The announcement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the United States is suspending its participation in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty – and will probably withdraw from the treaty in six months – is a rash, dangerous and counterproductive decision which could well lead to a new arms race in Europe.

Pompeo cited Russian noncompliance with the treaty for Washington’s withdrawal, but the decision is actually a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin who never liked the accord and is now free to ignore it. Not surprisingly, after Pompeo’s declaration Russia followed suit and announced that it too would not be adhering to the treaty.

The departure by the US from yet another treaty has only served to weaken its global leadership, make it a less reliable international partner and make the world a far less stable and safe place.  It also shows President Donald Trump’s contempt for multilateralism and the strong influence of his hawkish national security advisor, John Bolton, who has made no secret of his hostility to arms control agreements.

What exactly is the INF Treaty and why was it such a landmark deal? The 1987 treaty signed by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev prohibits Washington and Moscow from testing and deploying all ground-based cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500km.

The treaty eliminated an entire category of nuclear weapons and led to the destruction of 2,692 short, medium and intermediate range missiles by its implementation deadline of June 1, 1991. In simpler terms, the treaty got rid of US and Soviet missiles which were placed within range of European capitals and marked the start of the end of the Cold War.

To be fair, the US has been claiming that Russia was not adhering to the INF Treaty since 2014. The violation centres on a Russian 9M729 SSC-8 land-based cruise missile which the Americans say can carry nuclear and conventional warheads, is fired from a mobile launcher and has been tested at a range prohibited by the treaty. Washington believes the missiles, located in western and central Russia, are intended to intimidate Europe, especially former Warsaw Pact countries now aligned with the West.

Mr Trump is justified in expressing concern about Russia’s noncompliance with the treaty, but abandoning the deal is not the right way of dealing with this problem. In a nutshell, if the law is not being adhered to, then the law needs to be enforced, not abolished. By officially abandoning the treaty Washington has ensured that Russia no longer needs to defend its position vis-à-vis its alleged violations, and it has placed itself in a position to be blamed for the collapse of the INF, rather than Russia.

Every American President from John Kennedy to Barack Obama successfully negotiated an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union or Russia

It would have been better had the US focused on ensuring that the treaty is respected; there are various ways of doing this, such as through sanctions, a genuine dialogue between the two sides and mutual inspections – after all Moscow is claiming that the US missile defence launch system in Europe violates the INF, as it could also be used to launch missiles (most independent experts do not agree that this is the case).

There is also another way to pressure Russia to adhere to the agreement. James Miller, Barack Obama’s Under Secretary of Defence from 2012 to 2014 has suggested that the US should develop, or threaten to develop, sea-launched cruise missiles that carry nuclear weapons as a way of pressuring Moscow to negotiate a way of saving, or improving, the accord for both sides. One should keep in mind that the INF Treaty doesn’t prohibit the US from fielding and testing cruise missiles that can be shot from planes, ships, or submarines – only land.

It is important to acknowledge that every American President from John Kennedy to Obama successfully negotiated an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union or Russia. Over that period a whole range of treaties limiting nuclear testing and nuclear weapons were agreed to and consequently, Russia and the US, which stockpile the great majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, reduced their combined total of nuclear warheads from roughly 63,000 in 1986 to about 8,100 today, (although it has to be pointed out that some of today’s nuclear weapons are about 300 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atom bomb).

The collapse of the INF Treaty would be a step away from the progress made over all these years towards eliminating as many nuclear weapons as possible.  George Shultz (President Reagan’s Secretary of State) and Gorbachev wrote recently in The Washington Post: “Abandoning the INF Treaty would be a step towards a new arms race, undermining strategic stability and increasing the threat of miscalculation or technical failure leading to an immensely destructive war.”

Some analysts believe Trump wants to abandon the INF Treaty to be able to deploy these type of medium-range missiles in Asia and confront China, which is not part of the treaty and which has no restrictions on its missile development. The answer to that concern, however, is not to discard a treaty which has made Europe safer, but to open negotiations with China aimed at encouraging them to join the treaty. Of course, such talks would have to be conducted in a constructive manner and in a spirit of respect and genuine dialogue – hardly the description of US-China relations at the moment.

Arms control agreements are certainly not perfect, and in an ideal world we would have no nuclear weapons, but such accords make war less likely and have been used to manage the nuclear arms build-up over the years. It would be a tragedy to abandon them and hopefully both the US Congress and Washington’s Nato allies will exert pressure on the Trump administration to think twice before taking such a huge leap into the dark.

A case in point is the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction) Treaty, signed between the US and Russia in 2010, entered into force in 2011 and which expires in 2021. Under the treaty, the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers are being reduced by half, and the accord also includes a new inspection regime and data exchanges.

According to media reports, during President Trump’s first telephone call with President Putin in February 2017, the Russian leader asked about extending New START, to which Trump responded by attacking the treaty, claiming it favoured Russia and was “one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration”.

I get the feeling that Trump will be reluctant to extend the New START Treaty simply because it was nego-tiated by President Barack Obama, not because he understands what it’s all about, which is sadly so characteristic of his administration.

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