It is a sign of how wacko things hve gotten that the truly most important event of the past week has simply beeen buried in the news by all the juffing and puffing over Trump's shutdown ending and these reveleations about VA Governor Northam. This would be decidion by the US on Feb. 1 to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) treaty with Russia, followed by Russia's doing so as well shortly thereafter. This is both historic and very serious, far more so than Trump's wall or Northam's photographs.
The treaty was signed in 1987 between then US President Reagan and then Soviet President Gorbachev, culminateing several years of negotiations. It led to the destruction of around 36oo short and intermediate range nuclear missiles, including most importantly all of those in Europe that threatened the potential outbreak of a war on that continent between NATO and the USSR.. It was one of the most important moments on the way to bringing about the end of the end of the Cold War, and indeed it is unfortunately accurate to describe the ending of this treaty as the end of that end.
I have seen a number of people speculating that this action somhow shows Trump "standing up" to V.V. Putin, being a tough guy and all that. But the nearly immediate acceptance with virtually no complaint by Putin of this move suggests otherwise. US and also western European officials have argued that Russia has been in effective violation of the INF since 2014 when it developed a new cruise missile, 97M925, that can be easily modified to make fly in the forbidden distance ranges. Russian leaders have arruged that they were not in violation given that this missile alsso had as its main ranges ones not in violation and none violating the lmits had been deployed that they were not in violation. Putting such missiles with the violating ranges in deployment would directly threaten western Europe. As it is, Putin is in a position now to rapidly deploy them in a way to threaten western Europe while the US has nothing to put in place to reply to this. So, Putin gets to gain a major military edge and threaten the western Europeans while getting to blame Trump for having ended the treaty by with drawing and allowing him to do this. The Europeans in question had opposed Trump ending the treaty, with indeed this probably being one of those things Merkel was trying to maintain influence with Trump over by not complaining too loudly about the US pressuring German companies to stop dealing with Iran.
Another factor in this matter emphasized by US leaders is that China was never a part of the agreement, and I gather has been developing such intermediate range missiles. But those were unlikely to be deployed in Europe, where the removal of such missiles 32 years ago was a ttriumphant movement towards the reduction of mutual tensions and towards peace.
All the way around, there is nothing good at all about this development, and it most definitely soes not show Trump doing something that is against the interests or desires of V.V. Putin. The outcome may well be a new arms race, which will please the military-industrial compleses in both the US and Russia, and maybe China as well. No, this is not a good development at all.
Barkley Rosser
16 comments:
I have seen a number of people speculating that this action somehow shows Trump "standing up" to V.V. Putin, being a tough guy and all that. But the nearly immediate acceptance with virtually no complaint by Putin of this move suggests otherwise....
[ Of course, President Putin complained strongly from the time President Trump announced that we were preparing to leave the treaty. Of course Putin complained. What an unfortunate, incorrect assertion you have made. ]
Sorry, Anonymous, you do not have much of a leg to stand on. All of the pervious complaints by the Russian leaders has taken the form of them denying that they are in violation of the treaty, which even the Europeans accept that they are. The real bottom line is to compare Russian reaction to this treaty withdrawal and their reaction to the US withdrawing from the Iran JCPOA. Russia has not withdrawn from the latter, but withdrew from INF with barely a whisper.
Oh, I have seen in some other sources that one major motivation of the Russians to develop these missiles is to counter China, which has been developing them. In any case, Putin seems to have been just fine with exiting the treaty with no complaints. I think my story largely holds.
The real bottom line is to compare Russian reaction to this treaty withdrawal and their reaction to the US withdrawing from the Iran JCPOA. Russia has not withdrawn from the latter, but withdrew from INF with barely a whisper....
[ Right, the United States has decided to threaten Russia with nuclear armed missiles and Russia should do nothing in response... Russia of course wanted the INF to continue.
As for the China comments they are of course bizarre, but this is a time in the US of cultivating fear of and disdain for China.
This all really marks a return to Cold War thinking. ]
Anonymous,
I think you are somewhat off here. Trump threatened Russia with nuclear armed missiles when? there is no current plan to move any nuclear missiles to Europe or anywhere else near Russia that I am aware of. And the US is way behind in actually way behind Russia in developing ne intermediate range missiles, barely in the R&D phase, all that having been basically shut down for, well, nearly 32 years.
OTOH, Russia has these missiles actually produced that can with the flip of a few switches be turned into fully operational and deployable intermediate range nuclear missiles. Sorry, but it is Russia that has been doing the threatening in this area, if somewhat quietly so and officially denying that they are. But then when Putin grabbed Crimea and US and western European leaders complained, one of Putin's buddies starting publicly talking about how Russia could turn New York City into "radioactive dust," the first time since the end of the Cold War that anybody on either side talked like that. If you do not remember that, go check it out. No, A., frankly it has been the Russians making threatening noises, not the US.
Regarding the Chinese connection, I do not know why you are so skeptical. Actually, this was the first I had heard that dealing with China might be main reason Putin was building these missiles, but for what it is worth, the story was in the Guardian, which has a fair amount of credibility with me, at least. But I am not going to go to the mat on this one as indeed I have only just now heard about this.
The outcome may well be a new arms race,
You might want to make that "arms races" (plural). Given Trump's lukewarm ambivalence about NATO (and here I'm being generous), you could certainly understand why a country like Poland might want to get busy with their own intermediate nuke program. Not something they'd want to advertise, but Poland surely has the technical know-how sufficient to build their own nuclear deterrent. That's got disaster written all over it, but given 300 years of Polish and Russian history, you could understand why they might want to go down this route. Another arms race would be with the US development of an intermediate deterrent missile. That's high risk in the short run, but might be a good idea in the longer run just as the deployment of the Pershing II missiles elevated risk in the short run, but almost certainly was the key factor in the successful negotiation of the 1987 INF treaty.
So here we are. We've got a corrupt, lazy ignoramus in the WH; a corrupt, imperialist czar wannabee in the Kremlin; insecure NATO partners; and hair trigger nukes coupled with a compromised cybersecurity system.
Barkley,
there is no current plan to move any nuclear missiles to Europe or anywhere else near Russia that I am aware of.
Right. The only viable deterrence response would be to station a significant number of US troops along NATO's periphery, similar to the "trip wire" role that the Berlin brigade served during the Cold War. Their purpose was to die in sufficient numbers such that it guaranteed a US response.
all that having been basically shut down for, well, nearly 32 years.
And that technology was highly specialized. Back in the 1990s one of the BRACs called for shutting down Pueblo Army Depot. So the skilled workers quit and found jobs ASAP, as would be expected. The problem was that some of those skilled workers who quit were also the only folks in the world who had the technical expertise and training to disarm and disassemble the Pershing II missiles. It wasn't until well into the BRAC process that someone realized we were under a treaty requirement, so the government had to "persuade" those workers to quit their new jobs and go back to their old jobs at the depot. A typical Army cluster****.
Actually, Russia has accused the U.S, of violating the INF, since there are anti-missile systems installed near Russia and the suare boxes from which they would be fired are not verifiable and could contain anything. Further it was the U.S. that unilaterally abrogated the ABM treaty and there has been recurrent talk and now even policy actions for the U.S. to "modernize" their nuclear weapons, including the development of "low yield" tactical nukes which would make the threshold for use even lower, especially when combined with the U.S. refusal to declare a new first use policy. Obama and Putin had agreed to reduce currently deployed nukes to 1200 during the "reset" that failed, but thus far neither side has met that commitment. And Putin has been warning that Russia would have to take measures to restore the balance of deterrence at least since the Munich security conference in 2007, Distaste for Putin and Trump is no excuse for inaccurate reporting on these issues.
It is truw that the US withdrew from the ABM treaty to reasonable criticism by the Russians.
As far as my reading goes, Mr. Halasz is completely right. I will look for the NYT articles I have read.
john.c.halasz,
While it's true that the US did withdraw from the ABM treaty, and it's true that Putin has used that as an excuse to develop new missiles, I don't see how that is directly related to the INF issue. For one thing, we withdrew from that treaty 17 years ago. But the ABM treaty was really about intercontinental strategic weapons, not theater weapons covered by the INF. Now it is true that the US has (unwisely) flirted with theater defense systems based on some crazy concerns about Iran launching a rogue state attack on Bulgaria or wherever, but it's hard to see how that represents a first strike threat against Russia. Withdrawing from the ABM and building a strategic defense around both US cities and US ICBM silos would be a destabilizing threat, but that's all at the strategic level and not the theater level.
2slugbaits:
You missed two points I made. 1) the Russians have objected to the square box missiles in Poland or Romania because it is impossible to verify whether they contain ant-missiles or perhaps intermediate nukes. 2) the U.S. has explicitly committed to developing low yield nukes, implying that they would be more usable, (even in response to non-nuke attacks such as cyber warfare). The latter point is of grave concern not just to Russia. Pitin has publicly been warning about those concerns at least since 2007 and promised to respond to restore a balance of deterrence, if they were not addressed. Which he has, unveiling last year a number of new weapons systems (some of which might just be vaporware, but bluffing has alawys been a part of the nuke game). The balance of aggressiveness here is not just or even mostly on the Russian side. And the unilateral withdrawal from INF, without pursuing a diplomatic route and perhaps updating an old treaty to address new concerns (since no one is really expecting a massive Warsaw Pact invasion through the Fulda gap anymore)might just be a case of over-aggressiveness.
John,
Here is the difference. These earlier actions by the US clearly were opposed by Russia (Putin in particular). I do not see PUtin at all opposing the end of the INF treaty, indeed seems to welcoem it with his rapid exit from it also after Trump did so. Those earlier matters involved Putin complaining at length about US actions. Again, the most serious of those and the least provoked with the withdrawal from the ABM treaty by Bush, which was the highest priority of his national defnse team when he came into office, generally dismissing the concerns expressed by their predecessors about al Qaeda, with all that being viewed by them as just annoying distractions from this all-important effort to end the ABM treaty, which they did.
BTW, John, if you want to argue that the US removing from the ABM treaty was the real beginning of the end of the end of the Cold War, I recognize the case can be made. But, as 2Slugbaits notes, that and the other matters involved primarily strategic issues, whereas ending the INF treaty gets into an entirely different area.
Of course the reports also note that we have the matter of renewing New Start coming up, which may not happen. That also would not be a good thing, although I am not sure what PUtin's views on that one are. Trump may not like it as he probably sees it as being something Obama was for, and we know how he views anything Obama did internationally, see the JCPOA over Iran.
It's a crazy world where we even have to debate about building weapons that are too horrible to use.
Jerry Brown,
Yes, it is a crazy world, but it's looking more and more like we'll have to relearn the language of "throw weight" and "y^(2/3)" and argue about Paul Nitze stuff. Worst of all, Frank Gaffney will be showing up on Fox Noise.
john.c.halasz,
I don't think Putin is really worried about the US launching a first strike from Poland. I'm pretty sure he'd much rather have any offensive missiles in Poland under US control than Polish control. Putin's objective is and always has been to detach the former Warsaw Pact countries from NATO. Same with Turkey. That's been the objective of every Russian czar for centuries. Reintroducing aggressive theater weapons is just another way to remind eastern European countries of historical realities. As Napoleon once said, if you want to understand a man, learn what concerned him when he was a young man. When Putin was a young man he was stationed in Dresden and witnessed what he regarded as the greatest disaster in history.
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