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Mostrando postagens com marcador armas nucleares. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador armas nucleares. Mostrar todas as postagens

sábado, 15 de fevereiro de 2020

Hiroshima, 75 anos: reflexões sobre o papel da arma atômica - G. John Ikenberry (Princeton)

Um debate sobre o significado do primeiro, e quase único – ocorreu outro, pouco depois, sobre Nagasaki – bombardeio atômico no contexto do cenário internacional, da época e depois.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/age-hiroshima-nuclear-revolution-75th-anniversary-atomic-bombings?emci=1dfdf53c-494f-ea11-a94c-00155d039e74&emdi=2490c82a-514f-ea11-a94c-00155d039e74&ceid=36813

The Age of Hiroshima: The Nuclear Revolution on the 75th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings 


Video & key quotes

“There is a diffuse effort to blend the history and Hiroshima’s legacy into social movements, and to leverage, and remind, and have all of that feed into our politics and diplomacy,” observes G. John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

On August 6, 1945, in the waning days of World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The city’s destruction stands as a powerful symbol of nuclear annihilation, but it has also shaped how we think about war and peace, the past and the present, and science and ethics. The Age of Hiroshima, published by Princeton University Press in January 2020, traces these complex legacies, exploring how the meanings of Hiroshima have reverberated across the decades and around the world.
Age of Hiroshima editors Michael Gordin and John G. Ikenberry, as well as contributor Alex Wellerstein, will discuss how the bombing of Hiroshima gave rise to new conceptions of our world and its precarious interconnectedness, and how we continue to live in its dangerous shadow today. Toshihiro Higuchi and Jessica Mathews, in commenting on the volume, will offer their own perspectives on Hiroshima as an historical event and a cultural phenomenon.

Selected Quotes

Michael Gordin, Wilson Center Fellow and Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Princeton University
“The biggest absence…is we still have no really good idea why we haven’t had nuclear war since. We have a lot of theories about why that’s the case, but we have an n of 2 in terms of use of nuclear weapons in war to kill people. They have been used in other ways; testing, placement for deployment, there’s all sorts of ways you can use a nuclear bomb without setting it off.”
“So once you have the sense that there’s a threshold, I think it actually restructures how you think about the conventional, and makes the conventional permissible – as long as you’re not going above that.”
G. John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University
“We try to use Hiroshima as a site for turning its history into a kind of platform for debate, for education, for activism, for bringing people together each year, with reports that people who are elsewhere during the year. Thinking about how to control nuclear weapons, how to bring back the momentum that has kind of all gone away for arms control and disarmament.”
“There is a diffuse effort to blend the history and Hiroshima’s legacy into social movements, and to leverage, and remind, and have all of that feed into our politics and diplomacy.”
“I learned of the exquisitely complex way in which Japan thinks about Hiroshima, and the broader role of the war as both aggressor and victim.”
“Hiroshima had this kind of lightning affect – illuminating a landscape of international politics”
“The social milieu, the political milieu in which governments operate is so important. And that’s why in some sense, it’s so frightening today. Because remember the 80s? Remember when Reagan was deploying new missiles of intermediate missiles in Europe? There were millions of people in the streets in Europe and the United States.”
Alex Wellerstein, Stevens Institute of Technology
“The historians I know, the practicing people who work on this actively today, most of them think the revisionist narrative is wrong…. And they also think the orthodox narrative is wrong. And the reality is some very much more complicated thing.”
“Deterrence is in people’s minds. And it’s not a lot of people’s minds. For most of the world today, you’re talking about a dozen minds in the world, who are in charge of making…. Because we’ve centralized nuclear weapons unlike a lot of things our government does, nuclear arms are centralized. Basically, one person in the American system. It’s three people in the Russian system … You’re talking about a very small number of people, and if they have the idea that using the weapon is a terrible idea, then it’s enacted in the world. And if they don’t have the idea than we are in a dangerous, dangerous place. “
 “I will say I think that there’s a lot of factors. And instead of saying, ‘we can’t know,’ I would say it seems incredibly contingent. Which is really just a very intellectual way of saying, ‘well, it depends on what happens that day.’ And that’s not reassuring.”
Toshihiro Higuchi, Assistant Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
“I think of how fruitful it is to really bring together many different scholars… We have, you know, Japanese historians, literary scholars, and then political scientists, and the history of science, and the sociologists of science.”
“I think it’s about, really, if we can think about ourselves as an independent thinking citizen, as opposed to identifying ourselves completely with the state or nation.”
“I think it’s important to make them curious, so that they start asking questions, and they start exploring themselves.”

SPEAKERS


quarta-feira, 15 de maio de 2019

O Brasil não corre nenhum risco de ser levado a sério, com parlamentares como o presidente da CREDN-CD

Parece incrível, mas o presidente da CREDN-CD, da Bolsofamília, pratica o mesmo tipo de machismo diplomático que seu ídolo americano, o caótico presidente da maior potência militar do planeta. Ele pensa que a "ameaça" de o país se nuclearizar levaria outros países, e a comunidade internacional, a levar o Brasil a sério, quando o contrário é o que vai ocorrer.
Com todas as derrogações do Brasil a acordos e acertos internacionais, anunciadas, semi-implementadas pela Bolsofamília, em especial pelo "chanceler paralelo" (de fato real), e seu ajudante de ordens, o chanceler nominal, algumas delas convertidas – como a retirada do Pacto Global sobre as Migrações, o acolhimento da 25a COP, a abertura de uma representação em Jerusalém, ainda que não a transferência da embaixada de Tel Aviv –, outras ameaçadas – como essa luta insana contra o climatismo, o globalismo, o multilateralismo, o comercialismo, a "China maoísta", o marxismo cultural, e outros fantasmas retiradas da cabeça destrambelhada de um guru decadente –, o Brasil está sendo objeto do ridículo universal.
O chanceler nominal, seguindo na linha dos seus mestres e "professores", anuncia que nossos novos aliados são esses líderes populistas da extrema-direta, que são racistas, xenófobos, nacionalistas primários, anti-imigração, soberanistas vulgares, enfim, todos esses traços detestáveis, num país, como o Brasil, que durante quatro séculos acolheu imigrantes, foi construído por imigrantes (ainda que muitos tenham vindo como escravos), e que se tornou um país de emigração, devido à ação perniciosa, equivocada, corrosiva, senão corrupta, de políticos como esses pertencentes à Bolsofamília, e que não permitem o crescimento econômico no país, tal a soma de distorções e privilégios acumulados por essas elites promiscuas e incompetentes.
O fato de o chanceler se proclamar anti-globalista, e provavelmente também anti-comunitário, anti-europeista – a Europa, segundo ele, seria um "vazio cultural", e só o Trump poderia "salvar o Ocidente", entre outros ridículos –, deveria resultar, por conclusão lógica, na denúncia do Mercosul, que é uma tremenda renúncia de soberania, como aliás o é qualquer acordo internacional.
O Brasil desce um pouco mais na escala da respeitabilidade e da credibilidade externa, com "líderes" equivocados como esses.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 15 de maio de 2019

Eduardo Bolsonaro diz que bombas nucleares garantem paz

Deputado e filho do presidente defende armamento para Brasil ser 'levado mais a sério'; segundo ele, o 'politicamente correto' o impede de falar sobre possibilidade de guerra com Venezuela

Natália Portinari
14/05/2019 - 18:01 / Atualizado em 14/05/2019 - 19:07
O deputado federal Eduardo Bolsonaro discursa no plenário da Câmara Foto: Michel Jesus/ Câmara dos Deputados
O deputado federal Eduardo Bolsonaro discursa no plenário da Câmara Foto: Michel Jesus/ Câmara dos Deputados
BRASÍLIA — Em evento da Comissão de Relações Exteriores da Câmara dos Deputados, da qual é presidente, Eduardo Bolsonaro (PSL-SP) defendeu a posse de armas nucleares e disse que o "politicamente correto" o impede de falar abertamente sobre a possibilidade de guerra com a Venezuela 
A reunião, na tarde desta terça-feira, foi um encontro do parlamentar com alunos da Escola Superior de Guerra, entidade em que se formam militares do Exército, Marinha e Aeronáutica.
— São bombas nucleares que garantem a paz. Se nós já tivéssemos os submarinos nucleares já finalizados, que têm uma economia muito maior dentro d'água; se nós tivéssemos um efetivo maior, talvez fôssemos levados mais a sério pelo (Nicolás) Maduro, ou temidos pela China ou pela Rússia.
Ele frisou, porém, que não há debate no Congresso sobre o assunto no momento. O Tratado de Não Proliferação de Armas Nucleares, assinado por 189 países, foi endossado pelo Brasil no governo de Fernando Henrique Cardoso, em 1998. Além dele, o Brasil também faz parte do Tratado de Tlatelolco, assinado por todos os países da América Latina e Caribe em 1968, com exceção de Cuba, que o ratificou apenas em 2002.

Relembre polêmicas envolvendo os filhos do presidente Jair Bolsonaro

Em uma palestra feita antes do primeiro turno das eleições, Eduardo Bolsonaro disse que “para fechar” o STF bastam “um cabo e um soldado”. No vídeo do dia 9 de julho, o deputado é perguntado sobre uma eventual ação do Supremo para impedir a posse de Bolsonaro, e qual seria a atitude do Exército neste cenário. Foto: Reprodução
Em uma palestra feita antes do primeiro turno das eleições, Eduardo Bolsonaro disse que “para fechar” o STF bastam “um cabo e um soldado”. No vídeo do dia 9 de julho, o deputado é perguntado sobre uma eventual ação do Supremo para impedir a posse de Bolsonaro, e qual seria a atitude do Exército neste cenário. Foto: Reprodução
Eduardo também participou de bate-boca entre integrantes do PSL em um grupo de WhatsApp. Ele entrou na discussão sobre críticas à articulação política do governo após a deputada federal Joice Hasselmann dizer que as negociações estavam "abaixo da linha da miséria". Eduardo, Joice e o senador Major Olímpio trocaram acusações e críticas por mensagens Foto: Reprodução
Eduardo também participou de bate-boca entre integrantes do PSL em um grupo de WhatsApp. Ele entrou na discussão sobre críticas à articulação política do governo após a deputada federal Joice Hasselmann dizer que as negociações estavam "abaixo da linha da miséria". Eduardo, Joice e o senador Major Olímpio trocaram acusações e críticas por mensagens Foto: Reprodução
Em uma viagem aos EUA, Eduardo confirmou a mudança da embaixada de Israel de Tel Aviv para Jerusalém e criou polêmica ao dizer que o Brasil apoiaria políticas para "frear o Irã" como forma de compensar os países árabes pela transferência. As delcarações provocaram reação dos países árabes Foto: Henrique Gomes Batista
Em uma viagem aos EUA, Eduardo confirmou a mudança da embaixada de Israel de Tel Aviv para Jerusalém e criou polêmica ao dizer que o Brasil apoiaria políticas para "frear o Irã" como forma de compensar os países árabes pela transferência. As delcarações provocaram reação dos países árabes Foto: Henrique Gomes Batista
O Coaf identificou, no fim de 2018, movimentações atípicas na conta do ex-assessor parlamentar de Flávio Bolsonaro Fabrício Queiroz na ordem de R$ 1,2 milhão entre janeiro de 2016 e janeiro de 2017. De acordo com o documento, oito assessores e ex-assesores do então deputado na Alerj fizeram depósitos na conta bancária de Queiroz. Ele atuou por uma década como motorista e segurança do parlamentar. Foto: Reprodução
O Coaf identificou, no fim de 2018, movimentações atípicas na conta do ex-assessor parlamentar de Flávio Bolsonaro Fabrício Queiroz na ordem de R$ 1,2 milhão entre janeiro de 2016 e janeiro de 2017. De acordo com o documento, oito assessores e ex-assesores do então deputado na Alerj fizeram depósitos na conta bancária de Queiroz. Ele atuou por uma década como motorista e segurança do parlamentar. Foto: Reprodução
O vereador Carlos Bolsonaro (PSC-RJ) desmentiu nas redes sociais o ministro Gustavo Bebianno, da Secretaria-Geral da Presidência. Bebianno havia negado que era o centro de uma crise no Executivo e afirmou ter conversado, por mensagens, três vezes com o presidente. Carlos disse que o ministro mentia e divulgou uma gravação do presidente em que Bolsonaro afirma que não iria falar sobre o caso com Bebianno. Foto: Reprodução
O vereador Carlos Bolsonaro (PSC-RJ) desmentiu nas redes sociais o ministro Gustavo Bebianno, da Secretaria-Geral da Presidência. Bebianno havia negado que era o centro de uma crise no Executivo e afirmou ter conversado, por mensagens, três vezes com o presidente. Carlos disse que o ministro mentia e divulgou uma gravação do presidente em que Bolsonaro afirma que não iria falar sobre o caso com Bebianno. Foto: Reprodução
— Esse assunto não é pauta nesse momento, eu sequer vejo debate nesse sentido. A gente sabe que, se o Brasil quiser atropelar essa convenção, tem uma série de sanções, é um tema muito complicado. Mas acredito que possa voltar ao debate aqui.
O deputado citou ainda Índia e Paquistão, dos poucos países que não assinaram o tratado, como um exemplo positivo.
—  Paquistão e Índia, como é a relação dos dois? Se só um tivesse bomba nuclear, a relação não seria a mesma. Sou entusiasta dessa visão. Vão dizer que eu sou agressivo ou que quero tocar fogo no mundo, mas enfim. De fato. Por que o mundo inteiro respeita os Estados Unidos? — questionou. — Explodiram o World Trade Center, o que eles fizeram? Passaram por cima de tudo quanto é veto e invadiram o Iraque.

'Maduro é maluco associado a terroristas'

Dirigindo-se aos militares presentes no evento, Eduardo resssaltou que, em um eventual conflito com a Venezuela, eles teriam um papel importante e que as pessoas só dão valor às Forças Armadas "quando precisam", já que há umacrença generalizada de que o Brasil é um país pacifista , que não entra em guerra. O deputado federal ainda chamou o presidente venezuelano, Nicolás Maduro, de um "maluco associado a terroristas".
— Pois bem. Estamos tendo um problema com a Venezuela, e o politicamente correto me impede de falar algumas coisas, então tenho que falar que está tudo muito bem, que nós nunca entraremos em guerra e podem ficar tranquilos. É claro, é uma ironia, o que eu estou falando — disse. — Do lado de lá da fronteira tem um maluco associado a terroristas e ao narcotráfico. A gente sabe que, a qualquer momento, se isso daí evoluir para um quadro pior, que é o que ninguém deseja, quem vai entrar em ação são principalmente os senhores.

terça-feira, 14 de maio de 2019

Presidente da CREDN-CD quer Brasil dotado de armas nucleares !!!!

O presidente da CREDN-CD é COMPLETAMENTE MALUCO! 
Vejam o que ele disse:

 "—  Paquistão e Índia, como é a relação dos dois? Se só um tivesse bomba nuclear, a relação não seria a mesma. Sou entusiasta dessa visão. Vão dizer que eu sou agressivo ou que quero tocar fogo no mundo, mas enfim. De fato. Por que o mundo inteiro respeita os Estados Unidos? — questionou. — Explodiram o World Trade Center, o que eles fizeram? Passaram por cima de tudo quanto é veto e invadiram o Iraque."

Esse cara não é só perigoso para o Brasil, para a América Latina e para o mundo, mas ele afunda mais um pouco a imagem do Brasil na comunidade internacional.
O que fizemos para merecer MALUCOS nos círculos governantes?
Aposto como alguém vai vir em apoio a essas ideias completamente estapafurdias...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida


Eduardo Bolsonaro diz que bombas nucleares garantem paz

Deputado e filho do presidente defende armamento para Brasil ser 'levado mais a sério'; segundo ele, o 'politicamente correto' o impede de falar sobre possibilidade de guerra com Venezuela


BRASÍLIA — Em evento da Comissão de Relações Exteriores da Câmara dos Deputados, da qual é presidente, Eduardo Bolsonaro (PSL-SP) defendeu a posse de armas nucleares e disse que o "politicamente correto" o impede de falar abertamente sobre a possibilidade de guerra com a Venezuela.
A reunião, na tarde desta terça-feira, foi um encontro do parlamentar com alunos da Escola Superior de Guerra, entidade em que se formam militares do Exército, Marinha e Aeronáutica.
— São bombas nucleares que garantem a paz. Se nós já tivéssemos os submarinos nucleares já finalizados, que têm uma economia muito maior dentro d'água; se nós tivéssemos um efetivo maior, talvez fôssemos levados mais a sério pelo (Nicolás) Maduro, ou temidos pela China ou pela Rússia.
Ele frisou, porém, que não há debate no Congresso sobre o assunto no momento. O Tratado de Não Proliferação de Armas Nucleares, assinado por 189 países, foi endossado pelo Brasil no governo de Fernando Henrique Cardoso, em 1998. Além dele, o Brasil também faz parte do Tratado de Tlatelolco, assinado por todos os países da América Latina e Caribe em 1968, com exceção de Cuba, que o ratificou apenas em 2002.
— Esse assunto não é pauta nesse momento, eu sequer vejo debate nesse sentido. A gente sabe que, se o Brasil quiser atropelar essa convenção, tem uma série de sanções, é um tema muito complicado. Mas acredito que possa voltar ao debate aqui.
O deputado citou ainda Índia e Paquistão, dos poucos países que não assinaram o tratado, como um exemplo positivo.
—  Paquistão e Índia, como é a relação dos dois? Se só um tivesse bomba nuclear, a relação não seria a mesma. Sou entusiasta dessa visão. Vão dizer que eu sou agressivo ou que quero tocar fogo no mundo, mas enfim. De fato. Por que o mundo inteiro respeita os Estados Unidos? — questionou. — Explodiram o World Trade Center, o que eles fizeram? Passaram por cima de tudo quanto é veto e invadiram o Iraque.

'Maduro é maluco associado a terroristas'

Dirigindo-se aos militares presentes no evento, Eduardo ressaltou que, em um eventual conflito com a Venezuela, eles teriam um papel importante e que as pessoas só dão valor às Forças Armadas "quando precisam", já que há uma crença generalizada de que o Brasil é um país pacifista, que não entra em guerra. O deputado federal ainda chamou o presidente venezuelano, Nicolás Maduro, de um "maluco associado a terroristas".
— Pois bem. Estamos tendo um problema com a Venezuela, e o politicamente correto me impede de falar algumas coisas, então tenho que falar que está tudo muito bem, que nós nunca entraremos em guerra e podem ficar tranquilos. É claro, é uma ironia, o que eu estou falando — disse. — Do lado de lá da fronteira tem um maluco associado a terroristas e ao narcotráfico. A gente sabe que, a qualquer momento, se isso daí evoluir para um quadro pior, que é o que ninguém deseja, quem vai entrar em ação são principalmente os senhores.

quinta-feira, 19 de abril de 2018

Arms Control Today - Steven Pifer, Oliver Meier

ARMS CONTROL TODAY

Arms Control Today 48 
January/February 2018
By Steven Pifer and Oliver Meier
As relations between the West and Russia deteriorate, a key Cold War arms control accord has come under threat.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan shake hands December 8, 1987 at their Washington summit, as dignitaries give a standing ovation after the two leaders signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The ceremony was held in the East Room of the White House. (Photo: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan shake hands December 8, 1987 at their Washington summit, as dignitaries give a standing ovation after the two leaders signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The ceremony was held in the East Room of the White House. (Photo: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)
The United States charges that Russia has violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by deploying a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) having a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Moscow rejects the charge and instead claims that Washington has violated the agreement. The Trump administration has announced several steps in response to the Russian violation, including beginning research and development of options for U.S. intermediate-range missiles.

If the treaty unravels, it will open the door to an arms race in production and deployment of these missiles, which would weaken security in Europe and Asia. It would undermine support for other arms control treaties, such as the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and make it difficult to reach new accords. That would not be in the interest of the United States, Russia, Europe, or Asia.
Washington and Moscow should work to preserve the INF Treaty and its benefits. If the United States and Russia desire to maintain the treaty, there are ways to resolve their compliance concerns. If they do not act to save the treaty, its days are likely numbered.
INF Treaty History
The Soviet Union began deploying the SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missile in the late 1970s. The SS-20’s mobile launcher, three independently targetable warheads, and estimated range of 5,000 kilometers made it a significant improvement over older Soviet intermediate-range missiles and provoked alarm in Europe.
Washington at first downplayed the concern, but NATO agreed in December 1979 to the “dual-track” decision: The United States would seek to engage the Soviet Union in a negotiation aimed at reducing and limiting intermediate-range ground-launched missiles. In parallel, the U.S. military would develop and, beginning in late 1983, base GLCMs in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom and Pershing II ballistic missiles in Germany, provided that an arms control agreement did not obviate those deployments.
Dutch protesters demonstrate October 29, 1983 in The Hague against deployment of U.S. Pershing cruise missiles. The Soviet Union quit negotiations on a ban on such intermediate-range nuclear missiles in late 1983 but returned to talks in 1985 that concluded successfully with the INF Treaty eliminating a whole class of weapons.  (Photo: HERMAN PIETERSE/AFP/Getty Images)
Dutch protesters demonstrate October 29, 1983 in The Hague against deployment of U.S. Pershing cruise missiles. The Soviet Union quit negotiations on a ban on such intermediate-range nuclear missiles in late 1983 but returned to talks in 1985 that concluded successfully with the INF Treaty eliminating a whole class of weapons. (Photo: HERMAN PIETERSE/AFP/Getty Images)
U.S.-Soviet negotiations began in 1981, and U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced the “zero-zero” proposal under which the United States would forgo its planned deployments if the Soviet Union eliminated its SS-20 and other intermediate-range missiles. Moscow rejected zero-zero, and the first two years of negotiations yielded little common ground between the sides. When the first U.S. GLCMs and Pershing IIs arrived in Europe in November 1983, the Soviets broke off the negotiations.

The Kremlin seemed to hope that public opposition within NATO countries would derail the U.S. missile deployments. Although it appeared a near thing at times, leaders in the five basing countries held firm despite significant domestic opposition, and the alliance moved forward with deployment. In 1985 the Soviets agreed to resume negotiations.
The negotiations made progress in 1986-1987 along the lines of the zero-zero proposal. Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, signed the INF Treaty on December 8, 1987. The treaty banned the production, flight-testing, and possession of all ground-based cruise and ballistic missiles having ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (300 and 3,300 miles) and required the elimination of all such existing missiles. When the treaty’s reduction period concluded in 1991, the United States and Soviet Union had destroyed some 2,700 missiles, as well as launchers and other support equipment.
Following the Soviet Union’s collapse at the end of 1991, Russia and several other post-Soviet states assumed the Soviet INF Treaty obligations. The treaty’s inspection period ended in 2001. The Special Verification Commission (SVC), established by the treaty as a venue for discussing the treaty’s implementation and compliance concerns, with the participation of the United States, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, had its last meeting in 2003 before a 13-year hiatus.
In 2005, Russian officials expressed interest in withdrawing from the treaty and suggested to the United States to jointly terminate the accord. Washington refused. In February 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern that, although the United States and Russia were banned from having intermediate-range missiles, third countries were developing and fielding such systems, and those countries tended to be in close proximity to Russia.
The following October, Putin proposed making the INF Treaty “global in scope.” The United States and Russia at the UN General Assembly jointly called on third countries to eliminate their intermediate-range missile systems. Moscow did not seriously pursue its proposal, although Russian officials continued to express concern about the proliferation of intermediate-range missiles.
Treaty Violation Charges
During the Obama administration, reports began to circulate that Russia was violating the INF Treaty. In July 2014, the U.S. government publicly charged that Russia had violated the accord. Washington offered few public details, but press reports indicated that Russia had tested a prohibited intermediate-range GLCM. The INF Treaty does not ban development per se, but draws the line at testing. In March 2017, a senior U.S. military officer said Russia had begun to deploy the missile, confirming press reports that had appeared two months earlier.
USS Florida launches a Tomahawk cruise missile during a test in the waters off the coast of the Bahamas in January 2003. (Photo: U.S. Navy/Getty Images)
USS Florida launches a Tomahawk cruise missile during a test in the waters off the coast of the Bahamas in January 2003. (Photo: U.S. Navy/Getty Images)
U.S. government officials have made little information available publicly on the specifics of the Russian violation. This stems from their desire to protect sources and methods, that is, how the U.S. government learned of the violation. They have been consulting with allies on INF Treaty questions and the Russian violation.

The Trump administration says the Russian system of concern is the SSC-8 GLCM, which the U.S. government says uses the Russian designator 9M729. This missile appears to be an extended-range version of the SSC-7 (Iskander-K) cruise missile. The Iskander-K is an INF Treaty-permitted cruise missile with a range of less than 500 kilometers. The SSC-8/9M729 reportedly uses a launcher that differs from the Iskander-K launcher. Deployment of SSC-8 missiles is expected in all four Russian military districts, that is, in the European and Asian parts of Russia.
Russia has denied the U.S. charge and asserted that U.S. officials had not produced enough information for it to identify the system of concern. U.S. officials flatly rejected that, saying that Moscow has all the information it needs. The U.S. Department of State’s 2017 compliance report notes that, during several meetings, the U.S. side provided “more than enough information for the Russian side to identify the missile in question,” including “[i]nformation pertaining to the missile and the launcher,” such as “Russia’s internal designator for the mobile launcher chassis and the names of the companies involved in developing and producing the missile and launcher,” as well as data on “the violating GLCM’s test history, including coordinates of the tests and Russia’s attempts to obfuscate the nature of the program.”1 Russian officials recently acknowledged that the 9M729 (SSC-8) is the missile in question, but they maintain that it is fully compliant with the INF Treaty.
Russian officials charge the United States with violating the INF Treaty. The primary Russian concern appears to center on the Mk-41 vertical launch system for the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors in Romania, soon to be deployed in Poland, which are part of NATO’s missile defense program. Russian officials note that Mk-41 vertical launch systems on U.S. Navy warships can launch sea-launched cruise missiles, which are quite similar to the now eliminated GLCMs, as well as SM-3 interceptors and other missiles, and say that the launchers in Romania and Poland can contain cruise missiles.
Moreover, the Russians charge that the United States uses intermediate-range ballistic missiles as targets in missile defense tests and operates armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) that are equivalent to GLCMs of intermediate range.
U.S. and Russian officials discussed the charges in political channels for several years before convening the SVC in November 2016. The commission met again in mid-December 2017. Thus far, it has not reported progress toward resolving the compliance questions.
Resolving Compliance Issues
From a technical perspective, parties to the INF Treaty could resolve these concerns through a combination of political-level talks and technical exchanges in the SVC. A group of nongovernmental experts, the
trilateral Deep Cuts Commission, has developed a number of proposals on how the SVC could tackle these noncompliance concerns.2
U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis holds a press conference November 9, 2017, at NATO headquarters in Brussels during talks that included discussion of the alleged Russian INF Treaty violation. (Photo: JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images)If Moscow were prepared to address the U.S. charge seriously, the SVC could agree on procedures under which the Russian side would exhibit the SSC-8 and its launcher to U.S. experts and explain the missile’s characteristics, particularly its range. If that exhibition satisfied the U.S. side that the missile was consistent with the INF Treaty, the matter would be put to rest. If there were further questions, they could be discussed in the SVC. Another option for addressing the problem would be to create a new panel of technical experts from the United States and Russia to discuss ways to resolve noncompliance concerns.
If it turned out that the SSC-8 had a range in excess of 500 kilometers but not in excess of 5,500 kilometers, the issue would be more difficult to resolve. All missiles and their associated launchers, including all launchers from which the missile was tested, would have to be eliminated in a verifiable manner in order for Russia to return to compliance with the treaty. The INF Treaty contains precise verification procedures, but they were developed and tailored to certify the destruction of U.S. and Soviet systems in existence as of 1987. Those procedures would require adaptation for the SSC-8 and its launcher, which could be agreed in the SVC. In any case, the sooner that detailed discussions on the violation commenced, the easier it would be to find solutions to tackle the compliance problems raised by Washington and Moscow.
With regard to the Russian charges, the dispute over the U.S. use of booster stages in target missiles for ballistic missile defense tests should not prove difficult to resolve. The INF Treaty makes an allowance for such missiles, and the sides’ technical experts could work out language in the SVC to distinguish between prohibited intermediate-range ground-launched ballistic missiles and allowed target missiles for missile defense tests. In addition, they might agree on language restricting target missiles to production facilities and sites associated with missile defense tests.
The second dispute regards whether armed UAVs, which the United States deploys and Russia is developing, are covered by the agreement. Armed UAVs did not exist when the United States and Soviet Union concluded the INF Treaty. UAVs differ from cruise missiles because they can return to base after their mission is completed. This clear distinction between GLCMs and UAVs should enable experts in the SVC to agree on language to clarify the scope of the INF Treaty.
The more serious Russian charge concerns the Mk-41 vertical launch system deployed in Romania and scheduled to become operational in Poland in 2018. Experts could address that in two ways. One would be modification of the land-based Mk-41 system with an observable difference—ideally, a functionally related observable difference—to distinguish the launchers in Romania and Poland from Mk-41 vertical launch systems on U.S. warships.
The second approach would employ transparency measures to reassure Russia that the launchers in Romania and Poland did not contain cruise missiles or weapons other than SM-3 interceptors. With the agreement of NATO and, in particular, Romania and Poland, U.S. officials could invite Russian inspectors to periodically visit the SM-3 sites, where they could randomly choose two or some other agreed number of the 24 launch tubes in the vertical launch system to be opened, allowing confirmation that they contained SM-3 interceptors.
The SVC would work out procedures for such inspections, as well as the particulars for observable differences for the vertical launch systems in Romania and Poland. Given the concerns of NATO member states, it might make sense to include European experts on visits to the SM-3 interceptor sites or to any Russian exhibition of the SSC-8.
The Politics of Compliance
The political obstacles to resolving the INF Treaty issues appear more difficult to overcome than the technical hurdles. The INF Treaty dispute happens at a time when a number of other arms control and transparency agreements, including the Open Skies Treaty, are increasingly affected by the crisis in U.S.-Russian relations. These accords may lack the strong supporting constituencies in Moscow, Washington, and, to some degree, Europe that they used to have.
A number of Russian military and civilian officials seem to favor withdrawal from the INF Treaty. They argue that it is a Cold War relic that has been overtaken by technological advances. These include the deployment of U.S. missile defenses in Europe and the growing number of intermediate-range missiles in the inventories of third countries. China, for example, deploys hundreds of intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles. North Korea, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel also possess intermediate-range missiles.
Those Russians who support continued adherence to the treaty worry about a new arms race and the prospect of the deployment of new U.S. precision-guided weapons systems in Europe. Moscow’s official position remains that it has not violated the treaty and remains committed to it. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Russia remains willing “to discuss the concerns of both parties.”3
U.S. Attempts to Bring Russia Back Into Compliance
While charging Russia with violating the INF Treaty, the Obama administration made clear its interest in maintaining the treaty and sought to bring Russia back into compliance. It failed. The Trump administration conducted a review of the agreement while senior administration officials spoke in the fall of 2017 of looking for leverage to bring Russia back into compliance with the accord.
Also at that time, Congress agreed on language in the National Defense Authorization Act that authorizes up to $58 million to respond to the alleged Russian INF Treaty violation, including by the establishment of a program of record to develop an intermediate-range GLCM.4
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in remarks October 20, 2017, at the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference that Russia is willing to “discuss the concerns of both parties.” (Photo: C-SPAN)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in remarks October 20, 2017, at the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference that Russia is willing to “discuss the concerns of both parties.” (Photo: C-SPAN)
On December 8, 2017—the 30th anniversary of the signing of the INF Treaty—the Trump administration announced what it called an integrated strategy for dealing with the Russian violation. The strategy reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to preserving the treaty and said the United States would (1) continue efforts to seek a diplomatic settlement of the Russian violation, including through the SVC; (2) begin research and development on options for conventionally armed intermediate-range ground-launched missile systems; and (3) impose economic sanctions on Russian entities that had taken part in development and production of the SSC-8.

Development of a new U.S. intermediate-range ground-launched missile, although not a violation of the treaty as long as the United States did not proceed to flight-testing, would be at odds with the purpose of the INF Treaty. After all, it was negotiated with the goal of eliminating all land-based intermediate-range missiles from Europe and globally. The Russians undoubtedly will attempt to exploit the contradiction between U.S. words and actions if Washington were to pursue development of a new intermediate-range ground-launched missile while insisting on the value of a prohibition of those weapons.
The push for a tough response is based on the hope that the United States and NATO can pressure Russia to come back into compliance. Congress, which distrusts the Trump administration’s Russia policy, may also hope to make sure that the president does not paper over the INF Treaty issue. Proponents of a tit-for-tat response recall that deploying GLCMs and Pershing IIs in the early 1980s helped to trigger a discussion in Moscow that eventually led to the agreement to eliminate all INF Treaty-covered missiles.
Could a second dual-track decision, including a decision to deploy new U.S. intermediate-range systems in Europe, push Moscow back to the negotiating table? A number of factors appear to lower the likelihood that such a policy would work. First, finding consensus within NATO for such a course would prove difficult. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union’s military position relative to NATO was significantly stronger than that of Russia today relative to NATO. Second, the relationship between Moscow and Washington 30 years ago was on an upward trajectory, whereas today U.S.-Russian relations are in a downward spiral. Arguably, the leaderships in Moscow and Washington in the 1980s were pursuing more consistent and predictable policies and were more interested in reversing the nuclear arms race than their successors are today.
Moreover, a program that moved beyond early research and development to flight-testing and production of a new U.S. intermediate-range ground-launched missile would cost billions of dollars at a time when the Department of Defense budget already faces major shortfalls. Fielding a new missile system would take years and not provide a timely response to Russia’s current violation.
The Alliance Dimension
The U.S. and NATO military responses to Russian deployment of a new GLCM should primarily aim at reassuring allies. Although allies may not object to U.S. development of a new intermediate-range ground-launched missile, proceeding to flight-testing and deployment would severely stress NATO solidarity.
Deploying U.S. conventionally armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles to Europe would offer an alternative action. Temporary deployments of conventional B-1 heavy bombers combined with Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, as well as more frequent deployments to northern European waters of U.S. warships and submarines carrying conventionally armed sea-launched cruise missiles, could also signal the U.S. commitment to Europe. Deployment of the USS Georgia or USS Florida—converted Ohio-class submarines that carry up to 154 sea-launched cruise missiles—to seas near Europe would also underscore that any attempt by Moscow to create zones of different security are not going to be successful.
Steps such as these would be easier, faster, and cheaper than building a new ground-launched missile. They might affect Moscow’s calculation and encourage the Kremlin to return to compliance with the INF Treaty. If Russia did so, these steps would be readily reversible.
Such moves are also less likely to provoke a crisis within the alliance about its response to Russia’s actions. It is by no means certain that NATO would agree to deploy U.S. missiles now, as it did in its 1979 decision. The development of new intermediate-range ground-launched missiles will inevitably bring back memories of contentious debates within NATO about moving forward with the deployment of GLCMs and Pershing IIs in the early 1980s.
NATO members favor maintaining the INF Treaty. The communiqué of the 2016 NATO Warsaw summit termed preservation of the agreement “crucial to Euro-Atlantic security” and called on Moscow “to preserve the viability of the INF Treaty through ensuring full and verifiable compliance.”5
At a November 2017 NATO defense ministers meeting, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis again briefed allies on Russia’s alleged INF Treaty violation. Mattis reportedly urged allies to craft a joint position to force Russia back into compliance by the time of the next NATO summit in July 2018, suggesting that Washington would otherwise react unilaterally.6
On December 15, NATO allies took note of the U.S. decision to begin development of a new GLCM but stopped short of collectively endorsing it by stating that “our actions, including national measures taken by some allies, seek to preserve the INF Treaty, strengthen the alliance, and incentivize Russia to engage in good faith.” NATO also stated that “allies have identified a Russian missile system that raises serious concerns,” yet allies did not jointly affirm the U.S. finding of Russian non-compliance.7
That silence frustrates U.S. officials, particularly because a Russian intermediate-range GLCM would be designed and built to strike targets in Europe and Asia, not the United States. To improve alliance cohesion, Washington should inform the alliance in more specific detail about its intelligence on the SSC-8. It should consult with allies on the way forward. Any attempt to force allies to support U.S. military deployments could well increase skepticism in Europe about the reliability of Washington’s nuclear policies under President Donald Trump.
Given that Congress has become a driving force behind the U.S. push to respond in kind to Russia’s policies, a parliamentary dialogue on how to respond to the INF Treaty violation would be important. NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly, which regularly brings together legislators from alliance members, might be a good place to have discussions about a response to Russia’s actions. This could be complemented by bilateral dialogues between parliamentarians.
Any division among allies on how to act on the INF Treaty question would play into Moscow’s hands. In any event, it would make no sense for Washington to withdraw from the treaty unless it can present compelling evidence of Russia’s violation. Absent such information, the United States likely would get the blame for the treaty’s end, and Russia would be free to deploy intermediate-range missiles without any treaty constraints.
Conclusion
The INF Treaty is fundamental to European security and important to the security of U.S. allies and others in Asia. The treaty’s collapse would open the way for an arms race in intermediate-range ground-launched missiles, with unpredictable strategic and political consequences for relations between the West and Russia.8 It would also weaken the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control regime. Indeed, although their proposal did not survive congressional conference committee negotiations on the National Defense Authorization Act, some Republicans had proposed to deny funds for extension of New START beyond 2021 if Russia was not in compliance with the INF Treaty.
The INF Treaty has made a significant contribution to security in Europe and Asia over the past 30 years. It should be preserved. That will require smart decisions by the Trump administration and concerted action with NATO members, which will otherwise find they are confronting a new Russian missile threat.
Saving the INF Treaty will also require a change in the Kremlin’s current course. The West should do what it can to encourage such a change. 
ENDNOTES 
1 Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, U.S. Department of State, “2017 Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments,” April 2017, pp. 13-14, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/270603.pdf.
2 See Hans Kristensen et al., “Preserving the INF Treaty: A Special Briefing Paper,” April 24, 2017, http://deepcuts.org/files/pdf/Special_Brief_-_Deep_Cuts_INF.pdf. For information on the Deep Cuts Commission, see http://deepcuts.org/.
3 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, “Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s Remarks and Answers to Media Questions at the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference,” October 20, 2017, http://www.mid.ru/en/press_service/minister_speeches/-/asset_publisher/7OvQR5KJWVmR/content/id/2913751.
4 Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, “Analysis of Fiscal Year 2018 National Defense Authorization Bill: HR 2810,” n.d., https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/NDAA-conference-analysis-111417.pdf.
5 “Warsaw Summit Communiqué,” NATO press release no. (2016) 100, July 9, 2016, para. 62, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_133169.htm.
6 Matthias Gebauer, Christoph Schult, and Klaus Wiegrefe, “Alleged INF Treaty Violation; U.S. Demands NATO Action on Russian Missiles,” Spiegel Online, December 8, 2017, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/us-delivers-ultimatum-to-nato-regarding-russian-missiles-a-1182426.html.
7 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Statement by the North Atlantic Council on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty,” NATO Press Release (2017) 180, December 15, 2017, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_150016.htm.
8 For example, see Ian Anthony, “European Security After the INF Treaty,” Survival, Vol. 59, No. 6 (December 2014-January 2018): 61-76.

Steven Pifer is a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. Oliver Meier is deputy head of the International Security Research Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Both are members of the Deep Cuts Commission, a nongovernmental group of German, Russian and U.S. experts.

The End of Arms Control - Eugene Rumer

A Farewell to Arms . . . Control

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 2018

For more than half a century, nuclear arms control has been a key element of the bilateral relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, now Russia.1Throughout most of the Cold War, it played an especially important role as a tool for managing the arms race, as a platform for communications between the two superpowers, and as a barometer of not only their bilateral relations but also the overall global stability and security environment due to their outsize presence on the world stage. When U.S.-Soviet relations underwent particularly severe strains, arms control could even act as a surrogate for the entire relationship.
However, the end of the Cold War has had a dual and contradictory effect on arms control: On the one hand, it made possible a number of truly breakthrough arms control agreements that exceeded even the most ambitious proposals of the previous era. On the other hand, the end of the political and ideological standoff between the United States and Russia resulted in a much more benign relationship, thereby diminishing fears of nuclear confrontation and the need for arms control to regulate the arms race.
The benign phase ended after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its unleashing of an undeclared war in eastern Ukraine—yet there is no new momentum in the arms control process. To the contrary, the breakdown in U.S.-Russian relations, aggravated by Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has effectively ruled out the possibility of new agreements and dimmed prospects for saving the existing arms control structure, which is already experiencing severe strains following Russia’s suspension of its participation in the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and reported violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Aside from political factors, the perilous state of U.S.-Russian arms control is a consequence of changing strategic factors, which include the development of new technologies and geopolitical transitions that raise doubts about the relevance of the existing arms control structure and whether both sides should maintain it.
The consequences of the end of arms control—should it come to that—are not easy to predict. In addition to the loss of a critical tool to regulate the strategic nuclear balance between Washington and Moscow, it could lead to a return to a situation not unlike that in which the Soviet Union and the United States were during the 1950s, with each side pursuing its own programs with little regard to considerations of strategic stability.
But that would be only one potential consequence. There could be others. For example, the end of U.S.-Russian arms control could impact the nuclear relationship between the United States and China, as well as between Russia and China. The demise of U.S.-Russian arms control, whether as a result of the current breakdown in relations between Moscow and Washington or under the weight of new strategic circumstances, is likely to reverberate well beyond the U.S.-Russian context.

Arms Control Is a Continuation of Politics

The history of U.S.-Russian arms control closely follows the trajectory of the political relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States. Improvements in the political relationship were invariably accompanied by accomplishments in arms control. When the relationship between Moscow and Washington deteriorated, progress in arms control stalled and existing agreements came under increasing pressure from critics.

From More Is More to Less Is More

The development of nuclear weapons, the acquisition by the Soviet Union and the United States of nuclear arsenals, and the means of their delivery had a profound, revolutionary impact on both superpowers’ thinking about war. The development of airplanes early in the twentieth century, and in particular long-range aircraft in the 1940s and 1950s, transformed warfare by making almost the entire homeland, not just the immediate battlefield, vulnerable to enemy strikes. The creation of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles magnified that threat immeasurably by placing the entire homeland in danger of near-instant annihilation, against which there would be no defense. In these circumstances, deterring an adversary’s attack by means of a guaranteed and equally devastating response became the only feasible recourse.
As the United States and the Soviet Union expanded and improved their nuclear arsenals and refined their understanding of nuclear weapons, both came to realize the imperative of being able to retaliate against an adversary’s nuclear strike. That in turn meant that keeping up with the other side’s arsenal and improving one’s arsenal’s survivability were matters of the highest national priority. To do otherwise would result in a critical vulnerability. The arms race was on.
While some attempts to manage, if not limit, the arms race were made in the 1950s, they produced few meaningful results. The wake-up call for both Washington and Moscow was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
The shock of the Cuban Missile Crisis and newfound awareness of the dangers of an unrestrained nuclear arms race moved Washington and Moscow to consider the bilateral relationship and arms control in a new light.2 Both sides gained firsthand experience with the danger of nuclear escalation in a crisis and realized the need for dialogue. The so-called Hotline Agreement was signed in 1963 and established a direct, reliable communication link between the Kremlin and the White House.
The June 1967 summit between then U.S. president Lyndon Johnson and Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin took place in Glassboro, New Jersey, in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War between U.S.-backed Israel and the Soviet-backed Arab states. While the immediate reason for the meeting was the crisis in the Middle East, the U.S.-Soviet arms race was the new item on the agenda. The U.S. proposal that eventually led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which was signed five years later, was initially rejected by the Soviets at the summit, but it marked a step toward arms control talks just as the summit itself was a step toward a modest relaxation of tensions between the two superpowers.3
The talks did not begin until 1969—the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had resulted in a temporary halt to their preparations. It took until 1972 and then president Richard Nixon’s overture to the Soviet leadership to reduce the political confrontation to conclude those talks and sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I agreement that capped the size of each country’s arsenal of strategic delivery systems. The United States and the Soviet Union also signed the ABM Treaty in 1972, which limited each side’s defenses against ballistic missiles so as to prevent the development of nationwide defenses. This was an important affirmation on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union of their recognition of mutually assured destruction (MAD) as the underlying logic of their strategic nuclear relationship, and the notion that there can be no victor in a nuclear exchange.
The combination of these two agreements was a key milestone. The cap on the two superpowers’ strategic offensive systems was their acknowledgment that an open-ended pursuit of a bigger offensive arsenal made little sense. The agreement not to pursue nationwide missile defenses was equally significant as their recognition that such systems would be of little use. Together, the two agreements officially ushered in the era of MAD between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In 1974, still riding the détente momentum, then president Gerald Ford reached the Vladivostok agreement with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, setting out the framework for the follow-on SALT II treaty that would impose further limits on Soviet and U.S. arsenals. However, the political relationship between Washington and Moscow gradually deteriorated, and concerns grew in the United States about Soviet capabilities and intentions, which the arms control agreements did not capture. Prospects for arms control were fading.
Despite that, the SALT II treaty was signed in June 1979 by then president Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979 destroyed the last remnants of détente, and the Carter administration withdrew the treaty from consideration. Arms control came to a halt, although both sides agreed to abide by SALT II limits and did so for most of the 1980s.
The arms control process came to a halt in the early 1980s. The Soviet decision to deploy SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and the decision by NATO allies to counter with Pershing II ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles triggered the worst crisis in East-West relations since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States and the Soviet Union began negotiating in 1981 about reducing intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles, but talks collapsed when the Soviet delegation walked out. They did not resume until 1985, along with talks about reducing strategic systems and preventing an arms race in space.
Not only did the talks about new agreements break down in the early 1980s, but the existing arms control framework appeared threatened when, in 1983, then president Ronald Reagan announced U.S. plans to develop a nationwide ballistic missile defense system—the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—popularly dubbed “Star Wars.” The purpose of such a program—to “eliminate the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles”—would be in direct contradiction of the ABM Treaty and, if built, it would violate it. The proposal also rejected the logic of MAD and held out the possibility—or at least Washington’s intent—to redefine the strategic relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States and make it rely not on the threat of MAD, but on the promise of missile defense. This, in the eyes of the Soviet leaders, opened a new chapter in the arms race that threatened to disrupt the established strategic balance by introducing superior U.S. technology. Despite Reagan’s assurance about sharing the missile defense technology with the Soviet Union, Soviet leaders weren’t convinced and viewed this move as yet another affirmation of hostile U.S. intentions.

Times, They Are Changing

By 1985, the deteriorating relationship between Washington and Moscow prompted the two superpowers to return to the negotiating table with arms control serving as a surrogate for the bilateral relationship. However, those talks really took off following the rise of a new and reform-minded leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the Soviet Union and the prospect of a new détente. That was the milestone event that paved the way for a new era in arms control.
A major step toward the resumption of U.S.-Soviet arms control was the summit meeting between Gorbachev and Reagan in October 1986 in Reykjavik, Iceland. The two leaders went so far in their talks as to discuss the possibility of abolishing nuclear weapons altogether. Even though they failed to accomplish that lofty goal,4the meeting paved the way for the 1987 INF Treaty, which was a milestone in its own right—an agreement not just to limit but to abolish an entire class of missiles.
The winding down of the Cold War led to more arms control breakthroughs. In 1990, the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective NATO and Warsaw Pact allies signed the CFE Treaty, which reduced conventional arsenals across Europe and thus the prospects of offensive military operations on the continent that had been the scene of a tense military standoff for over four decades. In 1991, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed, committing the United States and the Soviet Union to cutting back their strategic arsenals. It was followed by the START II agreement, which imposed further limits on U.S. and now Russian arsenals.
START II, however, fell prey to a combination of domestic politics in Russia and the United States, as well as evolving strategic priorities in both countries after the end of the Cold War. Although signed by Russian president Boris Yeltsin, the treaty ran into opposition from his domestic political adversaries in the Russian Duma, and its ratification stalled. Meanwhile, the relationship between Moscow and Washington gradually deteriorated as a result of Russian opposition to NATO enlargement and U.S.-led military campaigns in the Balkans.

The treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1996, but the political momentum for arms control was slowing.5 Attitudes in the United States toward Russia were hardening: its sputtering reforms, its war in Chechnya, its opposition to NATO enlargement, and its vocal support for the regime of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia translated into a strong and widespread critique of then U.S. president Bill Clinton’s Russia policy.
One of the most pronounced themes in this critique was the charge that the Clinton administration was acting on the basis of misguided strategic priorities, including its commitment to preserve the obsolete arms control structure with Russia. Condoleezza Rice, then one of the leading Republican voices on foreign policy, wrote about the ABM Treaty in Foreign Affairs during the 2000 presidential campaign that “the Russian deterrent is more than adequate against the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and vice versa. But that fact need no longer be enshrined in a treaty that is almost 30 years old and is a relic of a profoundly adversarial relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.” The real threats the United States faced, Rice noted, had far less to do with Russia than with nuclear proliferators—Iraq and North Korea. The real imperative was to develop ballistic missile defenses against them, prohibited at the time by the ABM Treaty, which therefore had to go. This theme was reflected—implicitly—in the Clinton administration’s unsuccessful efforts to clarify certain aspects of the ABM Treaty in order enable the United States to develop defenses against new threats.
For the Kremlin, then in the throes of successive political and economic crises, the importance of strategic arms control with the United States was also changing. The specter of a nuclear confrontation with the United States had receded. The United States was funding Russian programs to dismantle and secure parts of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. For the country’s political leadership, the major challenge was to get out of the crisis spiral and to maintain U.S. support for the financial lifeline provided by the international community.
The challenge for Russia was not to limit, let alone reduce, its strategic arsenal but to maintain the existing force. For the Russian military, U.S. emphasis on renegotiating the ABM Treaty raised the possibility of a future in which the United States would gain undisputed strategic superiority due to its superior defensive and offensive systems that Russia was then struggling to maintain. That left START II ratificationin the Russian Duma hostage to the U.S. commitment to leave the ABM Treaty intact.

Toward U.S.-Russian Strategic Decoupling

The election of president George W. Bush and the arrival of a Republican administration in Washington was a catalytic event that altered the dynamics of U.S.-Russian arms control. The new administration’s frustration with the constraints imposed on U.S. strategic policy by Cold War–era agreements manifested itself in the radical step of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM Treaty on the grounds of its obsolescence.
Moreover, the Bush administration maintained, in the conditions where the United States and Russia were no longer adversaries in an arms race, the rationale for bilateral arms control did not exist. By this logic, the two countries should be free to develop and structure their forces without arms-control-imposed constraints and concerns about the other side since they weren’t adversaries anymore. Undoubtedly, such arguments were reinforced—if only implicitly—by the idea that Russia was in a state of irreversible decline and would be increasingly marginalized on the world stage.
The United States officially withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002. Russia responded by withdrawing from START II, which it had finally ratified in 2000, at the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s tenure as president. START II never entered into force because Russia had attached conditions to its ratification, which were designed to force the United States to remain in the ABM Treaty and thus unacceptable for the United States. This was an important step toward strategic disengagement, or decoupling between Russia and the United States, which the Bush administration apparently did not find alarming.
To smooth over disagreements with Russia, in 2002, Bush signed a new arms control agreement—the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), or the Moscow Treaty, which accomplished two goals. Russia, still not recovered from its dramatic decline in the 1990s, was interested in a binding agreement with the United States to limit the latter’s strategic capabilities. For the United States, it provided much greater flexibility (than previous arms control agreements) that the Bush administration desired for the U.S. strategic nuclear posture.
Throughout the remainder of Bush’s term in office, U.S. priorities did not include a robust arms control agenda with Russia. The key priorities were the War on Terror, the threat of nuclear proliferation, the merging of these two in the threat of nuclear terrorism, as well as the development of a missile defense system to counter these threats. The deteriorating political relationship with Russia—which was reflected among other things in Moscow’s announcement of its suspension of participation in the CFE Treaty (amounting to an effective withdrawal) and threats to withdraw from the INF Treaty—reached its nadir in 2008 following the Russian-Georgian war. All these developments posed a formidable obstacle to any effort to pursue an arms control deal with Russia, even if the Bush administration had attempted it.

Arms Control’s Last Hurrah?

The change of administrations and a new set of political and strategic priorities in the United States as a result of the 2008 election of president Barack Obama breathed new life into arms control with Russia. By the time of Obama’s inauguration, the relationship with Russia had reached yet another post–Cold War low and was badly in need of a reset. It was dictated by a number of Obama administration priorities, including the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the president’s embrace of the nuclear disarmament agenda, and the requirement for a broad international consensus to halt Iran’s nuclear program. In a situation somewhat reminiscent of the breakthrough during Gorbachev’s ascent to power, a reset with Russia looked promising in 2009 because, the year before, Russians had elected Dmitry Medvedev as president—a younger and seemingly more progressive leader than Putin. Arms control was the perfect venue for rekindling the overall relationship.
Reflecting the change toward the better, the New START agreement was negotiated quickly and signed in 2010. The name of the treaty suggested a new beginning, as well as continuity with past arms control agreements. It replaced the 2002 Moscow Treaty, reduced the overall number of strategic delivery systems, and nominally reduced the legal limit for deployed strategic warheads. It did not, however, reduce the actual number of warheads, and even made it possible for the two sides to deploy more warheads than allowed by the Moscow Treaty, due to a peculiar counting rule for warheads agreed by both sides.6 The treaty also carried over significant elements of the verification regime from START I. It provided important benefits to both sides: it marked a step toward Obama’s goal of nuclear disarmament and a degree of flexibility to U.S. planners without imposing rigid constraints on their ability to design the optimal force; to Russian planners, it offered a cap not only on U.S. strategic nuclear capabilities but also on U.S. strategic capabilities overall, including some conventional systems, which were not deployed yet but were viewed by Russian leaders with increasing concern.
However, the reset proved short lived. The bilateral relationship deteriorated as a result of several irritants, among which Putin’s return to the Kremlin as president in 2012 and U.S. officials’ public criticism of his authoritarian tendencies topped the list. Obama’s 2013 offer to Putin to engage in new rounds of arms control was rejected. Some of the logic of the Russian position was reminiscent of earlier Russian reservations about strategic nuclear arms reductions: with the United States pursuing missile defenses and being no longer bound by the ABM Treaty, further cuts in the strategic nuclear arsenal could over time disrupt the strategic nuclear balance between the United States and Russia and enable Washington to achieve a position of strategic superiority vis-à-vis Moscow.7 Moreover, Russian spokesmennoted that the lower levels of U.S. and Russian arsenals meant that the nuclear capabilities of other nations, such as China, France, and the United Kingdom, would have to be factored into the strategic balance.
Russia’s rejection of further nuclear cuts and linkage to missile defense reflected Russian nuclear planners’ commitment to the MAD concept. Whereas the United States had, on a few occasions since the end of the Cold War, attempted to move beyond MAD and loosen the linkage to Russia in its own strategic planning, Russian planners remained firmly committed to MAD. U.S. exploration of concepts such as mutually assured stability—where neither side has the intent or the means of gaining superiority over the other—gained little, if any, traction in Russia.8
Prospects for new arms control agreements were further damaged by the deteriorating political context of the bilateral relationship in both Washington and Moscow, especially after the 2014 crisis in Ukraine erupted into what many have described as a new Cold War. The atmosphere of mistrust and mutual hostility was aggravated further by the discovery of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Prospects for arms control were dealt another major setback with the discovery by the United States of Russian testing and subsequent deployment of a ground-launched cruise missile, violating the INF Treaty. U.S. charges of Russian violations were countered by Russian denials and accusations that the United States was deploying its anti-missile defense missiles in launchers that violated the INF Treaty.9
The significance of this development for arms control overall is hard to overestimate. The prospect of withdrawing from the treaty has been raised in both Washingtonand Moscow. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act provided funds to the U.S. Department of Defense for research and development of an INF missile, which in itself would not constitute a violation of the treaty, but if necessary would enable the United States to field a missile to counter the alleged Russian deployment.
The toxic political climate that surrounds bilateral ties in both Washington and Moscow shows no sign of abating. The consensus view is that this situation will persist as long as Vladimir Putin remains in charge in the Kremlin—until 2024, and possibly longer. No arms control agreement can be ratified in these circumstances by the U.S. Senate, even if it is possible to negotiate it, which appears highly unrealistic. Thus New START, negotiated in 2010 and ratified in 2011, is likely to be the last arms control treaty between Russia and the United States for a long time to come. Far from accomplishing new arms control agreements, the two countries face an uphill struggle if they are to preserve the INF Treaty and New START, which is due to expire in 2021.

Conclusions, Implications, and What Is to Be Done

Arms control is in trouble. Throughout most of the post–World War II period, arms control has been a continuation of politics. When relations between Washington and Moscow were improving, arms control agreements progressed. When they were deteriorating, arms control suffered. At times, when the relationship was at a particularly dangerous point, arms control talks served as an instrument of reducing tensions.
The present standoff between Moscow and Washington promises to be long-lasting, and the atmosphere in both capitals looks as hostile to new arms control proposals as it did during some of the coldest periods of the Cold War, if not more so. There is little on the political horizon in either capital to suggest that arms control talks can once again pave the way to a better overall relationship. If the logic of past such episodes—the Cuban Missile Crisis and the INF deployment crisis of the 1980s—is to be followed, the current U.S.-Russian relationship has to get worse before the situation compels the two sides to return to the arms control negotiating table as a means of stepping back from a confrontation. There is no guarantee, however, that the logic of the past will apply in the future.

Old Arms Control Treaties Fade Away

The political context of arms control is only one part of the problem. The strategic rationales of both Russia and the United States have changed since the framework of bilateral arms control emerged during the era of bipolar superpower competition. A resumption of U.S.-Russian negotiations about nuclear arms control in the bilateral context within that same framework would begin to address only one part of the strategic challenges facing Washington and Moscow. To address arguably the more relevant, contemporary set of challenges, they would need to agree to expand the conversation to include missile defense, new capabilities and activities in the cyber domain, and an array of new and emerging nuclear and conventional systems. Some of these weapons, which are still only being developed, would not necessarily violate existing treaties but, by virtue of their capabilities, could significantly erode the treaties’ relevance if not render them altogether obsolete, while some are being developed by China, not a party to these treaties.10
For example, the existing treaties do little to capture the consequences of the combination of changes in European geopolitics due to NATO enlargement, improving accuracy of conventional systems, and efforts aimed at miniaturization of nuclear weapons. This combination of geopolitical changes and technological progress could put at risk targets on both sides of the NATO-Russia divide that previously were vulnerable to longer-range and more destructive nuclear weapons, which are captured by the existing arms control framework. The Soviet Union’s outer and inner empires are gone, and the Russian heartland and NATO are within each other’s striking distance to a degree not imagined during the Cold War, which in a crisis situation could prove highly destabilizing. It is most unlikely that a dialogue about the emerging and future systems—whose mere presence in the theater could be destabilizing—can be launched between Washington and Moscow.
Thus, arms control is at risk of becoming a casualty of more than just the prevailing political currents in Russia and the United States that determine U.S.-Russian relations. It could be losing its relevance to both countries as other, more pressing issues arise from new geopolitical challenges and technological developments.
The types of qualitative improvements in U.S. and Russian nuclear capabilities—such as better accuracy and development of low-yield options, which, according to the Nuclear Posture Review, are being pursued by both countries—are not captured by the existing arms control framework that places emphasis on limiting the quantitative aspects of nuclear arsenals. The likelihood that a new framework can be developed to capture the qualitative aspects of Russian and U.S. weapons programs appears to be extremely low in the current political atmosphere.
The perceived obsolescence of arms control may be one of the reasons behind the Kremlin’s decision to move ahead with a missile in violation of the INF Treaty. Russia has been voicing complaints for over a decade that continuing adherence to the treaty is outdated and that it hurts Russian interests. If, from the perspective of Russian national security planners, the treaty does not constrain new U.S. systems that could in the future target critical Russian assets, then the risk associated with violating the treaty is unlikely to be prohibitive. A formal withdrawal from the treaty would carry with it much unfavorable international publicity, whereas a simple violation can always be denied. Russian national security leaders may have simply decided that the risk associated with violating the treaty was not significant enough compared with the benefits of reacquiring a whole class of weapons that Russia would need to counter multiple emerging threats in Europe as well as in Asia.11
Senior Russian military representatives have long complained about the INF Treaty denying them the necessary capabilities to counter those and other threats. The enhanced status of the Russian military in Russian society and politics after the very public and continuously publicized successes in Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and Syria may have similarly enhanced its stature in national security decisionmaking. In that case, the military’s arguments may have finally prevailed over other considerations resulting in the deployment of the INF missile.
If this analysis is correct, it cuts into the rationale for the United States to sustain the arms control regime with Russia. It raises questions about the utility of arms control in light of Russia’s à la carte approach to agreements, including not only the INF Treaty but also the CFE Treaty and, as reportedly revealed in the March 2018 nerve agent attack on a former Russian military intelligence officer and his daughter in Salisbury, England, the Chemical Weapons Convention. Moreover, these violations emerge in the context of Russian authorities’ disregard for other international obligations. Russia is clearly in violation of the 1994 Budapest memorandumregarding Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity, as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States Treaty and the Paris Charter for a New Europe, which committed Russia to respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of its neighbors.
The erosion of the post–Cold War framework of political and military agreements as a result of Russian actions prompts some fundamental questions about Russian rejection of not only the arms control framework inherited from the Cold War and survived through the post–Cold War era but the entire post–Cold War security arrangements with the West and revisionist plans for alternative arrangements that go well beyond arms control. Arms control does have a long history of serving as the backbone of the East-West relationship and providing a measure of stability for it. However, that was in the context of the overall adversarial relationship, in which Washington’s and Moscow’s expectations of each other were very low. The end of the Cold War ushered in a new era of cooperation between the two erstwhile adversaries and much greater expectations for each other that persist—albeit in a highly diminished form—even to the present day, despite the downturn in East-West relations since 2014. It is unrealistic to expect arms control to perform the same function—stabilizing the relationship—in the present circumstances. A more realistic course of action is not to expect the arms control process to “carry” or “save” the relationship, but to seek to define the new relationship with Russia and the place of arms control with it.

Back to the Future?

Contrary to the preference of U.S. policymakers during the George W. Bush administration, the United States and Russia are not decoupling their strategic postures. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review is sharply focused on Russia, which provides the leading rationale for the posture outlined in the review.
The release of the review shortly after the publication of the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy was a major and unambiguous signal that the United States was refocusing its attention on competition among major powers—China, Russia, and the United States; that it was intent on maintaining its “competitive edge,” which is likely to be interpreted in Moscow and Beijing as a thinly veiled reference to military superiority; and that nuclear weapons would once again be at the center of that competition.
On the one hand, the Donald Trump administration’s renewed focus on great power competition means that the Bush administration’s ideas about decoupling are history. Russia is viewed as an adversary and therefore has to be part of the strategic calculus driving the U.S. posture. But on the other hand, the Trump administration’s “America First” approach to dealing with the world, if applied to the strategic nuclear realm, could mean that the United States is now intent on pursuing unilateral enhancements to its strategic capabilities, including missile defenses, rather than being guided by considerations of strategic stability. This could mean that at least in conceptual terms, the United States will be moving beyond MAD in pursuit of strategic superiority.
Taken together with the decline and possible demise of U.S.-Russian arms control, this would result in a situation similar to the one Moscow and Washington were in during the 1950s and much of the 1960s, prior to the initiation of active, sustained efforts to limit the arms race. With both Russia and the United States seeking qualitative improvements to their arsenals and pursuing technological innovations, in both offensive and defensive systems, the task of sustaining strategic competition is likely to become more complicated and more costly than in the relatively simple era of mostly quantitative competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Imperfect knowledge about each other’s capabilities and the inherent propensity toward worst-case assumptions will carry with them the risk of an increasingly unstable strategic relationship.

What Can Be Done

There appear to be few, if any, solutions to this challenge, at least in the near term. The combination of political and geopolitical differences between Washington and Moscow and the increasing likelihood that traditional bilateral arms control measures will do little to limit the two sides’ pursuit of a qualitative edge in developing their strategic arsenals, increases the prospect of a destabilizing U.S.-Russian arms race.
The outlook for the current arms control regime surviving, let alone new agreements being signed, is clouded by the impasse over U.S. charges of Russian INF violations and Russian countercharges. A number of proposals intended to get Russia to comply with the INF Treaty have been raised, including by senior Trump administration officials. Some have argued for withdrawing from the treaty. None of these proposals appears likely to achieve the stated goal of forcing or enticing Russia to return to compliance with the INF Treaty.
The outlook for New START’s extension beyond its 2021 expiration, which could be done by executive agreement, is also dim. Some proposals link the extension of New START to the fate of the INF Treaty and condition its extension on Russia’s return to INF compliance. The New START’s expiration would remove the numerical cap on U.S. and Russian arsenals. Russian attitudes toward arms control are colored by long-standing concerns about U.S. missile defense and technological superiority. Taken together, these two perspectives leave little room for action by either side.
Some actions proposed by U.S. experts intended to counter Russian INF violations are not only unlikely to get Russia to comply but could make the situation even worse. Any attempt by the United States to return INF missiles to Europe is guaranteed to trigger a powerful wave of protests across the continent and cause a major, possibly fatal, rift in the transatlantic alliance.
Similarly, the proposal for the United States to withdraw from the INF Treaty in retaliation for Russian violations is likely to be counterproductive and play into the Kremlin’s hands. The latter has repeatedly denied U.S. charges of violating the treaty and would certainly use U.S. withdrawal for propaganda purposes, to drive a wedge between the United States and its European allies, and to justify its own actions as a response to the U.S. move.
Beyond these propaganda matters, U.S. withdrawal from the treaty would leave Russia free to deploy its INF missiles without any pretense at restraint. The United States would face an uphill struggle to counter Russian deployments with its own due to strong public opposition throughout Europe no doubt whipped up even more by Russian information operations. It would result in a situation similar to the INF crisis of the early 1980s, when NATO came under severe strain. This time, however, the odds of the alliance surviving the crisis would be considerably slimmer.
Linking the fate of New START’s extension to Russian INF compliance also carries with it certain risks. Should New START be allowed to expire, the United States and Russia would lose the only remaining bilateral arms control agreement that both sides have complied with and have not accused each other of violating. The loss of New START would also remove a major foundational element of their discussions about strategic stability and significant verification provisions, as well as a platform from which discussions about future arms control treaties could be launched at such time as the two countries decide to do so. Preserving and extending the treaty seems like a small price to pay for this, especially at a time when there are few other channels for dialogue between Moscow and Washington, even if this dialogue produces few results and fails to arrest the decline of their bilateral relationship. Moreover, even though the arms race between Russia and the United States appears to be shifting from quantity to quality, removing the limits on the size of their arsenals can only complicate matters further.
A robust diplomatic and media campaign in Europe, as well as in Asia, designed to highlight Russian INF violations and to mobilize U.S. allies and partners to pressure Russia, along with a restatement of U.S. commitment to the INF Treaty, appears to be the best course of action to get Russia to return to compliance. The public campaign should be accompanied by quiet diplomatic engagement with Russia offering a clear path back to compliance with the treaty. This is likely to be a long shot, but it could generate enough international pressure on Russia to at least engage seriously on this issue.
With their political relationship likely to remain in a deep freeze, Moscow and Washington could agree to at least begin some exploratory conversations about sketching out a new framework for managing their strategic competition.12 The risk and the cost associated with starting such a dialogue are likely to be minimal, but it could pay off in the long run. Such official discussions could and should be supplemented by track 2 engagement between Russian and U.S. experts whose unofficial status could enable them to reach beyond their official counterparts’ boundaries for exploration.
While creative ideas for resolving the contentious issues of Russian arms control violations and Russian countercharges of U.S. violations would be a welcome outcome of such discussions, they should go beyond the subject of existing treaties and tackle a broader agenda. That agenda should include, but not be limited to, such issues as new approaches to arms control, new definitions of strategic stability, challenges to strategic stability, missile defense, the role of other nuclear powers, as well as an exploration of the likely consequences for the strategic relationship between Russia and the United States should the remaining arms control structure collapse and both countries engage in an all-out arms race.
Existing proposals for resolving the current impasse over the INF Treaty, as well as for managing the unfolding arms race, suggest that technical solutions can be found if Washington and Moscow can find the political will to do so. But the political climate in both capitals leaves no doubt that there is no political will for finding the solution to the impasse or for better relations. And far from saving the relationship, arms control could become one of its victims.
However, instead of focusing on arms control, the Kremlin and the White House need to focus on the overall U.S.-Russian dynamics. This dialogue between them—however unlikely it appears at present—is urgently needed precisely because of the deteriorating relations. It must address not just arms control but the larger context of the relationship, each side’s goals and expectations, as well as mutual irritants and grievances. Only after such clearing of the air between the two capitals can they develop a way forward—even if they remain adversaries—to establish some rules of the road, to manage their relationship, and to define the place of arms control in it.

This dialogue too is best undertaken at first as a track 2 conversation, considering the level of mistrust and animosity between the two governments. Even though conducted by nongovernmental actors, it can produce useful insights to inform official conversations in both capitals. If sustained, it can prepare the ground for future strategic engagement and could help preserve elements of the old framework as both a useful temporary measure and potentially a foundation for a new framework. In a reversal of old Cold War roles, engagement on arms control will no longer save the bilateral relationship, but engagement on the overall relationship can save arms control.
The author is grateful to James Acton, Franklin Miller, Robert Nurick, Richard Sokolsky, Dmitri Trenin, and Andrew Weiss for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The author is solely responsible for its contents.

Notes

1 This essay deals primarily with U.S.-Soviet and -Russian bilateral nuclear arms control rather than efforts to deal with tactical nuclear weapons, conventional weapons in Europe, or global proliferation challenges.
2 Anatoliy Dobrynin, In Confidence (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1995), 93.
3 Ibid., 162–7.
4 One of Gorbachev’s major conditions for agreeing to abolish nuclear weapons was that the United States would agree not to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. This was unacceptable for Reagan in light of his commitment to pursue the SDI. Gorbachev’s insistence on the United States abandoning the SDI was indicative of long-standing Soviet concerns about U.S. missile defense development, which continues to the present day.
5 The uncertainty about Russia’s direction was also reflected in the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review, which predicted that the United States on the one hand was “at the threshold of a decade of planned reductions” but on the other hand would retain the ability to hedge against “unanticipated challenges as time goes on” with “the needed flexibility.” The Defense Department’s official statement on the review continued that “START I has not yet entered into force, nor has START II be[en] ratified. For this reason, and because of the uncertain future of the rapid political and economic change still underway in the former Soviet Union, we made two judgments in the NPR. First, we concluded that deeper reductions beyond those we made in the NPR would be imprudent at this time; and second, we took several actions to ensure that we could reconstitute our forces as the decade went along if we needed to. . . . The results of the NPR strike and appropriate balance between showing U.S. leadership in responding to the changed international environment and hedging against an uncertain future.” Office of Assistant Secretarty of Defense (Public Affairs), “DoD Review Recommends Reduction in Nuclear Force,” press release, September 22, 1994, Nukestrat, http://www.nukestrat.com/us/reviews/dodpr092294.pdf.
6 For more on this and the peculiar counting rule applied to the New START see: Hans M. Kristensen, “New START Treaty Has New Counting,” Federation of American Scientists, March 29, 2010, https://fas.org/blogs/security/2010/03/newstart/; and Amy F. Woolf, “The New START Treaty: Central Limits and Key Provisions,” Congressional Research Service, February 5, 2018, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41219.pdf.
7 Russian concerns about the United States developing strategic conventional capabilities also played a role.
8 The idea of moving beyond MAD could be open to more than one interpretation—not only as a step toward mutually assured stability but also as a step toward strategic superiority.
9 A very useful overview of INF charges and countercharges by Brigadier General Kevin Ryan (U.S. Army, retired), former U.S. defense attaché in Russia, presently at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, can be found here: Kevin Ryan, “After the INF Treaty: An Objective Look at US and Russian Compliance, Plus a New Arms Control Regime,” Russia Matters, December 7, 2017, https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/after-inf-treaty-objective-look-us-and-russian-compliance-plus-new-arms-control-regime; as well as by Ambassador Steven Pifer and Oliver Meier of the Brookings Institution and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, respectively, here: Steve Pifer and Oliver Meier, “Are We Nearing the End of the INF Treaty?,” Arms Control Today 48 (January/February 2018): https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2018-01/features/we-nearing-end-inf-treaty.
10 Guy Norris, “China Takes Wraps Off National Hypersonic Plan,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, April 10, 2017; Guy Norris, “Classified Report on Hypersonics Says U.S. Lacking Urgency,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, February 20, 2017; and Guy Norris, “U.S. Air Force Plans Road Map to Operational Hypersonics,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, July 27, 2017.
11 This, incidentally, echoes some of the statements expressed by U.S. officials concerned with China rather than Russia, who view the INF Treaty as a constraint on U.S. actions in the Pacific theater. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2018-01/features/we-nearing-end-inf-treaty
12 The first such dialogue was held in September 2017. Another round was planned for March 2018, but was postponed with no new date announced. The overall U.S.-Russian relationship has deteriorated even further since the first round and shows no prospect of improving, thus raising doubts about the dialogue’s quality, scope, and potential impact. Privately, some participants have referred to it as unproductive.