Another treaty bites the dust

The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty died last Friday, but there won’t be many mourners. There should be. The problem the treaty was intended to solve, back when United States President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed it in 1987, was ‘‘warning time’’.

Bombers would take many hours to get from Russia to America or vice versa and even intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMS) would take 30-35 minutes. That would at least give the commanders of nuclear forces on the side that didn’t launch the surprise attack enough time to order a retaliatory strike before they died.

Intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMS) based in Europe could reach the other side’s capitals, command centres, airfields and missile launchers in 10 minutes: barely time to tuck your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye, as they used to say.

The IRBMS put everything on a hair-trigger. You had maybe five minutes to decide if you trusted the data from your radars or your satellite surveillance before you had to decide whether to launch your nuclear counter-strike. Which makes it all the weirder that the Russians took the lead in introducing IRBMS to Europe. They were called SS20S and they put the capitals of Nato’s European members on 10 minutes’ notice of extinction. However, Moscow would also have only 10 minutes’ warning once the US developed its own IRBMS – called the Pershing IIS – and based them in Europe.

But the US is not in Europe and only the Soviet Union’s ICBMS could reach it. No matter what happened with IRBMS in Europe, the US would still have a half-hour-plus warning time. The Russians were foolish to start this particular bit of the arms race. By the mid-1980s the Russians were looking for a way out and Reagan, who hated nuclear weapons, was happy to help. He and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, banning all land-based ballistic missiles with ‘‘intermediate range’’ of 500-5500 kilometres.

The treaty was the first major sign that the Cold War was ending: 2700 missiles were destroyed in the following two years and everybody lived happily ever after. Sort of. So why have they now just let the treaty die? The reason is China. All the arms control treaties of the late 20th century were made when the US and the Soviet Union were the only players who counted. Now, China counts too.

The sane answer is simply to deal the Chinese in. Beijing doesn’t want to live with 10 minutes’ warning time either. But there are people in Washington, and no doubt in Moscow, who would love to have the option of a no-warning disarming strike on Beijing. You have to kill the treaty to achieve that, because you would need to put landbased intermediate-range ballistic missiles on the ground in Asia. But those people have won the argument, because nobody else cares enough.

Former US Secretary of State George Shultz, who negotiated the treaty, told the Voice of America recently: ‘‘When something like the INF goes down the drain almost like nothing, it shows you the degree to which people have forgotten the power of these weapons. One day it’ll be too late.’’

It’s 30 years since the Cold War ended and the insiders in the American and Russian defence establishments who are letting the treaty die are betraying our trust. New weapons, new strategies, new threats are the building blocks of their careers, and they have forgotten to be afraid of nuclear war. So don’t blame Donald Trump, John Bolton or Vladimir Putin, who are only doing their usual belligerent shtick. Blame the careerists, who should know better.