Right Problem, Wrong Solution

1 February 2019

 

Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Pompeo Says US Will Leave INF Treaty

 

The US will withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia in six months according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. This follows the failure of talks held to save the agreement. At the core of the trouble is the Russian SSC-8 ground-launched nuclear missiles. The Russians are violating the agreement with these weapons to be sure. Withdrawing from the treaty, though, is not the way forward.

A November 2018 DNI statement says, "Russia initially flight tested the 9M729 -- a ground based missile -- to distances well over 500 kilometers (km) from a fixed launcher. Russia then tested the same missile at ranges below 500km from a mobile launcher. By putting the two types of tests together, Russia was able to develop a missile that flies to the intermediate ranges prohibited by the INF Treaty and launches from a ground-mobile platform."

In October, before the DNI statement came out, President Trump said, "We're the ones that have stayed in the agreement, and we've honored the agreement. But Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out."

The American administration gave the Russians 60 days to return to compliance with the INF deal that dates from the 1980s. That has not happened, and therefore, the US is withdrawing from the agreement in 6 months.

The White House seems to believe that negotiations are about America doing what it wants while other parties acquiesce. This is how one goes broke running casinos. Mr. Putin responded. "Now it seems our American partners believe that the situation has changed so much that the United States must also have such a weapon. What's our response? It's simple: in that case we will also do this."

Russian cheating on an agreement, of course, is not acceptable. Yet, the question is whether canceling the treaty altogether is the correct response. If Russia is not going to be bound by any terms at all, it hardly makes America and its NATO allies any safer. The US will be able to build its own intermediate arsenal, and Mutually Assured Destruction will take over. Or at least, that's what game theory says.

In truth, the abandonment of the INF will have a much more significant impact. It will mark an escalation in the Second Cold War. While Mr. Trump's supporters will argue that this proves he is not in Vladimir Putin's pocket, one must ask whether the scrapping of the INF treaty under such circumstances is a victory for Mr. Putin. First off, the Americans are withdrawing first. That is always a PR loss for the quitting party.

Mr. Putin can honestly say he was prepared to stay at the negotiating table for as long as it took and that it was Mr. Trump who decided to end the treaty. Secondly, the purpose of the INF in the 1980s was to allay the fears of the Europeans that the US would abandon them in the event of war with the USSR. Intermediate-range weapons can hit London, Paris and Berlin, but not Washington, New York and Boston. If those weapons are allowed in the absence of a treaty, a wedge will exist between the US and Europe. That is exactly what Mr. Putin wants to see.

There are six months to save the deal, and perhaps, this is merely a ploy by the Trump administration to get the Russians to return to compliance. That presupposes the Russians want to comply. The Russians have no interest in more US weapons in Europe, but they may well be relying on the anti-nuclear, anti-elite movements in Europe to keep Yankee nukes out. If that happens, the Russians will definitely have won.

In short, withdrawing is the wrong response to Russian cheating on the INF treaty, but the president and his team are not the high-quality individuals who would understand that.


© Copyright 2019 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.


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