Arms Control for Dummies

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 22, 2018

[reaganaut1]

Donald Trump says the U.S. plans to withdraw from the 1987 INF nuclear arms-control treaty that everyone agrees Russia has been violating for a decade. Yet somehow this is said to be reckless behavior by—Donald Trump? Welcome to the high church of arms control in which treaties are sacrosanct no matter the violation.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty bans ground-fired ballistic and cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers and is an artifact of the late Cold War. Ronald Reagan and NATO deployed mid-range missiles in Europe in the early 1980s to counter Soviet deployments. After years of tense negotiation, Mikhail Gorbachev finally agreed to the modest INF accord on U.S. terms that traded U.S. missiles for Russia’s. This was hailed as a diplomatic triumph.

Yet when the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union collapsed over the next few years, nuclear arms control faded in importance. Which is the key point. Arms control didn’t make the world safer; the fall of the Soviet Union did that. Arms control tends to work when it is between countries that get along, while it fails with adversaries that can’t be trusted.

Enter Vladimir Putin, who has been developing a new medium-range cruise missile since the mid-2000s. The U.S. believes Moscow first tested the new missile in 2008, but the Obama Administration hid that intelligence from the Senate when it debated and ratified the New Start treaty with Mr. Putin in 2010.

The Obama Administration first went public with this news in 2014, and the State Department has noted Russian noncompliance every year. Moscow started deploying its new missiles in late 2016. This is in addition to a new ballistic missile Russia has tested that may be INF compliant only because it can travel slightly farther than 5,500 kilometers.

[Chainmail]

I used to lead INF arms control inspection teams to the Soviet Union in 1989-91 and always found it fascinating that we were observing and verifying that SS-20 mobile missiles (3 warheads, 3,500 nautical mile range) were destroyed, yet SS-25 mobile missiles (1 warhead, 5,000 nautical mile range) were left alone.

I also discovered an SS-23 and its launcher vehicle crashed alongside the road from Moscow to Smolensk. These were supposed to have been "fully eliminated" at this point and I have pictures of me sitting on the wreck yet I was also assured by the responsible agencies that "it doesn't exist".

Doesn't give much faith in our arms control system.