From WAR ROOM – Online Journal of the U.S. Army War College
President Trump’s October announcement that the U.S. will “pull out” of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty set off a flurry of opinion pieces and assessments by numerous experts. Predictably, two camps emerged. One group applauded the decision, calling the treaty a Cold War relic that should be scrapped as it handcuffed the U.S. security in a changed threat environment. The other group saw it as a signal for a new and costly arms race that would lead to a more dangerous world. Both took the view that the decision was entirely one of the executive branch’s making. Whatever the merits or failings of the President’s decision, the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty indicates something significant in the conduct of foreign policy towards Russia and China under President Trump: an emerging alignment between the President and the Republican majority in the Senate. This alignment leaves behind the internal party disagreements that characterized U.S.-Russia policy when the President took office almost two years ago. Combined with the U.S. hardening stance toward China, withdrawing from the INF may mark the beginning of a new period in international security.
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev ratified the INF Treaty in December 1987, and the Senate consented unanimously five months later. The accord required that the United States and Soviet Union eliminate all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers within three years after the Treaty entered into force, and that neither party possess such weapons in the future. The rationale for the Trump administration’s decision to upend the agreement was that the Russians have been violating it since 2014, which the Russians deny.
Can the President simply withdraw from the INF Treaty?
Continue reading here.