- Tweeter
republish
NATO described the situation as " very serious " after the failed meetings between Russia and Alliance representatives on the Intermediate Spacen Weapons (INF) Treaty. The United States and Europeans accused Moscow of producing and using missiles proscribed by the text signed in 1987. " The treaty is really threatened, " said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday. At the beginning of February, Washington will begin the process of withdrawal, which in fact will leave Russia another six months to comply with its obligations, but the general trend is not good, nearly three decades after the end. of the cold war, Europe is once again at risk of being caught in the spiral of the arms race.
Negotiations have yielded nothing, except last-minute turnaround, by February 2, the United States will launch the procedure to exit the Treaty on the Prohibition of Intermediate Range (INF) weapons: that can strike at a distance of between 500 and 5,500 km. For Europe, this is the sign of a " weakening of the strategic framework ", in the words of diplomats.
Clearly, since the end of the Cold War, a number of international rules, standards, and mechanisms have allowed for the oversight of the production, development, and deployment of nuclear or conventional weapons, but these arms control treaties are eroding little by little. small: the United States left the ABM treaty on nuclear weapons in 2002, with the deployment of the missile defense shield in Europe (NMD); and Russia left the CFE treaty on conventional weapons in 2015, after the Ukrainian episode.
New threats in Europe
Experts believe that Russia produces and intends to deploy cruise missiles, (GLCM) on the basis of the mobile system "Iskander", but having a range greater than 500 km. These highly mobile missiles are called " destabilizing and dispersible ", they also benefit from a " design allowing to play on the ambiguity between nuclear and conventional devices ".
Moscow responds that it is only gear with a range limited to 480 kilometers ... The presentation to the press this week by the Russian authorities of such missile tubes, presented as those of a 9M729 "Novator" (SSC-8 according to the nomenclature of NATO), does not seem to have convinced. According to some Western experts: "to unveil a missile in a room, ensuring that it is the right missile, is an operation that does not respond to criticism, it is not an act of transparency, but communication action " .
On the ground, these missiles could give the Russians a range of additional options by allowing them to fire farther, by placing their ground-ground batteries inside their territories, (thus protecting them better) or by reaching more distant targets in Western Europe, such as military bases in the Netherlands or Germany. This attitude has been described as " aggressive " by many countries and makes NATO's Eastern European partners very nervous.
What answers?
In 1987, it was the INF Treaty that put an end to the Euromissile crisis triggered in the 1980s by the deployment of the Soviet SS-20 nuclear warheads targeting Western capitals. On this issue, the Europeans have decided to block behind the United States, it is for the allies to have a united position. They demand strict compliance with the treaty and the destruction of the missiles produced. The most exposed countries could be tempted to provide a " symmetrical military response ", ie to equip themselves with comparable missiles, or to reinforce their anti-missile defenses.
To date, doubts remain about the ability of the US shield installed in Poland and Romania to intercept these devices with flight profiles difficult to predict and can fly at ground level. France, adept of multilateralism, advocates a solution " based on the law ". For example, the revival of an arms control agenda rather than the revival of the arms race.