the
eagle’s talon on the Great Seal of the United States.
“As I recall, there is a bald eagle
picture,” Mr. Putin said. “It holds 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch
in the other as a symbol of peaceful policy, a branch with 13 olives. My
question: Has your eagle already eaten all the olives leaving only the arrows?”
Backstory
Trump and Bolton try to
dismantle the INF Treaty
By Elisabeth Eaves,
October 22, 2018
The BGM-109G, a ground-launched cruise
missile shown here at the National Museum of the US Air Force, was one of the
US weapons banned by the INF. (Photo credit: US Air Force.)
As
the name suggests, an intermediate-range nuclear missile is one that goes a
medium distance. In weapons speak, that means 500 to 5,500 kilometers, so, for
instance, from Russia to Western Europe and vice versa, but not from Russia to
Los Angeles. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the United States and the Soviet
Union built up their intermediate-range nuclear arsenals in Western and Eastern
Europe respectively, until the whole landmass bristled with projectiles capable
of obliterating entire cities. Finally recognizing that things were getting out
of hand, not to mention awfully expensive, US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet
leader Mikhail Gobachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or
INF, in 1987. It was a major landmark for nuclear nonproliferation; as the Arms
Control Association explains, “The treaty
marked the first time the superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear
arsenals, eliminate an entire category of nuclear weapons, and utilize
extensive on-site inspections for verification.”
Reagan
is long gone, Gorbachev, at 87, long out of office, and now that seminal
agreement appears to be on its deathbed. Since 2014, the United States has
charged Russia with violating the INF. (Back in 2015, Bulletin columnist
Pavel Podvig examined what, exactly,
Russia was developing that was leading to the US accusations.) On Saturday, US
President Donald Trump declared he would soon pull his country out of the INF,
and said “we’ll have to develop those weapons,” the Guardian reported. The
groundwork has already been laid: As Abigail Stowe-Thurston wrote in the Bulletin in
August, “The 2019 [US] defense bill renews calls for the development of a new
missile system that will not only violate the INF Treaty but also put the
United States on a poor footing with its European allies.”
In short, it
seems that at least some players in both countries are chomping at the bit to
develop and deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles once again. David A.
Wemer at the Atlantic Council offers
a good analysis in which he notes, “Although the Obama administration
identified the Russian violations, support for a US withdrawal from the INF
Treaty did not gain steam until the start of the Trump administration.” John
Bolton, Trump’s National Security Adviser and an advocate for pulling out of
the INF—and pretty much all treaties—plans to meet with Russian President
Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.
Russia nuclear treaty:
Gorbachev warns Trump plan will undermine disarmament
Reuters
and EPA Mr Gorbachev has questioned the sense of withdrawing from the INF
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says US
President Trump's plan to withdraw from a key Cold War nuclear weapons treaty
is a reversal of efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament.
Mr
Gorbachev - who signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with
President Reagan in 1987 - questioned the plan's intelligence.
Mr
Trump said Russia had been "violating [the INF] for many years".
Russia
has condemned the plans and threatened to retaliate.
The
Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin would be seeking an explanation from
visiting US National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Germany
was the first US ally to criticise the move, with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas
urging Washington to consider the consequences both for Europe and for future
disarmament efforts.
The
INF banned ground-launched medium-range missiles, with a range of between 500
and 5,500km (310-3,400 miles).
AFP Mr Gorbachev and Mr Reagan signed
the INF treaty in 1987
It
was signed near the end of the Cold War, a period of relations between the US
and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1989 marked by intense international tension
and overshadowed by the threat of nuclear conflict.
In
the past five decades the US and Russia have signed a range of joint agreements
to limit and reduce their substantial nuclear arsenals.
Who is Mikhail
Gorbachev?
- The
last General Secretary of the Soviet Union
- Appointed
in 1985, his domestic reforms and nuclear disarmament deals helped end the
Cold War
- Resigned
as Soviet president in 1991 after Soviet republics declared independence
Read more: The man who lost an empire
What exactly has Trump
said?
President
Trump said the US would not let Russia "go out and do weapons [while]
we're not allowed to".
"I
don't know why President [Barack] Obama didn't negotiate or pull out," the
president said of the INF treaty after a campaign rally in Nevada.
In
2014, President Obama accused Russia of
breaching the INF after it allegedly tested a ground-launched cruise
missile. He reportedly chose not to withdraw from the treaty under pressure
from European leaders, who said such a move could restart an arms race.
How has Russia
responded?
"This
would be a very dangerous step that, I'm sure, not only will not be
comprehended by the international community but will provoke serious condemnation,"
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
The
treaty is "significant for international security and security in the
sphere of nuclear arms, for the maintenance of strategic stability," he
told state news agency Tass.
The
minister also told the news agency RIA Novosti that if the US continued to
behave "clumsily and crudely" and backed out of international
agreements, "then we will have no choice but to undertake retaliatory
measures, including involving military technology".
"But
we would not want to get to this stage," he added.
'A significant
setback'
Analysis by BBC defence and diplomatic correspondent
Jonathan Marcus
Concern
about Russia's development and deployment of a missile system that breaches the
INF treaty predates the Trump administration. But the president's decision to
walk away from the agreement marks a significant setback for arms control.
Many
experts believe that negotiations should have continued to try to bring the
Russians back into compliance. It is, they fear, part of the wider unravelling
of the whole system of arms control treaties that helped to curb strategic
competition during the Cold War.
Other
factors too may have played into President Trump's decision. This was a
bilateral treaty between Washington and Moscow. China was free to develop and
deploy intermediate range nuclear missiles. Some in the Trump administration
feel that the INF treaty places them at a growing disadvantage in their
developing strategic rivalry with Beijing .
Has Russia breached the treaty?
The US
insists the Russians have, in breach of the deal, developed a new medium-range
missile called the Novator 9M729 - known to Nato as the SSC-8.
It would
enable Russia to launch a nuclear strike at Nato countries at very short
notice.
Russia has
said little about its new missile other than to deny that it is in breach of
the agreement. Analysts say Russia sees such weapons as a cheaper alternative
to conventional forces.
The New York
Times reported on Friday the US was considering withdrawing
from the treaty in a bid to counter China's expanding military presence
in the western Pacific. China was not a signatory of the deal, allowing
it to develop medium-range missiles without restraint.
The last
time the US withdrew from a major arms treaty was in 2002, when President
George W Bush pulled the US out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which
banned weapons designed to counter ballistic nuclear missiles.
His
administration's move to set up a missile shield in Europe alarmed the Kremlin,
and was scrapped by the Obama administration in 2009. It was replaced by a
modified defence system in 2016.
What is the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty?
- Signed
by the US and the USSR in 1987, the arms control deal banned all nuclear and
non-nuclear missiles with short and medium ranges, except
sea-launched weapons
- The US
had been concerned by the Soviet deployment of the SS-20 missile system
and responded by placing Pershing and Cruise missiles in Europe - sparking
widespread protests
- By
1991, nearly 2,700 missiles had been destroyed. Both countries were
allowed to inspect the others installations
- In
2007, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared the treaty no longer
served Russia's interests. The move came after the US withdrew from the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002
Trump is creating a nuclear
threat worse than the cold war
In ditching the
treaty with Russia, the US president risks an arms race with multiple nuclear
powers
Guardian,Tuesday,
23 October 2018
A
Russian Iskander-M tactical missile: ‘Trump’s decision, if implemented, fires a
starting gun in a second global arms race.’ Photograph: Konstantin
Alysh/Defence Ministry handout/EPA
Whoa! There he
goes again. Donald Trump’s impulsive decision to rubbish a landmark arms control treaty and develop a new generation of
American nuclear weapons deals another devastating, dangerous blow to the
rules-based global order. It seems Trump only has to look at an international
treaty or a multilateral institution, and he is overcome by an irresistible
urge to tear it down.
The man is a
menace, that much is true. This latest piece of wilful vandalism will put
everyone at greater risk. It’s terrible news for all who seek a nuclear-free
world. It’s a significant backwards step away from the obligation of all
declared nuclear weapons states, under the 1970 nonproliferation treaty, to reduce and eliminate their
arsenals. It’s a reckless, irresponsible act.
But that’s not
the worst of it. Trump’s decision, if implemented, fires a starting gun in a
second-phase global arms race that could be even more frightening than the
two-sided superpower contest that halted when the Soviet Union imploded. The
world has changed since 1991. This time around, the race could be many
dimensional and multipolar, making it harder to contain. This time, the threat
of mutual annihilation will be replaced by multilateral assured destruction.
Trump’s double
standard also extends to Iran – ironically, the only country that has kept its
nuclear word
It’s possible
Trump’s announcement could be a ploy, intended to pressure the Russians in a
week when John Bolton, his national security adviser, is
holding talks in Moscow. It would be typical of this president to threaten
Armageddon only to make nice later, as he did with North Korea. Trouble is,
Vladimir Putin is no weak, marginalised actor, like Kim Jong-un. The Kremlin
has vowed to match new US weapons, warhead for warhead.
Specifically,
Trump justifies his decision by saying Russia’s deployment of new, mobile,
medium-range, land-based, nuclear-capable cruise missiles breaches the 1987
intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty. It’s not a new problem; Barack
Obama wrestled with it. And the west knows, to its cost, that Putin is in
offensive mode on a range of fronts. In March, he ostentatiously displayed
Russia’s modernised arms chest, unveiling a 15-warhead long-range missile,
wizard underwater drones and a hypersonic missile called the “dagger” that
could, he said, strike like a meteorite.
Such juvenile bragging aside, Russia
maintains – with some justice – that it is the Americans who have undermined
the INF pact by spending billions of dollars on upgrading existing nuclear
weapons systems and making them more “usable” by lowering their explosive yields.
Fundamentally threatening, from Moscow’s perspective, was George W Bush’s
unilateral decision in 2002 to quit the 30-year-old anti-ballistic missile
(ABM) treaty, another cold war arms-control building block. Russia says the
subsequent US deployment of antimissile
defences – the current
Nato-run “missile shield” is based in Poland and Romania –
tipped the European balance of forces against Moscow.
Trump’s INF
decision also reflects American concern, shared by the Russians, about China –
which is not bound by the agreement, and is developing medium-range systems. A
possible future threat to Russia’s far east is another reason why Putin
believes he needs the mobile, land-launched missiles. Given rising military
confrontation between American, Chinese and other nations’ forces in the South China Sea, and Beijing’s aggressive stance
towards Taiwan, it is not hard to see why generals on all sides, mired in old,
cold-war thinking, take a similar view.
Minor-league
nuclear-armed states, such as the UK and France, cannot escape a share of blame
for this across-the-board deterioration in nuclear security. London and Paris
can barely afford their nukes, financially or morally. They are less an
“independent deterrent”, more a forlorn symbol of forfeited great power status.
Both governments should set an example to unmonitored nuclear states such as
Israel, Pakistan and India, and others who may in future seek to “go nuclear”,
by unilaterally disarming. But even Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong anti-nuclear
campaigner, cannot bring himself to promise that, lest it derail his political
ambitions.
All of which
brings us back to Trump, and the breathtaking hypocrisy of a man who last year
threatened to “completely destroy” North Korea because it had the temerity to
build atomic bombs. Trump insists Kim must disarm totally – even as he plans to
expand the US nuclear arsenal. Has the White House considered how this may
affect Pyongyang’s willingness to talk peace?
Trump’s double
standard also extends to Iran – ironically, the only country that has kept its
nuclear word. Tehran faces extreme US sanctions despite its scrupulous adherence to the multilateral 2015 nuclear deal
that Trump jettisoned earlier this year. Iran’s leaders will look at this
latest exercise in treaty-busting and say America, once again, has shown that
its solemn word cannot be trusted. Hardliners will argue it proves the case for
an Iranian bomb.
How Russia cyber attacks helped
Trump to the US presidency
Kathleen Hall
Jamieson
Read more
If Trump goes
ahead, and the Kremlin responds in kind, it could mean the return to Europe
after 30 years of US land-based missiles, dread offspring of the cruise and
Pershing missiles whose deployment in the 1980s was resisted by CND and the
Greenham Common women’s peace camp. Alternatively, there could be major new
deployments of US air- and sea-launched missiles, plus renewed pressure on Nato
countries to put more cash in the kitty.
The trashing of
the INF treaty could also kill off an arguably even more important pact, the New Start strategic weapons reduction treaty,
negotiated by Obama in 2010, whose renewal in 2021 is already far from certain.
In short, the knock-on effects of Trump’s act of gross irresponsibility are
globally destabilising, unpredictable and wildly risky. They point to a world
for ever ruled by fear of nuclear destruction. But then, fear is how Trump
works.
Trump’s Punk Rock Nuclear
Policy
The only reason to
pull out of the INF Treaty is to give a middle finger to the world.
Jeffrey LewisOctober 23, 2018, 5:07 PM
Donald
Trump talks with journalists during a rally against the Iran nuclear deal in
Washington on Sept. 9, 2015. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)"
Why did
President Donald Trump announce that the United States would withdraw from the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty? If you are asking this
question, you are already wrong.
You would be
wrong because you are looking for a strategic rationale or a policy
explanation. And to be sure, some experts will offer those rationales. Russia
is violating the INF Treaty. (Probably true.) China is not a party to the
agreement and has a bunch of missiles, including nuclear-armed ones, with
ranges that would be prohibited if it were. (Definitely true.) Other countries
have missiles that would be prohibited were they members, including India,
Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (thanks China!), and South Korea.
(True, with that list likely to grow.) But this will be a post hoc
effort, as analysts seek to explain the campaign stylings of Trump, hoping for
a job or maybe just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
While each
of these is a reason, not a single one of them is the reason that Trump said on
Saturday, “We’re going to terminate the agreement, and we’re going to pull
out.” After all, in 2011, John Bolton, now Trump’s national security advisor, called for withdrawing
from the INF Treaty because the pact didn’t address “today’s strategic
threats,” most notably Iran. Of course, that wasn’t the reason either.
The
United States and the Soviet Union signed the INF Treaty in 1987. It bans
land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles between 500 and 5,500
kilometers. (Despite the word “nuclear” in the title, it bans all land-based
missiles within that range, not just nuclear ones.) The United States was long
fine with the treaty since it did not ban those same missiles as long as they
were deployed on ships or delivered aircraft. But the Russians gradually grew
to feel the treaty was constraining given that other countries around
it—including China, India, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, and South
Arabia—all had missiles in this range. After years of complaining that the
agreement should be made worldwide, the Russians started nibbling around the
edges, eventually (according to the U.S. government) violating it with a fancy
new cruise missile, the 9M729. That left former President Barack Obama, and
then Trump, to decide what to do about cheating. Obama tried, half-heartedly,
to persuade Russia to return to compliance. Trump killed the treaty.
But
that is a backstory, not a reason. The fact is, there is no reason—at least,
not the sort of reason one might study in an international relations class.
Back when Bolton penned that op-ed in 2011 with Paula DeSutter, I realized that
it wasn’t really an explanation at all. It was more like, well, a tube of lube.
About the Author
Jeffrey
Lewis is director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James
Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of
International Studies at Monterey. @ArmsControlWonk
In Jean
Genet’s The Thief’s Journal, he recounts how he was arrested by the
Spanish police, who, when confiscating his things, discovered that he had a
tube of Vaseline. The context here is important—to the Spanish police in the
Francisco Franco-era, that tube of Vaseline was an unmistakable sign of
homosexuality. While the object draws homophobic torment and ridicule from the
police, Genet begins to the see the object as holding a sort of power: “I was
sure that this puny and most humble object would hold its own against them,” he
wrote, “by its mere presence it would be able to exasperate all the police in
the world; it would draw upon itself contempt, hatred, white and dumb rages.”
Genet, in
other words, loved to shock the normies. The sociologist Dick Hebdige used this
passage from Genet to illustrate an important idea about the power of objects
to shock and discomfort, or as he put it, “the idea of style as a form of
Refusal.” Hebdige was interested in subcultures—“the teddy boys and mods and
rockers, the skinheads and the punks”—and how “the tensions between dominant
and subordinate groups can be found reflected in the surfaces of subculture —
in the styles made up of mundane objects which have a double meaning.” In other
words, Hebdige understood that the discomfort one might feel in looking at a
safety pin through a punk’s nose is precisely the point of the pin. It matters
to them that you think it looks awful.
I don’t know
why, but Hebdige and his work leaped into mind in 2011 when I read Bolton and
DeSutter’s op-ed. It was obvious to me that we were mistaken in understanding
the purpose of the object, typeset words printed on thin paper. We should “not
mistake the words for an exercise in persuasion,” I realized, “just as we
would not confuse the safety-pin through a punk’s nose with a careful analysis
of strategic stability.”
Trump’s
announcement, made clearly in the context of a campaign rally, is obviously in
that same vein. It should be obvious, in an era where “triggering the libs” is
an actual reason, that the decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty wasn’t made
on the basis of some model showing the balance of nuclear forces.
But what is
less obvious is how clear this tendency was long before Trump took office.
Bolton and DeSutter’s op-ed, seven years on, looks a lot like a template for
the Trump era. Words that mimic the forms of inquiry but that are intended to
shock and outrage. Long before Steve Bannon entered the scene, Bolton called
himself an “Americanist” and decried the influence of “Globalists,” whom he
accused way back in 2000 of “belittling our popular sovereignty and
constitutionalism, and restricting both our domestic and our international
policy flexibility and power.”
The problem
with looking for a reason for Trump’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty is that
Bolton, at a fundamental level, would object to needing a reason. After all,
needing a reason would seem to imply that there might be some case where the
United States would willingly accept some international treaty or agreement
that limited the exercise of its sovereignty. Bolton rejects that possibility
outright, with almost every treaty an affront to American exceptionalism.
“Every time America is forced to bend its knee to international pressure,”
Bolton wrote, “it sets a significant, and detrimental, precedent for all of the
others.” As an example of this, Bolton cites the death penalty, which he lauds
as a “textbook demonstration of popular sovereignty at work” and a result that
“enrages the Globalists.”
The problem with looking for a
reason for Trump’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty is that Bolton, at a
fundamental level, would object to needing a reason.
(Seriously,
you should read Bolton’s 2000 essay in the
Chicago Journal of International Law on “Should We Take Global
Governance Seriously?”)
What is also
clearer is how hard the community of experts and pundits has been working to
back-fit some reasonable explanation to this profound act of unreason. Almost
no one accurately describes Bolton’s worldview in the stark terms that he
himself uses. That’s strange because that worldview appealed to Trump, who has
a certain affection for the popular sovereignty of an execution.
Clothing Trump’s willfulness in secondhand arguments simply helps to
obscure the real motivations and normalize the dysfunction.
So let’s not
do that. The reason, such that it is, is as clear and striking as the safety
pin in a punk’s nose. We can go screw ourselves.
Jeffrey
Lewis is director
of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for
Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies
at Monterey. @ArmsControlWonk
Trump says US will withdraw from
nuclear arms treaty with Russia
Experts warn of
‘most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s’ as Trump confirms
US will leave INF agreement
Sun 21 Oct 2018
02.29
Donald
Trump in Nevada on Saturday. He said: ‘We’re going to terminate the agreement
and we’re going to pull out.’ Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave an
arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear
missiles out of Europe for three decades.
“We’ll have to
develop those weapons,” the president told reporters in Nevada after a rally.
“We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out.”
Trump was
referring to the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF), which banned
ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km. Signed by
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to nearly 2,700 short- and
medium-range missiles being eliminated, and an end to a dangerous standoff
between US Pershing and cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe.
UK backs Trump
withdrawal from Russia nuclear treaty
Read
more
The Guardian reported on Friday that Trump’s third national
security adviser, John Bolton, a longstanding opponent of arms control
treaties, was pushing for US withdrawal. The US says Russia has been violating
the INF agreement with the development and deployment of a new cruise missile. Under the terms of the treaty, it
would take six months for US withdrawal to take effect.
US hawks have
also argued that the INF treaty ties the country’s hands in its strategic
rivalry with China in the Pacific, with no response to Chinese medium-range
missiles that could threaten US bases, allies and shipping.
Bolton and the
top arms control adviser in the National Security Council (NSC), Tim Morrison,
are also opposed to the extension of another major pillar of arms control, the
2010 New Start agreement with Russia, which limited the number of deployed
strategic warheads on either side to 1,550. That agreement, signed by Barack
Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, then president of Russia, is due to expire in 2021.
This is the
most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s
Speaking to
reporters in Nevada, Trump said: “Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve
been violating it for many years and I don’t know why President Obama didn’t
negotiate or pull out.
“We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear
agreement and do weapons and we’re not allowed to. We’re the ones that have
stayed in the agreement and we’ve honoured the agreement but Russia has not
unfortunately honoured the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement,
we’re going to pull out.”
Asked to clarify,
the president said: “Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they
all come to us and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us
develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and
we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable. So we have a tremendous
amount of money to play with with our military.”
Jeffrey Lewis,
the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury
Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said: “This is a colossal
mistake. Russia gets to violate the treaty and Trump takes the blame.
“I doubt very
much that the US will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the
treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters.”
John Bolton addresses a press conference following a
meeting with his Russian counterpart in Geneva. Photograph: Fabrice
Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
Russian state
news agencies on Saturday cited a foreign ministry source as saying
Washington’s move to pull out of the treaty is motivated by a dream of a single
global superpower.
“The main motive is a dream of a unipolar
world. Will it come true? No,” a foreign ministry source told Ria Novosti state
news agency.
The official
said that Russia has “many times publicly denounced the US policy course
towards dismantling the nuclear deal”.
US Nato envoy's threat to Russia:
stop developing missile or we'll 'take it out'
Washington “has
approached this step over the course of many years by deliberately and
step-by-step destroying the basis for the agreement,” the official said, quoted
by Russia’s three main news agencies.
“This decision
is part of the US policy course to withdraw from those international legal
agreements that place equal responsibilities on it and its partners and make
vulnerable its concept of its own ‘exceptionalism’.”
Russian senator
Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter that the move was “the second powerful blow
against the whole system of strategic stability in the world, with the first
being Washington’s 2001 withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty”.
“And again the
initiator of the dissolution of the agreement is the US,” Pushkov wrote.
The Pentagon
has been generally supportive of the INF treaty but defense secretary James
Mattis warned other Nato ministers earlier this month it would no longer be
tenable if Russia did not withdraw its Novator ground-based missile, which the
US has argued for nearly four years violates the INF range restrictions.
Nato ministers
issued a joint statement saying the INF agreement “has been crucial to
Euro-Atlantic security and we remain fully committed to the preservation of
this landmark arms control treaty”. But they urged Russia to come clean about
the capabilities of its new missile.
This president
who is constantly telling us he is deal-maker has failed utterly to save
Reagan’s nuclear legacy
Alexandra Bell, Centre for Arms Control
& Non-Proliferation
The Chinese
arsenal has also been a source of concern for the US Pacific Command. Its
former commander, Adm Harry Harris, told the Senate in March: “We have no ground-based capability
that can threaten China because of, among other things, our rigid adherence,
and rightfully so, to the treaty that we sign on to, the INF treaty.”
Lewis disagreed
that the INF leaves the US at a significant disadvantage in the Pacific.
“The China
stuff is nonsense,” he said. “INF does not prohibit sea- and air-based systems,
not does it prohibit South Korea and Japan from developing long-range missiles.
If China were a real problem, the US and its allies could have acted long ago.”
Alexandra Bell,
a former senior state department official and now senior policy director at the
Centre for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, said: “When problems arise in
arms control, you work and fix them.
“What shocks me is that this president who is
constantly telling us he is deal-maker has failed utterly to save Reagan’s
nuclear legacy. He did nothing with his relationship with Putin. There were
trades to be made to fix this treaty and he couldn’t pull it off.”
She added: “Why
would the North Koreans have any reason to believe in any deal made with this
president, with Bolton whispering in his ear.”
Agence
France-Presse contributed to this report
US Nato envoy's threat to Russia:
stop developing missile or we'll 'take it out'
- Kay Bailey
Hutchison seems to raise prospect of strike
- Washington
says cruise missile breaks 1987 INF treaty
Julian Borger in Washington
Tue 2 Oct 2018
16.17
Kay
Bailey Hutchison said: ‘We would then be looking at a capability to take out a
missile that could his any of our countries in Europe and hit America in
Alaska.’ Photograph: Francois Lenoir/Reuters
The US
ambassador to Nato has warned Russia that if it does not halt the
development of a new cruise missile in violation of a treaty between the
countries, the US will “take out” the missile.
Kay Bailey
Hutchison was speaking to reporters about a longstanding issue of
contention, a Russian ground-launched cruise missile which Washington says
breaks the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).
US and Russian nuclear arsenals
set to be unchecked for first time since 1972
Read more
Moscow has
denied the charge, and the Trump administration has announced plans to develop
its own medium-range cruise missile in response, raising the spectre of a new nuclear arms race.
But Hutchison
went further in her remarks and appeared to suggest the possibility of a
pre-emptive strike when the Russian missiles became operational.
“The counter-measures
would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in
violation of the treaty,” the envoy said, mistakenly referring to the missile
in question as a ballistic missile, rather than a cruise missile. She also
suggested the missile, known as 9M729, was still in development, even though
the US accused Russia of deploying it last year.
“Getting them
to withdraw would be our choice, of course. But I think the question was what
would you do if this continues to a point where we know that they are capable
of delivering. And at that point we would then be looking at a capability to
take out a missile that could hit any of our countries in Europe and hit America in Alaska.”
The Russian
foreign ministry accused Hutchison of dangerous rhetoric.
“It seems that
people who make such statements do not realise the level of their responsibility
and the danger of aggressive rhetoric,” the ministry spokeswoman, Maria
Zakharova, said, according to Tass news agency.
A few hours
later, Hutchison clarified her remarks on Twitter, insisting she was “not talking about
preemptively striking Russia”, adding that Russia “needs to return to INF
Treaty compliance or we will need to match its capabilities to protect US and
Nato interests”.
Hutchison did
not specifically explain what she meant by her warning that the US would “take
out” the Russian missile.
A US threat of
a pre-emptive strike against Russia would be unprecedented since the end of the
cold war, and a dangerous new departure in rhetoric and military posture
towards Russia.
“If she is
saying that if the diplomatic route doesn’t work we will destroy the missiles,
that’s obviously dangerous and risks triggering a war that could go nuclear,”
Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association, said. “I cannot recall
anything like this in the post cold-war period.”
Some nuclear
experts speculated that Hutchison may have misspoken, and meant to say that the
US would develop ways of destroying the Russian missile for use in the event of
a conflict.
Hans Kristensen, the director of the
nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, said: “I
don’t think the Nato ambassador is threatening pre-emptive
attacks against Russian development of INF weapons. She did a poor job in
trying to repeat what the US has been saying for several years; that it is
contemplating measures in response to the Russian INF violation.
“That can
include tweaking existing strike capabilities to hold the new weapons at risk,
developing new ones for potential deployment, and/or increasing economic and
political pressure on Moscow to return to compliance.”
Kristensen
said: “This is going to feed right into the paranoia of Russian planners. She
will definitely have to make a follow-up statement to clarify what she intended
to say.”
Mikhail Gorbachev: My plea to
the presidents of Russia and the United States
Mikhail Gorbachev
Washington Post, October
11, 2017
Mikhail Gorbachev was leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991.
This
December will mark the 30th anniversary of the signing of the treaty between the Soviet Union and United
States on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. This was
the start of the process of radically cutting back nuclear arsenals, which was
continued with the 1991 and 2010 strategic arms reduction treaties and the agreements
reducing tactical nuclear weapons.
The scale of
the process launched in 1987 is evidenced by the fact that, as Russia and the
United States reported to the Non-Proliferation
Treaty Review Conference in 2015, 80 percent of the nuclear weapons
accumulated during the Cold War have been decommissioned and destroyed. Another
important fact is that, despite the recent serious deterioration in bilateral
relations, both sides have been complying with the strategic weapons
agreements.
The
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, however, is now in jeopardy. It has proved to be the most
vulnerable link in the system of limiting and reducing weapons of mass
destruction. There have been calls on both sides for scrapping the agreement.
So what is
happening, what is the problem, and what needs to be done?
Both sides
have raised issues of compliance, accusing the other of violating or
circumventing the treaty's key provisions. From the sidelines, lacking fuller
information, it is difficult to evaluate those accusations. But one thing is
clear: The problem has a political as well as a technical aspect. It is up to
the political leaders to take action.
Therefore I
am making an appeal to the presidents of Russia and the United States.
Relations
between the two nations are in a severe crisis. A way out must be sought, and
there is one well-tested means available for accomplishing this: a dialogue
based on mutual respect.
It will not
be easy to cut through the logjam of issues on both sides. But neither was our
dialogue easy three decades ago. It had its critics and detractors, who tried
to derail it.
In the final
analysis, it was the political will of the two nations' leaders that proved
decisive. And that is what's needed now. This is what our two countries'
citizens and people everywhere expect from the presidents of Russia and the
United States.
I call upon
Russia and the United States to prepare and hold a full-scale summit on the
entire range of issues. It is far from normal that the presidents of major
nuclear powers meet merely "on the margins" of international gatherings. I hope that the
process of preparing a proper summit is in the works even now.
I believe
that the summit meeting should focus on the problems of reducing nuclear
weapons and strengthening strategic stability. For should the system of nuclear
arms control collapse, as may well happen if the INF Treaty is scrapped, the
consequences, both direct and indirect, will be disastrous.
The closer
that nuclear weapons are deployed to borders, the more dangerous they are:
There is less time for a decision and greater risk of catastrophic error. And
what will happen to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if the nuclear arms
race begins anew? I am afraid it will be ruined.
If, however,
the INF Treaty is saved, it will send a powerful signal to the world that the
two biggest nuclear powers are aware of their responsibility and take their
obligations seriously. Everyone will breathe a sigh of relief, and relations
between Russia and the United States will finally get off the ground again.
I am
confident that preparing a joint presidential statement on the two nations'
commitment to the INF Treaty is a realistic goal. Simultaneously, the technical
issues could be resolved; for this purpose, the joint control commission under
the INF Treaty could resume its work. I am convinced that, with an impetus from
the two presidents, the generals and diplomats would be able to reach
agreement.
We are
living in a troubled world. It is particularly disturbing that relations
between the major nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, have become a
serious source of tensions and a hostage to domestic politics. It is time to
return to sanity. I am sure that even inveterate opponents of normalizing
U.S.-Russian relations will not dare object to the two presidents. These
critics have no arguments on their side, for the very fact that the INF Treaty
has been in effect for 30 years proves that it serves the security interests of
our two countries and of the world.
In any
undertaking, it is important to take the first step. In 1987, the first step in
the difficult but vitally important process of ridding the world of nuclear
weapons was the INF Treaty. Today, we face a dual challenge of preventing the
collapse of the system of nuclear agreements and reversing the downward spiral
in U.S.-Russian relations. It is time to take the first step.
Dr Kate Hudson, general secretary of
CND wrote:
:Yesterday Donald Trump announced
plans to withdraw the US from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
(INF). This is a dangerous and destabilising move with the potential to take us
back to the worst days of the Cold War. It unleashes the possibility, not only
of a spiralling nuclear arms race, but of greater numbers of US nuclear weapons
coming to Europe. At a time when President Trump’s recent new Nuclear Posture
Review commits to ‘usable’ nuclear weapons, and his Defence Strategy ramps up
the conflict with Russia and China, this is not good news.
The reality is that the last time
these missiles came to Europe, they were designed for the US’s nuclear war to
be fought in Europe. Nothing I have heard so far in the ongoing debate over US
withdrawal leads me to think that the situation will be different now.
Signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in
1987, the INF treaty banned ground-launched nuclear missiles with ranges from
500km to 5,500km and led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being
eliminated. It meant cruise missiles were removed from Britain and Pershing,
cruise and SS-20 missiles from continental Europe. Tearing up the INF
Treaty will mark the end of those restraints on nuclear arsenals achieved in
the 1980s. It will open the way for the return of cruise-type missiles to
Europe – and the increased potential for nuclear war on our continent.
In the 1980s, the deployment of
cruise and Pershing marked a massive escalation of the arms race because they
greatly reduced the time it took to hit Soviet cities such as Moscow from bases
in western Europe, without any equivalent siting of state-of-the-art missiles
closer to the population centres of the US. The siting of Soviet SS-20s was
used as a justification for the siting of cruise and Pershing, but they did not
have the capacity to strike the US. It was for the Soviets exactly the kind of
threat that the US had argued it faced from Soviet missiles if they were based
in Cuba.
Since the Cuban Missile
Crisis, it had generally been assumed that the ability of the US and Soviet Union
to annihilate each other many times over meant that no government would be mad
enough to actually start a nuclear war. The prospect of ‘mutual assured
destruction’ was believed to mean that deterrence worked and that meant,
coupled with détente and arms-limitation talks, that popular fear of nuclear
war had receded. Cruise and Pershing missiles changed all that.
The real significance of the new
missiles was that they made feasible the prospect of ‘limited nuclear war’
confined to the European theatre. In fact this was made absolutely clear in a
government publication at the time. Using the same argumentation that Trump
uses to back the development of ‘usable’ nukes, it suggested that faced with
the choice of surrender or all-out nuclear war:
‘Having smaller medium-range nuclear
weapons could give us another choice in those circumstances – allowing us to
bring home to the Russians the appalling risks they would run if they pressed
us further. The aim of using them would be to persuade the Russian leadership –
even at the eleventh hour – to draw back.’[1]
In other words, cruise was to be
used within Europe to avoid the superpowers attacking each other with
long-range missiles! This idea of ‘limiting’ nuclear war to Europe provoked
horror in the countries where it would take place.
We understood that in the 1980s and
we mobilised against it. The INF Treaty was in large part a result of massive
international protest against nuclear escalation in the 1980s, including CND
protests against cruise missiles which mobilised hundreds of thousands of
people. The iconic Greenham peace camp was part of that wave of protest. As a
result of the protests and the Treaty, cruise was removed from Britain and
across Europe, and Greenham was returned to common land.
Our government’s unforgivable
support for Trump’s action cannot go unchallenged. We cannot accept these
missiles back in Britain, to put us on the front line in Trump’s nuclear wars.
Today we must stand resolutely against this return to the nuclear escalation of
the Cold War and CND calls on all peoples once again to reject these moves.
“INF crisis: No
cruise missiles back in Britain,” CND Blog, October 22, 2018; https://cnduk.org/no-cruise-missiles-back-in-britain/
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