by Stephen Blank and Peter Huessy • December 5, 2018 at 5:00 am
- Russia, evidently not restrained by the agreement, is already building missiles outside the INF treaty, according to an October 29, 2018 report from the Congressional Research Service. The bottom line is: If the Russians do not comply with the INF arms control treaty, there is no treaty to be saved.
- Worse, as China was never a party to the INF treaty, it is deploying thousands of such INF range missiles in the Pacific, thereby putting the USA and its allies at a serious military disadvantage.
- To counter such threats effectively and stand up to the culture of intimidation and threats of both Russia and China, the US needs create a conventional missile and nuclear deterrent capability that is at least on a par with those of Moscow and Beijing. Such deployments, rather than undermining arms control, might even induce Russia and China to negotiate any future arms negotiations with the US in better faith, while simultaneously strengthening US security.
- If created with US allies in the Pacific, such relatively inexpensive and easily produced conventionally armed missiles would, in short order, rebalance the Pacific security situation in the favor of the US and its Indo-Pacific alliances.
The reason the Soviets eventually signed the INF treaty in 1987 was because the US and NATO deployment of hundreds of Pershing and ground launched cruise missiles in Western Europe exemplified NATO solidarity and vitiated the coercive threat that the earlier Soviet SS-20 missile deployments had hoped to secure to prevent a NATO response to potential Soviet aggression. Pictured: Pershing II missiles at Fort Bliss McGregor Range. (Image source: US Dept. of Defense)