‘Getting tough’ over a missile pact with Russia could weaken America
Donald Trump is not the first American president to accuse Russia of violating the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. President Barack Obama did so four years ago. But if, in response to the violations, Trump is unilaterally withdrawing from the pact — which was the message his national security adviser, John Bolton, gave President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Moscow on Tuesday — it could end up only helping Russia strategically and hurting American security.
A milestone in closing out the Cold War, the INF, signed in 1987, was a result of Ronald Reagan’s meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, a year earlier. The treaty banned all American and Soviet missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,417 miles). The United States and the Soviet Union destroyed 2,692 missiles and launchers, which blunted fierce resistance in Europe to the deployment of U.S. missiles on the continent.
But much has changed since, and on the face of it, junking the treaty might seem reasonable. In 2014, the Obama administration accused Russia of violating the treaty by testing and deploying a cruise missile of illegal range. That’s the SSC-8 that the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, famously warned this month the United States might need to “take out.” (Russia denies the missile violates the INF and says it is the United States that violated the treaty.)
At the same time, China, unconstrained by any treaty, has rapidly expanded its missile forces, and 95 percent of the weapons are in the INF range.
So if Russia and China are barreling ahead with medium-range missiles, couldn’t the United States? “You can’t play that game on me,” Trump said Monday, declaring that he was prepared to outspend Russia and China on nuclear weapons “until people come to their senses.”
One reason is that in Europe, American defenses against Russia are largely air- and sea-based, and fully in keeping with the treaty. The United States has no similar missile available to counter Russia’s SSC-8, and if it did, it would be hard-put to find a European ally willing to host it.
But the United States does have many other weapons with which to defend itself and its allies, and at any rate, the Russian missiles, said to be located far from the European border, do not affect the military balance on the continent, experts say.
So ripping up the INF would let Russia openly build up its land-based arsenal as much as it wants, far beyond what it has done while pretending to abide by the treaty. If the United States follows through on the president’s threat of a costly buildup, Russia can loudly blame America for starting a new arms race, and America will be further distanced from its allies.
The Russian propaganda assault has already begun, as has a furious reaction in Europe, which would bear the brunt of a Russian buildup. President Emmanuel Macron of France telephoned Trump to argue against “any hasty unilateral decisions,” while the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, declared, “We are not ready to set off a new arms race.”
The United States faces a similar situation with China. Naval and air power are at the core of the U.S. forces in the Western Pacific, and that’s likely to remain the case for some time. For now, Japan and every other ally in Asia would most likely oppose hosting nuclear-armed land-based missiles.
So given all that, even if INF is fraying, abandoning it makes no sense.
Washington should press hard to persuade Russia to reverse course and go back into compliance; European allies should also more forcefully confront Putin about his new missiles. Prodded by the Trump administration’s plans, Maas has already declared that Germany will urge NATO to force Russian compliance with the INF. At the same time, the United States should release as much evidence as it can of Russian deployments and meet the Russian challenge by redeploying treaty-compliant land, sea and air arsenals.
None of that is likely to resonate with Trump, who has made clear he is against any agreements that predate his administration, or the hawkish Bolton, who is constitutionally averse to arms controls.
But on something with such grave potential consequences, Congress should join America’s allies and the world’s arms-control experts to impress on Trump that he is on a dangerous track that will further erode American leadership in curbing the world’s most lethal weapons.