Experts warn of ‘most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s’ as Trump confirms US will leave INF agreement

Donald Trump has confirmed the US will leave an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades.

“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” the president told reporters in Nevada after a rally. “We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out.”

Trump was referring to the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF), which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km. Signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated, and an end to a dangerous standoff between US Pershing and cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe.

UK backs Trump's nuclear treaty withdrawal, blames Russia for breakdown Read more

The Guardian reported on Friday that Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, a longstanding opponent of arms control treaties, was pushing for US withdrawal. The US says Russia has been violating the INF agreement with the development and deployment of a new cruise missile. Under the terms of the treaty, it would take six months for US withdrawal to take effect.

US hawks have also argued that the INF treaty ties the country’s hands in its strategic rivalry with China in the Pacific, with no response to Chinese medium-range missiles that could threaten US bases, allies and shipping.

Bolton and the top arms control adviser in the National Security Council (NSC), Tim Morrison, are also opposed to the extension of another major pillar of arms control, the 2010 New Start agreement with Russia, which limited the number of deployed strategic warheads on either side to 1,550. That agreement, signed by Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, then president of Russia, is due to expire in 2021.

This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s Malcolm Chalmers, Royal United Services Institute

“This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s,” said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute. “If the INF treaty collapses, and with the New Start treaty on strategic arms due to expire in 2021, the world could be left without any limits on the nuclear arsenals of nuclear states for the first time since 1972.”

Speaking to reporters in Nevada, Trump said: “Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years and I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out.

“We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons and we’re not allowed to. We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honoured the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.”

Asked to clarify, the president said: “Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military.”

Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said: “This is a colossal mistake. Russia gets to violate the treaty and Trump takes the blame.

“I doubt very much that the US will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Bolton addresses a press conference following a meeting with his Russian counterpart in Geneva. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images

Russian state news agencies on Saturday cited a foreign ministry source as saying Washington’s move to pull out of the treaty is motivated by a dream of a single global superpower.

“The main motive is a dream of a unipolar world. Will it come true? No,” a foreign ministry source told Ria Novosti state news agency.

The official said that Russia has “many times publicly denounced the US policy course towards dismantling the nuclear deal”.

US Nato envoy's threat to Russia: stop developing missile or we'll 'take it out' Read more

Washington “has approached this step over the course of many years by deliberately and step-by-step destroying the basis for the agreement,” the official said, quoted by Russia’s three main news agencies.

“This decision is part of the US policy course to withdraw from those international legal agreements that place equal responsibilities on it and its partners and make vulnerable its concept of its own ‘exceptionalism’.”

Russian senator Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter that the move was “the second powerful blow against the whole system of strategic stability in the world, with the first being Washington’s 2001 withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty”.

“And again the initiator of the dissolution of the agreement is the US,” Pushkov wrote.

The Pentagon has been generally supportive of the INF treaty but defense secretary James Mattis warned other Nato ministers earlier this month it would no longer be tenable if Russia did not withdraw its Novator ground-based missile, which the US has argued for nearly four years violates the INF range restrictions.

Nato ministers issued a joint statement saying the INF agreement “has been crucial to Euro-Atlantic security and we remain fully committed to the preservation of this landmark arms control treaty”. But they urged Russia to come clean about the capabilities of its new missile.

This president who is constantly telling us he is deal-maker has failed utterly to save Reagan’s nuclear legacy Alexandra Bell, Centre for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation

The Chinese arsenal has also been a source of concern for the US Pacific Command. Its former commander, Adm Harry Harris, told the Senate in March: “We have no ground-based capability that can threaten China because of, among other things, our rigid adherence, and rightfully so, to the treaty that we sign on to, the INF treaty.”

Lewis disagreed that the INF leaves the US at a significant disadvantage in the Pacific.

“The China stuff is nonsense,” he said. “INF does not prohibit sea- and air-based systems, not does it prohibit South Korea and Japan from developing long-range missiles. If China were a real problem, the US and its allies could have acted long ago.”

Alexandra Bell, a former senior state department official and now senior policy director at the Centre for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, said: “When problems arise in arms control, you work and fix them.

“What shocks me is that this president who is constantly telling us he is deal-maker has failed utterly to save Reagan’s nuclear legacy. He did nothing with his relationship with Putin. There were trades to be made to fix this treaty and he couldn’t pull it off.”

She added: “Why would the North Koreans have any reason to believe in any deal made with this president, with Bolton whispering in his ear.”

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report</s>(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Terrence Guay, Pennsylvania State University (THE CONVERSATION) Among Donald Trump’s many unusual characteristics as president is his frankness. Last…

(THE CONVERSATION) Among Donald Trump’s many unusual characteristics as president is his frankness.

Last week, after the disappearance and apparent torture and murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump argued that “we would be punishing ourselves” by canceling arms sales to Saudi Arabia over a human rights concern. Few world leaders, or former U.S. presidents, would have been so bold as to publicly admit that a Saudi journalist’s life is not worth the loss of arms sales.

And it’s true that the armaments relationship between these two countries is long-established and lucrative for U.S. companies, as my own research on the global defense industry shows.

However, the president has it wrong when he argues the U.S. would be “foolish” to use these sales as leverage with the Saudis, claiming they could just get their tanks and fighter jets from other countries. In fact it’s one of the best bargaining chips he has with the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia spent US$69.4 billion on military expenditures in 2017, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the world’s leading research organization on conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. Only the U.S. and China spent more.

But since it doesn’t have an arms industry – like the U.S. and China – Saudi Arabia must import most of that from other countries. That’s why, over the past decade, Saudi Arabia has imported more armaments than every country but India.

And U.S. companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have benefited most from all that spending, making up the 55 percent of its weapons imports from 2008 to 2017.

That has made Saudi Arabia the top buyer of American arms, with 11.8 percent of all sales over that period. In fact, U.S. defense contractors have made almost $90 billion selling arms to Saudi Arabia since 1950.

In recent years, fighter planes like the F-15 and their spare parts have become particularly important to the weapons trade with Saudi Arabia because it needs them to conduct its bombing campaigns in Yemen.

For example, a 2011 contract awarded $30 billion to U.S. defense contractors to produce 84 F-15 jets and other weaponry for the Saudi military. Boeing stands to earn $24 billion of this total, which the company claimed will support over 50,000 U.S. jobs.

As president, Trump clearly hopes that the money continues to pour in and helps him with his “America First” campaign, intended to create jobs for Americans.

It’s no surprise, then, that he made his first foreign trip as president to Saudi Arabia in May 2017. During the trip, he reportedly struck a bargain with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: Trump wouldn’t lecture his kingdom on human rights, and Saudi Arabia would buy more American weapons.

Unfortunately, Trump’s claim to have secured $110 billion in arms sales has not materialized. Although the Saudis signed numerous letters of intent and interest, some of which had been approved by the Obama administration, no new contracts have resulted, due mainly to lower oil prices and the Saudis’ costly war in Yemen.

So in the Khashoggi affair, it appears that Trump is eager to keep to his end of the bargain. He has avoided criticizing the Saudi government over its alleged role in Khashoggi’s disappearance to curry favor with the monarchy over arms sales. Even in the face of Turkish reports that Saudi agents tortured Khashoggi and dismembered his body and U.S. intelligence supporting those allegations, Trump has preferred to blame “rogue killers” for any crime.

In defending this course of action, Trump claimed that “if they don’t buy [weapons] from us, they’re going to buy it from Russia or they’re going to buy it from China or they’re going to buy it from other countries.”

While it’s true that Russia and China are indeed major exporters of armaments, the claim that U.S. weapons can easily be replaced by other suppliers is not – at least not in the short term.

First, once a country is “locked in” to a specific kind of weapons system, such as planes, tanks or naval vessels, the cost to switch to a different supplier can be huge. Military personnel must be retrained on new equipment, spare parts need to be replaced, and operational changes may be necessary.

After being so reliant on U.S. weapons systems for decades, the transition costs to buy from another country could be prohibitive even for oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

The second problem with Trump’s argument is that armaments from Russia, China or elsewhere are simply not as sophisticated as U.S. weapons, which is why they are usually cheaper – though the quality gap is quickly decreasing. To maintain its military superiority in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has opted to purchase virtually all of its weapons from American and European companies.

That is why the U.S. has significant leverage in this aspect of the relationship. Any Saudi threat to retaliate against a ban on U.S. arms sales by buying weapons from countries that have not raised concerns about the Khashoggi disappearance would not be credible. And is probably why, despite worries in the White House, such a threat has not yet been made.

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has developed a global reputation as a moral authority championing human rights.

Yes, there have been many times when realpolitik took priority.

But despite these moments, the U.S. managed also to maintain its authority by advocating respect for human rights as a global norm during the Cold War, and within many repressive regimes ever since.

With Khashoggi, Trump is choosing to give up that mantle completely by showing his priority is purely economic, regardless of the impact on the United States’ global reputation. Such a bald-faced strategy, in my view, sells American values short and weakens U.S. global credibility.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/arms-sales-to-saudi-arabia-give-trump-all-the-leverage-he-needs-in-khashoggi-affair-104998.

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>US president Donald Trump said the United States will exit the Cold-War era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that eliminated a class of nuclear weapons, in a move that is likely to upset Russia.

The INF treaty, negotiated by then-president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and ratified by the US Senate in 1988, required elimination of short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.

“Russia has not, unfortunately, honoured the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” Mr Trump told reporters after a rally in Nevada on Saturday.

Washington believes Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow Moscow to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.

Mr Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development.

China is not a party to the treaty and has invested heavily in conventional missiles as part of an anti-access/area denial strategy, while the INF has banned US possession of ground- launched ballistic missiles or cruise missiles of ranges between 500 and 5,500 km .</s>Donald Trump says the US will pull out of a nuclear treaty with Russia, claiming Moscow has violated it.

The 1987 pact prohibits America and the Kremlin from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile, with a range of 300 to 3-thousand 400 miles.

The US President feels the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty been breached</s>Washington, Oct 21: President Donald Trump has confirmed that the US will pull out of an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that limited the number of missiles in the two nations, accusing Moscow of violating the deal.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty was one of those agreements and is set to expire in the next two years. The 1987 pact helps protect the security of the US and its allies in Europe and the Far East. It prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles. It also covers all land-based missiles, including those carrying nuclear warheads.

"We're going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out," Trump told reporters Saturday in Nevada when asked about the reports that his National Security Advisor John Bolton wants the US to pull out of the three-decade-old treaty. "We’ll have to develop those weapons," he said. The INF treaty was signed between the then US president Ronald Reagan and his USSR counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles. The Pentagon has been supportive of the INF treaty but Defense Secretary James Mattis warned other NATO ministers earlier this month it would no longer be tenable if Russia did not withdraw its Novator ground-based missile, which the US has argued for nearly four years violates the INF range restrictions.

"We are going to terminate the agreement and then we are going to develop the weapons," unless Russia and China agree to a new deal, the US president said. "Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years," Trump said. He asserted that the US is "not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we're not allowed to”. "We'll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let's really get smart and let's none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia's doing it and if China's doing it, and we're adhering to the agreement, that's unacceptable," Trump asserted.

He said the US will not adhere to the agreement, unless others were violating it. Trump alleged that his predecessor Barack Obama had kept quite on this. “I don't know why president Obama didn't negotiate or pull out. And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we're not allowed to," he said.

"We're the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we've honoured the agreement. “If they get smart and if others get smart and they say let's not develop these horrible nuclear weapons, I would be extremely happy with that, but as long as somebody's violating the agreement, we're not going to be the only ones to adhere to it," the US president said.

Russian state news agencies on Saturday cited a foreign ministry source as saying Washington's move to pull out of the treaty is motivated by a dream of a single global superpower. "The main motive is a dream of a unipolar world. Will it come true? No," a foreign ministry source told Ria Novosti state news agency.

The official said that Russia has "many times publicly denounced the US policy course towards dismantling the nuclear deal". Washington "has approached this step over the course of many years by deliberately and step-by-step destroying the basis for the agreement," the official said. NATO ministers issued a joint statement saying the INF agreement "has been crucial to Euro-Atlantic security and we remain fully committed to the preservation of this landmark arms control treaty". But they urged Russia to come clean about the capabilities of its new missile.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. from an arms control agreement with Russia (all times local):

Britain’s defense secretary says his country stands “absolutely resolute” with the United States as President Donald Trump says he’ll pull out from a landmark arms control agreement with Russia.

Gavin Williamson blames Russia for endangering the treaty. He’s calling on the Kremlin to “get its house in order.”

Trump says he’ll exit the agreement because Russia has violated it “for many years” and it’s preventing the U.S. from developing new weapons.

Backing Trump, Williamson tells the Financial Times that Moscow has made a “mockery” of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The 1987 pact prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 miles to 3,400 miles

A top Russian diplomat says President Donald Trump’s intention to withdraw from a landmark treaty on nuclear weapons is a perilous move.

And a Russian senator says the U.S. move to leave the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty would undermine nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as telling state news agency Tass that “this would be a very dangerous step.”

He says the move “will cause the most serious condemnation from all members of the international community who are committed to security and stability.”

Konstatin Kosachev is head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament. He says on Facebook that a U.S. withdrawal from the treaty would mean “mankind is facing full chaos in the nuclear weapons sphere.”

President Donald Trump says he will exit a landmark arms control agreement the United States signed with the former Soviet Union. He says Russia is violating the pact and it’s preventing the U.S. from developing new weapons.

The 1987 pact helps protect the security of the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Far East. It prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 miles to 3,400 miles.

Trump is saying that “Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years.”

The agreement has constrained the U.S. from developing new weapons, but Trump said America will begin developing them unless Russia and China agree not to possess or develop the weapons.</s>President Donald Trump has announced that the US will pull out of a landmark Cold War-era arms control treaty with Russia that limited the number of missiles in the two nations, accusing Moscow of violating the deal.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty was one of those agreements and is set to expire in the next two years. The 1987 pact helps protect the security of the US and its allies in Europe and the Far East.

It prohibits the US and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles. It also covers all land-based missiles, including those carrying nuclear warheads.

“We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” Trump told reporters Saturday in Nevada when asked about the reports that his National Security Advisor John Bolton wants the US to pull out of the three-decade-old treaty.

“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” he said.

The INF treaty was signed between the then US president Ronald Reagan and his USSR counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

The Pentagon has been supportive of the INF treaty but Defense Secretary James Mattis warned other NATO ministers earlier this month it would no longer be tenable if Russia did not withdraw its Novator ground-based missile, which the US has argued for nearly four years violates the INF range restrictions.

“We are going to terminate the agreement and then we are going to develop the weapons,” unless Russia and China agree to a new deal, the US president said.

“Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years,” Trump said.

He asserted that the US is “not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to”.

“We’ll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let’s really get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it, and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable,” Trump asserted.

He said the US will not adhere to the agreement, unless others were violating it.

Trump alleged that his predecessor Barack Obama had kept quite on this. “I don’t know why president Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out. And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to,” he said.

“We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honoured the agreement.

“If they get smart and if others get smart and they say let’s not develop these horrible nuclear weapons, I would be extremely happy with that, but as long as somebody’s violating the agreement, we’re not going to be the only ones to adhere to it,” the US president said.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said Sunday the US’ withdrawal from the treaty would be a dangerous step.

“This would be a very dangerous step that, I’m sure, not only will not be comprehended by the international community but will provoke serious condemnation,” Ryabkov told TASS state news agency.</s>Donald Trump on Saturday announced the US is to pull out of a landmark nuclear agreement with Russia, accusing the Kremlin of violating its terms.

Mr Trump did not offer specific details on how Moscow had violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, but during the past four years America has repeatedly argued that Russia has been in breach of the agreement with its aggressive actions against former Soviet states in Europe.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years," said Mr Trump after a campaign rally in Nevada.

"And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we're not allowed to."

Mr Trump hinted that the only way forward might be to include China in a new treaty.</s>President Trump said Saturday he will withdraw the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, contending that Russia “violated the agreement” and raising the prospect of developing a new set of weapons.

"They have been violating it for many years,” Mr. Trump said after a campaign rally in Nevada. “And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to.”</s>President Donald Trump said on Saturday the United States will exit the Cold-War era treaty that eliminated a class of nuclear weapons due to Russian violations, a move an official in Moscow called a dangerous attempt at blackmail.

ELKO, Nev/MOSCOW: President Donald Trump said Washington will exit the Cold-War era treaty that eliminated a class of nuclear weapons due to Russian violations, triggering a warning of retaliatory measures from Moscow.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, required elimination of land-based short-range and intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles by both countries.

"Russia has not, unfortunately, honoured the agreement so we're going to terminate the agreement and we're going to pull out," Trump told reporters on Saturday after a rally in Nevada.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Sunday that a unilateral U.S. withdrawal would be "very dangerous" and lead to a "military-technical" retaliation.

Gorbachev, now a frail 87-year-old, said it would be a mistake for Washington to quit the treaty, and that it would undermine work he and U.S. counterparts did to end the Cold War Arms race.

"Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?" Interfax news agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.

A Kremlin spokesman said Russian President Vladimir Putin would seek answers about the planned withdrawal when he meets John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser, for scheduled talks in Moscow this week.

U.S. authorities believe Moscow is developing and has deployed a ground-launched system in breach of the INF treaty that could allow it to launch a nuclear strike on Europe at short notice. Russia has consistently denied any such violation.

Trump said the United States will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a halt on development.

China is not a party to the treaty and has invested heavily in conventional missiles, while the INF has banned U.S possession of ground-launched ballistic missiles or cruise missiles of ranges between 500 and 5,500 km (311 and 3,418 miles).

Ryabkov, in comments reported by state-controlled RIA news agency, said if the United States withdrew, Russia would have no choice but to retaliate, including taking unspecified measures of a "military-technical nature".

"But we would rather things did not get that far," RIA quoted him as saying.

TASS news agency quoted him as saying withdrawal "would be a very dangerous step", and it was Washington and not Moscow that was failing to comply with the treaty.

He said the Trump administration was using the treaty in an attempt to blackmail the Kremlin, putting global security at risk. "...We will, of course, accept no ultimatums or blackmail methods," Interfax quoted him as saying.

British defence minister Gavin Williamson, in comments reported by the Financial Times, said London stood "resolute" behind Washington over the issue, and that the Kremlin was making a mockery of the agreement.

However, another of the United States' NATO allies, Germany, voiced misgivings.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that for 30 years the treaty had been a pillar of Europe's security architecture. "We now urge the United States to consider the possible consequences," of quitting the pact, Maas said in a statement issued on Sunday.
U.S. President Donald Trump says that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a 1987 nuclear arms treaty with Russia.