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(Bloomberg) – Two years ago, the President of the Republic, Vladimir Putin, was questioned about the usefulness of the 1987 treaty banning Russia and the United States from disposing of medium-range nuclear missiles. The answer, in essence, was no.
This exchange is etched in the memory of Rand Corp.'s political scientist Samuel Charap, not least because Putin began his response by asking if Charap was a spy.
Now that the United States has announced its renunciation of the Mid-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing violations committed by Russia, the incident also casts a skeptical light on the Kremlin's outrageous professions. If hawks on both sides see the treaty as obsolete, it is probably doomed – and this is a worrying prospect for arms control advocates and European governments.
With two of the four major arms control treaties already collapsed and a third to be renewed in 2021, the murder of the INF agreement could tip European security, particularly in the years leading up to the war's easing cold.
At the time, "you had short notice systems and mistrust on both sides," said Tom Plant, formerly a specialist in nuclear warfare design facilities in the UK, and now director of the proliferation and nuclear policy of the Royal United Services Institute, a reservoir. A return to a world without arms control would be "terribly dangerous".
Read more: New reasons to fear a nuclear arms race
He favorably opposed the recent East-West tensions over Ukraine to the 1983 "Able Archer" crisis when, in part because of the recent US deployment of medium-range Pershing missiles in Soviet interpretation of a routine exercise of NATO almost triggered the nuclear war. war. The INF Treaty followed.
Charap says today what is amazing in the recent US announcement is: "why now? And more generally, why in this way? "There does not seem to have been any attempt by Washington to prepare or appease US allies who will be affected," he said.
The US National Security Advisor, John Bolton, said the United States would consult with its allies before withdrawing from the treaty, although there is no doubt about the Trump Government's intention to leave him.
The INF Treaty is unique among arms control agreements in several respects. He was the first to eliminate an entire class of weapons and to establish intrusive verification procedures. But it is also unusual for the people most affected by its adoption and its potential loss – the countries lying between the border of the then Soviet Union and the Atlantic Ocean – not to be signatories. As a result, they have little to say in his destiny.
Corentin Brustlein, Director of the Center for Security Studies at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) in Paris, has not changed. These security concerns – the short-range nuclear missile shootings in Central Europe – have not changed. Once again, he said, the question for the Europeans is: "Why hurry?"
"Build it"
US President Donald Trump has directly raised concerns about the potential of a new era nuclear arms race.
"We have more money than anyone, by far. We will build it, "said Trump after being questioned this week about his willingness to expand the US nuclear arsenal." Until they come back to them. When they do, we'll be there. " all smart and we'll all stop. "
Bolton was in Moscow this week for talks on the subject. Putin is expected to raise him when he meets Trump in Paris on November 11, at a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.
The treaty could only be saved "if Russia dismantled all its material in violation of the treaty and China did the same," Bolton told Kommersant newspaper in Moscow. "I think there's no chance that will happen."
This is probably true, since China is not bound by the treaty and a significant part of its missile arsenal would fall under INF restrictions. The United States said it had lost patience because Russia had broken the rules since 2007 by deploying cruise missiles launched from the ground, within the forbidden limits (500 to 5,500 km). Russia denies the charges and has counter-claims against the United States.
Bolton has been asking for the withdrawal of the United States since 2011, before the US published their allegations in 2014. He feared then that the INF would allow China and other non-signatories to manufacture and to deploy weapons that the United States could not.
Soviet "naïve"
Putin echoed Bolton when he responded to Charap at Valdai's annual conference in 2016. He said the treaty would have value "if other countries followed Russia and the United States." ". He complained that almost all of Russia's neighbors now had banned weapons.
The treaty, Putin said, was approved by a "naive" leadership of the Soviets. It forced the Soviets to eliminate their stock of intermediate-range missiles, while the United States had to keep equivalents launched at sea and in the air without the Soviet Union having developed, creating a "manifest imbalance".
At a joint meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in the Kremlin on Wednesday, Putin said it would be "very dangerous" to lose the INF and New Start nuclear treaties. "There will be more than an arms race." New Start limits Russia and the United States to 1,550 nuclear warheads deployed and, unless extended, expires in 2021. Putin warned that any European country accepting to receive US nuclear missiles would risk retaliatory strike.
Yet Russia may have violated the treaty precisely to provoke the withdrawal of the United States. "As the United States has claimed, Moscow has been working to find solutions to the INF Treaty since 2008, by developing two missiles and deploying a missile that went beyond the limits of the treaty," said Vladimir Frolov. , foreign affairs analyst in Moscow.
Stay or leave
Kori Schake, who served at the Pentagon and the State Department in the administrations of George W. Bush and Obama, said that when it came to the INF treaty, the fact to stay or leave was for a long time a very balanced question.
But Schake also questions the timing and style of the American announcement, which she attributes to the arrival of Bolton at the White House. At a press conference in Moscow, Bolton said he also announced in 2001 the withdrawal of the US from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Schake said it would be logical for the United States to wait to terminate the INF agreement until they have developed missiles to deploy. A hasty withdrawal could also complicate the debate in Germany and other NATO allies on whether to replace their aging Tornado-powered aircraft with more modern American aircraft.
After years of trying to convince the German and French governments of the US-Russia case, the 29-member NATO finally accepted language accusing Moscow of presuming violation of the INF Code. The United States has itself defined a strategy to bring Russia back to compliance earlier this year, before Trump hired Bolton.
It is unclear today which European country would host the missiles that the United States could deploy. Any attempt could create deep transatlantic tensions, recalling the Pershing missile crisis of the 1980s, when the sight of US nuclear missiles in German villages sparked protests.
Even if there is no recovery of the 1980s, the end of the INF Treaty will create friction between the United States and its NATO allies, as they will see in Washington a sacrifice of the interests of European security to improve its own position in Asia, according to Schake. The United States will be "forced into a debate about their willingness to increase risks for Europe in order to manage the rise of China," she said. "This is the way Europeans will think about it, and besides, they are not wrong."
– With the help of Stepan Kravchenko and Ilya Arkhipov.
To contact the reporter on this story: Marc Champion in London at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at [email protected], Alan Crawford
For more articles like this, go to bloomberg.com
© 2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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