JRL NEWSWATCH: “The end of an era? The INF Treaty, New START, and the future of strategic stability” – Brookings/ Frank A. Rose

Iskander Missile with Launch file photo

“On February 1, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States was suspending its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and notified Russia and the other treaty parties that the United States would be withdrawing from the treaty in six months …. Pompeo said: ‘Russia remains in material breach of its treaty obligations not to produce, possess, or flight-test a ground-launched intermediate-range cruise missile system with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.’ … Putin stated that Russia was also suspending its obligations under the treaty. Unless something dramatic occurs, it appears that the INF Treaty, signed in 1987 by … Reagan and … Gorbachev, will likely come to an end this summer.File Photo of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan at Table Signing Documents … a symptom of a much larger problem: the collapse of the existing U.S.-Russia strategic stability framework. The key question now is whether the Trump administration can effectively manage the demise of the INF Treaty in a way that 1) maintains the cohesion of U.S. alliances; 2) upholds a level of strategic stability with Russia in the near- to mid-term; and 3) facilities the transition to a new framework for strategic stability that incorporates new actors (e.g., China) and emerging technologies (e.g., space and cyber). …”

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