NATO’s members and President Trump are in solid agreement that Russia has substantially violated the long-standing Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.
While President Trump’s push to get NATO members to contribute a fair share of the defense organization’s budget has raised some tension, the inherent danger posed by Putin’s latest aggressive act has produced unity within the alliance. According to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking at a foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, “All allies have concluded that Russia has developed and fielded a new ground-launched cruise missile system – the SSC-8, also known as the 9M729…Allies agree that this missile system violates the INF Treaty and poses significant risks to Euro-Atlantic security. And they agree that Russia is therefore in material breach of its obligations under the INF Treaty.”
NATO describes the treaty violated by Moscow as “…a pillar of European security. The treaty eliminated an entire category of destabilizing weapons…” Stoltenberg noted that “Russia’s deployment ratchets up tension on the continent. This is really serious, …these missiles are in particular dangerous because they are hard to detect, they are mobile [and] they are nuclear-capable,” the secretary general said at a news conference…The new Russian missiles can reach European cities, thus reducing warning time… they also reduce the threshold for nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict. That’s the reason why the INF Treaty has been so important, and that is why it is so serious that this treaty risks breaking down because of the Russian violations.”
Stoltenberg, referring to Washington’s efforts to get Putin to comply with the treaty, emphasized that “the United States has made every effort to engage with Russia, and to seek answers about the new missile. The U.S. has raised the matter formally with Russia at senior levels more than 30 times…Other allies have raised it with Russia, too. We did so, a few weeks ago, in the NATO-Russia Council here in Brussels… This violation “erodes the foundations of effective arms control and undermines allied security. This is part of Russia’s broader pattern of behavior, intended to weaken the overall Euro-Atlantic security architecture.”
The Secretary-General reported that The United States continues to fully comply with the INF Treaty. “There are no new U.S. missiles in Europe, but there are new Russian missiles in Europe…Arms control agreements are only effective if they are respected by all sides. A situation where the U.S. abides by the treaty and Russia does not is simply not sustainable.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at the Brussels meeting, explained that “…whatever successes this treaty helped produce, today we must confront Russian cheating on its arms control obligations…our nations have a choice. We either bury our head in the sand or we take common-sense action in response to Russia’s flagrant disregard for the express terms of the INF Treaty. It’s worth noting that Russia’s violations didn’t happen overnight. Russia’s been flight-testing the SSC-8 cruise missile since the mid-2000s. They’ve been testing it in excess of ranges that the treaty permits. All the tests of the SSC-8 have originated from a Kapustin Yar site from both a fixed and mobile launcher. Its range makes it a direct menace to Europe… Throughout all of this, the United States has remained in scrupulous compliance with the treaty. In spite of Russia’s violations, we have exercised the utmost patience and effort in working to convince Russia to adhere to its terms. On at least 30 occasions since 2013, extending to the highest levels of leadership, we have raised Russia’s noncompliance and stressed that a failure to return to compliance would have consequences.
“Russia’s reply has been consistent: deny any wrongdoing, demand more information, and issue baseless counter-accusations. For more than four years, Moscow has pretended that it didn’t know what missile or test the United States was even talking about, even when we provided extensive information about the missile’s characteristics and testing history. It was not until we chose to publicize the Russian name of the missile in November of 2017 that Russia finally acknowledged its existence. Then Russia changed its cover story from the missile that does not exist to the missile that exists but is treaty-compliant.
“These violations of the INF Treaty cannot be viewed in isolation from the larger pattern of Russian lawlessness on the world stage. The list of Russia’s infamous acts is long: Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, election meddling, Skripal, and now the Kerch Strait, to name just a few.”
Photo: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks with reporters during a foreign ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Dec. 4, 2018. (NATO)