Undoing the Damage of Trump’s Nuclear Blunder
The U.S. has a choice: forge a new INF deal with Russia, or face a global arms race.
Keeping the peace?
Photographer: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
The Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the 1987 treaty with Russia on intermediate-range nuclear forces is a mistake. For all its faults, the pact was one of the West’s great Cold War triumphs, and it continued to serve U.S. interests. Fortunately, if the administration is willing to think again, there’s a way to correct the error.
The White House said the treaty had to go mainly because Russia has been cheating. The U.S. has evidence that Moscow violated the agreement by developing and deploying ground-based cruise missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,500 miles. Russia denies that the systems breach the pact, and has made an unfounded counterclaim that the U.S. has been doing proscribed research.