'This is a colossal mistake' say experts, US allies
Concerns are mounting
after President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that he will withdraw from a
Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty with Russia.
This follows reports that National Security Adviser
John Bolton had been pushing the plan behind closed doors despite warnings from experts that ditching the
agreement "would be reckless and stupid."
The Guardian had reported Friday that Bolton and an ally
in the White House have been working to convince members of the administration
to support the United States withdrawing from the 1987 Intermediate-range
Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) on the grounds that Russia is violating it.
Nuclear arms control
experts and others rapidly responded with alarm. Many agreed that Russia's
alleged violation "merits a strong response" but noted a withdrawal
could alienate European allies and raise the chances of armed conflict.
The president's
comments on Saturday spurred more alarm, with Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control
Association calling the looming withdrawal "an epic mistake."
Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey agreed. "This is a colossal mistake," he told the Guardian. "I doubt very much that the U.S. will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters."
"By declaring he
will leave the INF Treaty, President Trump has shown himself to be a demolition
man who has no ability to build real security," responded Beatrice Fihn,
executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear
Weapons. "Instead, by blowing up nuclear treaties he is taking the
U.S. down a trillion dollar road to a new nuclear arms race."
Journalist Glenn
Greenwald tied the update to broader narratives about the Trump
administration's relationship with Russia, and in particular President Vladimir
Putin:
Trump revealed his withdrawal plans to reporters
after campaign event in Nevada on Saturday. "Russia has violated the
agreement. They've been violating it for many years. I don't know why President
[Barack] Obama didn't negotiate or pull out," he said. "And we're not
going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons [while]
we're not allowed to."
While claiming he
would be receptive if both Russia and China concluded, "'Let's all of us
get smart and let's none of us develop those weapons," under current circumstances,
Trump appears hellbent on making more weapons. "If Russia's doing it and
if China's doing it and we're adhering to the agreement, that's
unacceptable," he said. "So we have a tremendous amount of money to
play with with our military."
"We are going to
terminate the agreement and we are going to develop the weapons. If we get
smart and if others get smart, and say 'Let's not develop these horrible
nuclear weapons,' I would be extremely happy with that," he added. "But as long as somebody's
violating that agreement then we're not going to be the only ones to adhere to
it."
The signing of the INF
treaty during the nuclear arms race of the Cold War, as CNN pointed out, had "marked a watershed
agreement." It required both Russia and the United States to
eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 300
and 3,400 miles.
The treaty
"wasn't designed to solve all of our problems with the Soviet Union,"
but was "designed to provide a measure of some strategic stability on the
continent of Europe," explained former State Department spokesman Rear
Adm. John Kirby, now a CNN military and diplomatic analyst.
"I suspect our European allies right now are none too happy about hearing
that President Trump intends to pull out of it."
Kingston Reif of the
Arms Control Association outlined in a pair of tweets the impact a withdrawal
could have on American foreign relations:
And thanks to the
president's warmonger of a national security adviser, the INF treaty isn't the
only arms control agreement with Russia currently under threat of termination.
As the Guardian reported:
Bolton and the top
arms control adviser in the National Security Council (NSC), Tim Morrison, are
also opposed to the extension of another major pillar of arms control, the 2010
New Start agreement with Russia, which limited the number of deployed strategic
warheads on either side to 1,550. That agreement, signed by Barack Obama and
Dmitri Medvedev, then president of Russia,
is due to expire in 2021.
"This is the most
severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s," said Malcolm
Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute.
"If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic
arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the
nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time since 1972."
Responding to the
developments in a series of tweets, Alexandra Bell, a former senior arms
control official at the State Department who is now at the Center for Arms
Control and Non-Proliferation, said: "Trump says that he is abandoning
the INF treaty, basically confirms a renewed arms race, and absolves himself
from any responsibility to lead efforts to reduce nuclear tensions around the
globe."
"This
administration has damaged, perhaps irreparably, an int'l order that has served
U.S. interests for decades, turned a blind eye to catastrophic climate change,
corroded our govt, [and] poisoned our national discourse," she added.
"Now it will ask you to fund a nuclear arms race. #VoteThemOut"