Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
9/5/2014
Three former generals are advocating continued U.S. compliance to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty despite allegations that Russia violated the agreement by testing its R-500 cruise missile. The INF Treaty prohibits ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,000 kilometers. In a piece published last week in the magazine National Interest, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson, former deputy commander U.S. Strategic Command, Army Brig. Gen. J. Robert Barnes, senior fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, and Marine Lt. Gen. John Castellaw, president of the Crockett Policy Institute, suggested that the United States should focus its diplomatic efforts on cultivating Russian treaty compliance and auditing it through measures like special meetings of the INF Treaty’s Special Verification Commission, which last occurred in 2003.
Despite increasing tensions after the annexation of Crimea and subsequent Ukraine invasions, the United States and Russia have continued to cooperate on issues like New START implementation, Iran nuclear negotiations and in dismantling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile, the article states. Quashing the treaty could engender a nonchalant attitude toward future treaties, with countries viewing agreements as mere bargaining chips, the former generals wrote.
Authors: More Value to Keeping Russia Part of INF Treaty
The piece challenges the practicality of abrogating the INF treaty, as it states intermediate-range missiles deployed on American soil is “of little use,” and questions NATO member states’ and East Asian allies’ willingness to deploy U.S. nuclear weapons. “Retaliating harshly over Russia’s INF Treaty violation could prompt Russia to suspend New START’s verification regime, denying the United States critical information about Russia’s nuclear-modernization efforts and damaging reliable communications between both countries,” the authors wrote. “Given that U.S. deployment of its own intermediate-range missiles on allied territory would be complicated at best, the United States and its allies derive security benefits from keeping Russia within its INF Treaty obligations. Indeed, those calling for the United States to abrogate the INF Treaty in response to Russia’s noncompliance should consider whether doing so would simply play into Putin’s ‘long game’ of disrupting Western unity in confronting Russian adventurism.”
President Obama should highlight to Congress his Administration’s violation response plans, and should emphasize the importance of arms control to the security of the U.S. and its allies, according to the piece. Formally, the United States has asked Russia to destroy all missiles and launchers involved in tests that violate the INF Treaty. “Moving forward, it will remain in the interest of the United States and Russia—and the international community at large—for Washington and Moscow to avoid allowing their deteriorating relations to disrupt cooperation on global nonproliferation and other international-security issues. It is with this objective in mind that the United States should consider and carefully calibrate its response to Russia’s noncompliance with the INF Treaty to restore the integrity of treaties that are in the national-security interest of the United States,” the piece says.
