Nuke ‘em High!

In the mid-1980s, as nuclear missiles were adding multiple warheads, shorter range missiles were capable of delivering a quick Russian nuclear first strike against Europe… and vice versa. Tensions were high. “By the time President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader at the time, negotiated the deal to ban the weapons in 1987, the intermediate-range missiles had come to be seen as a hair trigger for nuclear war because of their short flight times — as little as 10 minutes.

“This was particularly troubling to the Soviet command, which could be destroyed by a ‘bolt from the blue’ strike before it could order a retaliatory attack. Partly in response to this shortcoming, Moscow developed a ‘dead hand’ trigger to fire its arsenal at the United States without an order from the leadership, based on computers interpreting radiation and seismic sensors.

“The treaty prohibited land-based cruise or ballistic missiles with ranges between 311 miles and 3,420 miles. It did not cover air- or sea-launched weapons, such as the American Tomahawk and Russian Kalibr cruise missiles fired from ships, submarines or airplanes, although those missiles fly similar distances.” New York Times, February 1^st. That “dead hand” was a Russian automated system was purportedly able to detect a strike much faster than human analysis… and launch a counterstrike without a human decision. What could possibly go wrong?

The result was the 1987 U.S.-Russian Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that banned such weapons. In the mid-1980s, there were an estimated 65 thousand nuclear warheads scattered around the world. Though the INF and other treaties, today there are an estimated 8 thousand such warheads deployed, too many but a whole lot fewer than in the crazy 1980s. 

Given Vladimir Putin’s rather obvious desire to recapture those nations that were either part of the Soviet Union or well-within the Soviet Bloc, lost when the USSR collapsed, combined with his obvious desire to play the United States and ramp back up to returning as an equal military/nuclear power, he just could not help himself. Putin ordered the design and construction of a whole new generation of medium-range missiles, a direct violation of the IFN Treaty.

Meanwhile, the Russians claim to have developed, soon to be fully deployed, a missile capable of flying 20 times faster than the speed of sound, unmatched by any other missile, one that can automatically evade any current and expected technology that could be used to shoot it down. It’s called the Avangard. American sensors detected a ship-based launch of a Russian missile that could achieve Mach 8 (8 times the speed of sound, 2 miles a second, 6138 mph) on December 10^th. Putin was bragging to the world. One minor catch: this missile was a flagrant violation of the INF Treaty. 

Seems that Putin has been violating that INF Treaty for quite a while. “According to information dating to the Obama administration, it seems so. During the 2014 crisis in Ukraine, the United States accused Russia of violating the treaty by deploying prohibited tactical nuclear weapons designed to intimidate Europe and the former Soviet states that have aligned with the West.

  

“President Barack Obama personally informed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in a letter that the United States believed the Russians were violating the treaty, but that he wanted to resolve the issue through dialogue and preserve the accord.”  NY Times. Simply-put, by violating that treaty, Russia has developed its nuclear capacity beyond U.S. weapons and weapons-defense technology. 

On February 1^st, Department of State Secretary Mike Pompeo formally announced that the United States was withdrawing from the INF Treaty. Putin responded in kind a day later. “But adding to a sense that the broader architecture of nuclear disarmament has started to unravel, Mr. Putin also said that Russia would build weapons previously banned under the treaty and would no longer initiate talks with the United States on any matters related to nuclear arms control.” NY Times, February 2^nd. China immediately noted that this turn of events could easily trigger a new nuclear arms race, the likes of which the world has never seen before.

The Trump administration strategy suggests that, for example, that if too many people break the law (like murderous gun homicides in Chicago), the effort should not be to punish the perpetrators but simply to repeal the law itself. Trump dislikes multinational treaties. He thinks even the multination European Union should be dissolved and somehow believes that multiparty negotiations are a waste of time. He applies his business deal experience, bilateral agreements, to global issues. However, instead of pressuring Russia, ramping up the consequences for a breach of that INF Treaty, Trump has simply let Russia off the hook to continue to grow its nuclear arsenal with no real leverage to stop the obvious. 

To anyone schooled in international arms limitations negotiations, everything about Trump’s approach is a powerful reflection of both inexperience and a lack of even trying to understand the underlying variables. Putin’s pursuit of his new superweapons has received a greenlight from Donald Trump!

              I’m Peter Dekom, and Donald Trump is also spearheading the new going-forward denuclearization talks with Kim Jong-un; is anyone concerned?