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Donald Trump said that the United States was planning to withdraw from the INF's Nuclear Control Treaty of 1987, which is recognized by everyone as Russia has been violating for a decade. Yet, one way or another, it is said that this behavior is imprudent Donald Trump? Welcome to the High Arms Control Church in which treaties are sacrosanct, regardless of the violations committed.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty bans ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers and is an artifact of the end of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan and NATO deployed medium-range missiles in Europe in the early 1980s to counter Soviet deployments. After years of strained negotiations, Mikhail Gorbachev finally accepted the modest INF agreement on US conditions that exchanged US missiles for Russia. This has been hailed as a diplomatic triumph.
Yet when the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union collapsed over the next few years, control of nuclear weapons became less important. What is the key point. Arms control has not made the world safer; the fall of the Soviet Union did that. Arms control tends to run between countries in difficulty, while it fails with adversaries who can not be trusted.
Enter Vladimir Putin, who has been developing a new medium-range cruise missile since the mid-2000s. The United States believes that Moscow tested the new missile in 2008, but the Obama administration hid this information in the Senate when debated and ratified the New Start Treaty with Mr Putin in 2010.
The Obama administration released this news for the first time in 2014, and the state department has found every year the non-compliance by Russia. Moscow has started deploying its new missiles by the end of 2016. This adds to a new ballistic missile that Russia has tested and which could conform to the INF standard only because it can go a little bit further. more than 5,500 kilometers.
The question was whether the United States would do anything about it. The diplomatic impulse is to remain silent about violations and to work behind the scenes to push an adversary to comply, but this has clearly not worked. Putin wants the new missiles to be a demonstration of Russian power and a means of pressure on Europe in a conflict. Why would he abandon them if the United States and Europe turned away?
As he so often does, Mr. Trump has broken this reverie by showing that non-compliance would have a cost. By withdrawing from the agreement, the United States would be free to develop a missile of comparable scope to counter the Soviet threat. This would restore a mutual deterrent to the European theater. It also shows that Putin can not use the violation of one treaty to induce Trump to sign another, which was the hope expressed by Russia this summer at the Helsinki fiasco summit.
The withdrawal also recognizes the emerging reality of other global nuclear threats. China is not a party to INF and has developed its own medium-range missiles that threaten US and Pacific bases deployments. The United States should not tie its hands against China to comply with a 30-year-old treaty that only the United States respects.
You think that arms inspectors, in particular, would understand that doing nothing against violations undermines the validity of new arms agreements. One of the reasons the Obama administration finally publicly announced Russia's INF violations was to show the Senate that it would take seriously the potential violations of the Iranian nuclear deal. In retreating from the INF, Mr. Trump sends a similar message with more courage to Iran and North Korea.
However, the immediate reaction to Mr. Trump's decision was to blame him for daring to recognize the nuclear reality. "The world does not need a new arms race that would not benefit anyone, but would instead create even more instability," said a statement from the European Commission. But instability is caused by Putin and a new "arms race" will not stop simply because the West chooses not to participate.
At least, the British have shown tougher things, Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, noting that "it is Russia that is in breach and it is Russia that needs to put the money on the table. order in his affairs ".
The Senate Democrats also criticize Mr. Trump, although it is the same worthy who have spent two years to assert that the American president is a secret agent of Putin. Once again, Mr Trump seems to be adopting a tougher policy in response to the Russian aggression that Barack Obama has never adopted.
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