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In a flash, the US has scrapped the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which safeguarded Europe and the world from a deadly US-Russia arms race. This is particularly bad news for Europeans.
Russia must be feeling a lot like the Native Indians these days with regards to treaties signed with the duplicitous Americans. For the second time in as many decades, the US has gone back on its word, removing another pillar from the global arms reduction architecture.
The Trump administration, in its infinite wisdom,
announced on the weekend
it would freeze US participation in the INF "for 180 days," which, from a military perspective, must be interpreted to mean forever. In the spirit of reciprocity,
Vladimir Putin, expressing regret that Russia "could not save" the Cold War treaty,
said he would be forced to follow suit.The Russian leader emphasized, however, that Moscow would not deploy intermediate or smaller range weapons "until the same type of American weapons" were placed in Europe or elsewhere in the world.
This latest ratcheting up of tensions between Moscow and Washington was wholly avoidable - that is, if avoiding confrontation is a goal of the US. Clearly, it is not. The unpredictable hotheads now dictating foreign policy in the Trump administration, particularly
National Security Advisor John Bolton, a veteran hawk who the
Washington Post recently
called a "serial arms control killer,"
have somehow concluded that playing a game of nuclear chicken on the European continent with Russia is the best way to resolve bilateral issues.
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