Nobody could have predicted

Valued commenter Gin & Tonic asked if I plan to write on the end of the INF Treaty. I hadn’t intended to – there’s an enormous amount of good commentary (Twitter threads here and here) on it – but as I thought about it, I have some thoughts beyond the standard commentary.

First, an overview of the situation.

The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty was concluded between the US and the USSR in 1987. Both countries had been emplacing missiles in Europe in such a way as to dangerously shorten the warning time for a nuclear attack on Europe or Moscow. The treaty banned a whole class of missiles and largely ended the nuclear terrors of the early 1980s.

John Bolton despises arms control treaties. His rationale seems to be that the United States should give up no scrap of sovereignty for any reason whatsoever, and agreeing to limit nuclear weapons is an unjustified violation of sovereignty. Donald Trump has no idea of treaties, but if there are going to be treaties, they should only be the greatest treaties that only he could negotiate.

Russia has been violating the INF Treaty for several years now. In my opinion, the Obama administration should have tried harder to meet with Russia over the violations and resolve them. But they didn’t. All treaties have provisions for dealing with alleged violations, and the INF Treaty was no exception. But neither the Obama administration nor the Trump administration took that path.

In addition to Bolton’s hatred for treaties and Trump’s narcissism, others have suggested that China’s increasing military power justifies leaving the treaty so that the US can build missiles to use in a war against China. It’s hard for me to write that with a straight face. A US war with China is highly improbable, and that such missiles would be useful is moreso. That’s all I’ll say about that in this post.

And, of course, there is the influence of the defense industry and academic types who like to see yet another way to blow things up. So the treaty ended yesterday.

That’s the overview. The INF Treaty has some emotional overtones for me that I think have more general reverberations.

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The INF Treaty EndsPost + Comments (34)