INF demise raises concerns of new arms race

Signed in 1987, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia officially ended Aug. 2, 2019. The New START treaty could be the next to go.

First Look

The United States plans to test a new missile in coming weeks that would have been prohibited under a landmark, 32-year-old arms control treaty that the U.S. and Russia ripped up on Friday.

Washington and Moscow walked out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed in 1987, raising fears of a new arms race. The U.S. blamed Moscow for the death of the treaty. It said that for years Moscow has been developing and fielding weapons that violate the treaty and threaten the U.S. and its allies, particularly in Europe.

"Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement released on Friday.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg similarly blamed Russia for what he described as repeated blatant violations of the treaty.

Mr. Stoltenberg said members of the 29-nation alliance "regret that Russia showed no willingness and took no steps to comply with its international obligations."

But the U.S. also sees an upside to exiting the treaty. Washington has complained for years that the arms control playing field was unfair. U.S. officials argued that not only was Russia violating the treaty and developing prohibited weapons, but that China also was making similar non-compliant weapons, leaving the U.S. alone in complying with the aging arms control pact.

Now, the U.S. is free to develop weapons systems that were previously banned. The U.S. is planning a test flight of such a weapon in coming weeks, according to a senior administration official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the weapons development and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

The current Pentagon budget includes $48 million for research on potential military responses to the Russian violations of the INF treaty, but the options do not include a nuclear missile.

The official downplayed the test and said it was not meant as a provocation against Russia. Because the U.S. adhered to the treaty for 32 years, the U.S. is "years away" from effectively deploying weapons previously banned under the agreement, the official said Thursday.

Arms control advocates still worry that America's exit from the INF treaty will lead the two nations to also scrap the larger New START treaty, which expires in early 2021.

"Pulling out of this treaty leaves New START as the only bilateral nuclear arms agreement between the U.S. and Russia," said physicist David Wright, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. If President Donald Trump "pulls out of that treaty as well or allows it to lapse, it will be the first time since 1972 that the two countries will be operating without any mutual constraints on their nuclear forces."

Mr. Trump hasn't committed to extending or replacing New START, which beginning in 2018 imposed limits on the number of U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear warheads and launchers. Mr. Trump has called New START "just another bad deal" made by the Obama administration, and Mr. Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, said in June that it's unlikely the administration will agree to extend the treaty for five years, which could be done without legislative action in either capital.

The Trump administration thinks talks about extending New START are premature. The administration claims that with China's growing arsenal of nuclear warheads, Beijing can no longer be excluded from nuclear arms control agreements. Mr. Trump has expressed a desire to negotiate a trilateral arms control deal signed by the U.S., Russia, and China.

"We'll see what happens," Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday. "I will say Russia would like to do something on a nuclear treaty and that's OK with me. They'd like to do something and so would I."

The administration official said the U.S. has had regular discussions with the Russians and Chinese about the possibility of a three-way arms control agreement. Mr. Trump wants the agreement to address not just intermediate-range weapons, but "all nuclear weapons," the official said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov urged the U.S. to observe a moratorium in using intermediate-range weapons.

"We invited the U.S. and other NATO countries to assess the possibility of declaring the same moratorium on deploying intermediate-range and shorter-range equipment as we have, the same moratorium Vladimir Putin declared, saying that Russia will refrain from deploying these systems when we acquire them unless the American equipment is deployed in certain regions," he said in an interview with state news agency Tass.

European leaders are expected to react to Friday's demise of the INF with disappointment and concern.

"With the end of the INF treaty, a bit of security in Europe is being lost," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said this week. "Now we call all the more on Russia and the U.S. to preserve the New START treaty as a cornerstone of worldwide arms control.

"Nuclear powers such as China must also face up to their responsibility on arms control – they have more weight in the world than at the time of the Cold War."

Over its lifetime, the 1987 INF treaty led to the elimination of 2,692 U.S. and Soviet Union nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles. Until its demise, the treaty banned land-based missiles with a range between 310 to 3,410 miles.

Mr. Pompeo said the U.S. first raised its concerns that Russia was violating the treaty in 2013 during the Obama administration. He said the U.S. tried for six years to prod Russia back into compliance.

In February, Mr. Trump determined that Moscow was in material breach of the treaty and the U.S. suspended its own obligations under the agreement. That started a six-month clock to get Russia back into compliance – time that ran out on Friday.

"As it has for many years, Russia chose to keep its non-compliant missile rather than going back into compliance with its treaty obligations," Mr. Pompeo said. "The United States will not remain party to a treaty that is deliberately violated by Russia."

This story was reported by The Associated Press. Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.