Trump: U.S. will exit ’87 Russia arms pact
Treaty bans midrange nuke cruise missiles
ELKO, Nevada — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will exit an arms-control agreement that the United States signed with the former Soviet Union, saying that Russia is violating the pact and it’s preventing the U.S. from developing new weapons.
The U.S. has been warning Russia that it could resort to strong countermeasures unless Moscow complies with international commitments to arms reduction under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
The 1987 pact, which helps protect the security of the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Far East, prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying ground launched cruise missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,400 miles.
“Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years,” Trump said after a rally in Elko, Nev. “And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons, and we’re not allowed to.”
“We’re going to terminate the agreement,” Trump said.
The agreement has constrained the U.S. from developing new weapons, but America will begin developing them unless Russia and China agree not to possess or
develop the weapons, Trump said. China is not currently a party in the pact.
“We’ll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let’s really get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it, and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable,” he said.
National security adviser John Bolton was headed Saturday to Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.
His first stop is Moscow, where he’ll meet with Russian leaders, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, as a follow-up to Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July.
Bolton’s visit comes at a time when Moscow-Washington relations remain frosty over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria, and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race and the coming U.S. midterm elections.
There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin or the Russian Foreign Ministry on Trump’s announcement.
Trump didn’t provide details about violations, but in 2017, White House national security officials said Russia had deployed a cruise missile in violation of the treaty.
Earlier, President Barack Obama’s administration accused the Russians of violating the pact by developing and testing a prohibited cruise missile. Russia has repeatedly denied that it has violated the treaty and has accused the United States of not being in compliance.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers earlier this month discussed concerns that Russia was developing a medium-range ballistic missile. The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, has said Russia’s noncompliance would compel the U.S. to match its capabilities to protect the interests of the U.S. and European allies.
NATO has credited the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with playing a crucial role in ensuring security for 30 years by ending the proliferation of groundlaunched intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has previously suggested that a Trump administration proposal to add a sea-launched cruise missile to America’s nuclear arsenal could provide the U.S. with leverage to persuade Russia to get back in line on the arms treaty.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in February that his country would consider using nuclear weapons only in response to an attack involving nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or in response to a non-nuclear assault that endangered the survival of the Russian nation.
“We are slowly slipping back to the situation of cold war as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, with quite similar consequences, but now it could be worse because Putin belongs to a generation that had no war under its belt,” said Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent Russian political analyst. “These people aren’t as much fearful of a war as people of Brezhnev’s epoch. They think if they threaten the West properly, it gets scared.”
Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union from 1964-82.
Trump’s decision could be controversial with European allies and others who see value in the treaty, said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who focuses on nuclear arms control.
“Once the United States withdraws from the treaty, there is no reason for Russia to even pretend it is observing the limits,” he wrote in a post on the organization’s website. “Moscow will be free to deploy the 9M729 cruise missile, and an intermediate-range ballistic missile if it wants, without any restraint.”
U.S. officials have previously alleged that Russia violated the treaty by deliberately deploying a land-based cruise missile to pose a threat to NATO. Russia has claimed that U.S. missile defenses violate the pact.
In the past, the Obama administration worked to persuade Moscow to respect the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty but made little progress.
“If they get smart and if others get smart and they say let’s not develop these horrible nuclear weapons, I would be extremely happy with that, but as long as somebody’s violating the agreement, we’re not going to be the only ones to adhere to it,” Trump said.