The United States announced last Friday that Russian cheating obliged it to suspend participation in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, paving the way for its eventual withdrawal. Moscow denied the charge but promptly said that it would abandon the agreement as well. While the INF was designed to promote arms control and security in Europe, its collapse will reverberate throughout Asia as well. A renewed arms race is a likely outcome. While arms control treaties must be observed to be useful, greater efforts must be made to preserve this agreement.
The INF treaty was a critical element of European security during the Cold War. Agreed by the U.S. and Russia in 1987, it eliminated more than 2,500 missiles, nuclear and conventional with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km, deployed by the two countries that would have been used across Europe during a conflict.
U.S. governments have complained since 2008 that Russia was violating the treaty, pointing to a series of cruise missile tests. Moscow denied the accusation and countered that U.S. deployment of missile defense systems in Europe is the real treaty violation, a charge that the U.S. denies. Washington warned several months ago that Russian noncompliance threatened the treaty's survival and last week the Trump administration made good on that commitment. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained that the U.S. government had complained over 30 times and "Russia's violation puts millions of Europeans and Americans at greater risk, it aims to put the United States at a military disadvantage, and it undercuts the chances of moving our bilateral relationship in a better direction. ... When an agreement is so brazenly disregarded and our security is so openly threatened, we must respond." Russian President Vladimir Putin promised "a tit-for-tat response ... we will suspend as well." He said that Russia would begin work on developing new missiles and modifying old ones, but deployment would depend on U.S. actions.