No basis for trilateral arms talks, China says

There is no basis for China to participate in trilateral arms control negotiations with the United States and Russia at present, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Tuesday.

At a regular news conference, Geng called on Russia and the US to continue drastically reducing their nuclear weapons in a verifiable, irreversible and legally binding manner, which he said would create conditions for realizing final and full nuclear disarmament.

Representatives from Russia and the US were to meet in Geneva on Wednesday to explore a new accord to limit nuclear arms that could eventually include China, according to Reuters, which cited senior US officials who requested anonymity.

US President Donald Trump has said he would like to see a next generation arms control deal with Russia and China to cover all types of nuclear weapons, according to US media reports.

US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan will lead the US delegation in Geneva, which will include Tim Morrison, a top aide at the White House National Security Council, and representatives from the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Agency.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov will lead the Russian delegation.

Geng said he hopes the negotiations will send a positive message to the world.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between Russia and the United States is set to expire on Aug 2.

The US has said the INF Treaty was already dead because, it contends, Russia had for years violated it, in part by developing and fielding the nuclear-capable SSC-8 groundbased cruise missile.

In February, Washington suspended its participation in the treaty, saying it would quit the deal on August 2 if Russia does not return to compliance.

Moscow has denied the allegation it violated the treaty and accused Washington of breaking the accord, which the US likewise denied.

On July 3, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill that suspends the country’s participation in the treaty. The decree was passed by the Russian parliament last month.

The INF Treaty, which was signed by US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, has been considered a landmark arms control agreement. It bans Russia and the US from possessing, producing or conducting test flights of ground-launched cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The treaty caps the number of deployed warheads at 1,550 for each side.

In an article in Arms Control Today, a monthly magazine on nonproliferation and global security, Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the US-based Arms Control Association, suggested that the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, also known as New START, be extended for five years in order “to provide a foundation for a more ambitious successor agreement”.

“Without New START, there would be no legally binding, verifiable limits on the US or Russian nuclear arsenals for the first time in nearly half a century,” Kimball said.

New START was signed by Russia and the US in 2010 and took effect in 2011. It replaced the 1991 START I treaty, which expired in 2009, and superseded the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which was terminated when New START took effect.

New START limits the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed warheads on 700 deployed delivery vehicles for long-range, strategic nuclear warheads. Both sides have reduced their forces, meeting the mandated limits in February last year. If Moscow and Washington don’t come to an agreement on an extension, the agreement could die in 2021.

Analysts worry about the impact the demise of the INF Treaty would have on arms control, and some says its termination could spark a new arms race, according to Canadian media outlet Global News.

Kimball, of the Arms Control Association, wrote that “if Trump continues to listen to (US National Security Advisor John) Bolton’s advice and allows New START to expire, he will likely become the first president since John Kennedy to fail to conclude at least one agreement with Russia to reduce nuclear dangers, and he will have opened the door to a new and dangerous nuclear arms race”.

Russia does not plan to deploy new weapon systems on the European part of its territory after the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty, unless new US missiles are installed in Europe, the Russian Permanent Mission to NATO announced after a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels on July 5.

“We did confirm that, when planning measures for Russia’s military security within the context of US withdrawal from the INF Treaty, we did not intend to deploy similar missile systems in Europe and other regions, unless short-range missiles are deployed there,” Russia’s announcement said.

Chen Yu, a researcher at the Institute of Eurasian Studies at the Beijing-based China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said there has been a letup in the competition between Russia and the US in recent years in geopolitical hot spots such as Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela.

“If the INF Treaty is allowed to expire, there are more possibilities that the two nuclear powers will come to a conflict accidentally,” Chen said.

“If Russia and the US freed themselves from the treaty, there would be no limitations on developing and deploying new short- and mediumrange missiles. And if the two put a lot of these missiles on the demarcating areas in East and Central Europe between NATO and Russia, Russian missiles would strike the whole of Europe, and US missiles would pose a threat to Russia,” Chen said.

Shen Jiru, a researcher with the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty is aimed at developing medium-range missiles as the country’s strategic attention has extended to the Middle East and Western Pacific, in addition to Europe.

Russia had tried to keep the INF Treaty. In December, by a vote of 46 opposed and 43 in favor, with 78 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly rejected a Russian proposal calling for strengthening Russian-US compliance with the treaty.

Therefore, Shen said, Russia has no choice but to suspend participation in the treaty.

“The treaty has long served as a stabilizer for Europe. Once it is terminated, the consequences are serious,” Shen warned. “There will be a new round of arms race, for example.”

According to a New START declaration in March, Russia deployed 1,461 strategic warheads on 524 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers.

The Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia had approximately 4,490 stockpiled warheads and 2,000 retired warheads as of early 2019.

The US deployed 1,365 strategic nuclear warheads on 656 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers.

The FAS estimates that the US had approximately 3,800 stockpiled warheads and 2,385 retired warheads as of early this year.

No breakthrough was expected on the INF Treaty at the Geneva meeting on Wednesday, Reuters quoted US officials as saying. In addition, the US is not planning to discuss renewal of New START, they said.