The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was a landmark Cold War agreement that banned nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 310 to 3,418 miles and ushered in a new era of arms control. President Trump withdrew from the treaty as of Aug. 1 after years of alleged Russian violations.
Washington Examiner senior writer Jamie McIntyre, who’s covered defense and national security for 35 years, recently engaged Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, who has been advocating for arms control for just as long, in friendly debate about whether the demise of the INF treaty was a mistake, or long overdue.
Here is an edited version of their conversation:
McIntyre: Why do you think it was a mistake for the Trump administration to withdraw from the INF Treaty?
Cirincione: Withdrawing was a gift to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It didn’t fix the problem. It made it worse. Now there are no restraints whatsoever on Putin’s ability to deploy hundreds of missiles capable of hitting European targets within minutes. When someone breaks the law, you don’t repeal the law, you bring the violator into compliance. That historically is what we’ve done under every single president until Donald Trump.
McIntyre: During the Obama administration, many efforts were made to bring Russia back into compliance. That continued through the beginning of the Trump administration. It had been going on for at least four years. And Russia never showed any sign that it was ever going to admit that it violated the treaty with the development and deployment of its SSC-8 land-based cruise missiles.
Cirincione: The Obama administration’s efforts were weak and halfhearted; the Trump administration’s were worse. Their policy was not to negotiate at all but to make unilateral demands on Russia. There was a negotiated solution available, which was to demand inspections of the Russian sites and in exchange give inspections to the Russians of U.S. sites that the Russians claimed were in violation of the treaty. Neither Obama nor Trump seriously engaged in that, a compromise solution.
McIntyre: But the idea that you could bring Russia back into compliance when Putin was so intent on cheating and denying it, you have to admit, is kind of a fool’s errand.
Cirincione: Four years is nothing in terms of arms control treaties. Ronald Reagan pushed and cajoled the Soviets for six years to get back into compliance with the ABM treaty, and he eventually succeeded. In fact, he negotiated the INF treaty with the Soviets while they were in violation of the ABM treaty. It’s hard work, but Reagan showed that you can do it.
McIntyre: The INF treaty is often called a landmark Cold War treaty. Why is it still relevant today?
Cirincione: It really broke the back of the nuclear arms race. It was the first treaty ever to require the physical destruction of nuclear weapons, not just their limitation. The U.S. and the Soviet Union destroyed almost 3,000 brand new, perfectly good nuclear weapons that were particularly destabilizing — nuclear weapons deployed in Europe that could hit their targets within minutes, that is, with little or no warning. And it paved the way for major nuclear reduction treaties to follow, particularly the START treaty that cut U.S. and Soviet arsenals in half. It was a landmark treaty both for the United States and the Soviet Union, but particularly for Europe. Remember, this was a European security treaty first and foremost, one that greatly reduced the risk of a nuclear war that would be fought in Europe.
McIntyre: Okay. But that was then, and this is now. Back then it was pretty much a bipolar world. The United States and the Soviet Union were the only two major powers that had nuclear weapons. It’s a much different world now. One of the arguments the Trump administration has made is, “Look, this treaty — which constrained the United States and Russia — did not apply to anyone else, including China and others who have been free to develop and deploy land-based missiles that were banned by the INF treaty. And we just saw Iran apparently dispatch ground-launched cruise missiles of the range and type that were banned under this treaty. If the treaty only applies to two nations and everybody else in the world can do whatever they want, how is it of any use anymore?”
Cirincione: Well, the solution is to extend the treaty to other countries, or, to extend agreements of this type to other countries. By pulling out, you’ve eliminated that possibility. But we didn’t need to leave the treaty to address weapons deployed by China. We already have hundreds of weapons in the field that can be targeted against the Chinese weapons. We don’t need to build or deploy new intermediate range land-based missiles to counter China.
McIntyre: Because we can launch them from the air and the sea?
Cirincione: Let me give you two examples just to show you how ridiculous this argument is that we need to deploy a system in kind to counter China. We have air-based assets on the B-1. We have the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, Extended Range, the JASSM-ER. Each B-1 can carry 20 of these conventional or nuclear armed missiles that are not banned by the treaty. The treaty only covers land-based missiles. So, we have dozens of B-1s and each could be armed with 20 JASSM-ER to target Chinese targets.
We also have the Arleigh Burke class of guided missile destroyers. Each could have a compliment of 90 Tomahawk land attack missiles, the T-LAMs. We’ve got 66 destroyers. Again, these sea-based systems are not prohibited by the treaty. You can deploy them in the Pacific, you could deploy them in the European theaters. We have these assets but the Russians and the Chinese don’t.
McIntyre: If the United States is not significantly constrained in its ability to respond to threats by this treaty, if Russia is surreptitiously flouting the treaty, and if China is not covered by the treaty, why do we need the treaty?
Cirincione: You do not want to have a renewed arms race in Europe, and that’s what you’re risking right now. You see it. Russia is already deploying scores of these conventional missiles. They could decide to put nuclear warheads on them. The U.S. is pressing to deploy similar systems in Europe, and that is exactly why you saw NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg say, “We don’t want a new arms race, and we have no intention to deploy new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe.”
McIntyre: The technology for these short- and intermediate-range missiles, whether they’re ballistic or cruise missiles, is not new technology. As soon as the treaty had expired, the U.S. fired off a land-based cruise missile, the same kind it fires off ships, just to show it could. The much bigger threat now are these maneuverable hypersonic weapons, which can fly five or six times the speed of sound and were never covered under the decades-old treaty. When we focus on what was banned way back in 1987, aren’t we missing the real future threat?
Cirincione: No. You don’t discard the restraints you already have, you build upon them. We should be negotiating limitations or bans on hypersonic missiles, on nuclear-powered cruise missiles. Nobody should have these weapons. The U.S. is at a distinct disadvantage if other countries deploy these kinds of doomsday systems. We should be negotiating bans on these kinds of weapons, as we have with many systems in the past. That’s how you get real security, not by engaging in a new arms race that no one can really win.
McIntyre: But realistically, how can you do that? It’s difficult enough to negotiate a bilateral agreement with Russia or Iran or North Korea. How do you get all the countries that you would need to sign onto this to sit around the table and work out an agreement, especially when so many of them believe that these kinds of missiles are vital to their very existence?
Cirincione: You can, one, talk directly with the Russians about limiting or stopping these new systems in exchange for addressing their concerns about our missile defense systems. Two, the U.S. and Russia have to get serious about keeping the limitations on strategic nuclear weapons and negotiating new cuts to bring us down to hundreds of weapons rather than thousands. And three, once you do that, you can then engage China, Great Britain, France, and eventually, countries like India, Pakistan, and Israel.
This is a long-term process, but it’s the kind of process we’ve been engaged in since Ronald Reagan. Now, the reductions have stopped. Now, that talk about reductions has stopped. We have to regain the bipartisan legacy that Ronald Reagan left us and put our faith in arms reduction talks, not arms races.
McIntyre: But the INF Treaty is dead. It’s not coming back. So, what’s your prediction for what’s going to happen over the next year? And a year from now, I’m going to call you back and see if you were right.
Cirincione: Congress is going to attempt to restrict funding for any new systems that would violate the INF treaty. No. 2, there will be no countries that will accept these land-based forces in Europe or in Asia. And three, some contractors will proceed with these programs, but they are unlikely to go anyplace.
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
