In 2019, the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles - the INF Treaty ceased to exist. This document was signed on December 8, 1987, as part of the program of "new political thinking" of the last head of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, which was aimed at defusing the Western countries and the Eastern Bloc, as well as ending the Cold War.
Then the USSR and the USA agreed to completely destroy ground-based missiles, the flight range of which ranged from 500 km to 5.5 thousand km, and launchers. By 1991, the Soviet Union disposed of R-12 and R-14, RK-55 ballistic missiles, the Pioneer, Temp-S complexes, and also (as a goodwill gesture) the Oka complex, the range of which did not exceed 400 km The Pentagon, in turn, got rid of the Pershing systems and ground versions of the Tomahawk cruise missile.
Despite the fact that Russia, as the successor of the USSR, over the past decades has followed the terms of the treaty, Washington regularly accused Moscow of violating it. In 2014, US President Barack Obama sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin in which for the first time at the level of heads of state he accused the Russian side of violating the terms of the agreement.
Harvested exit
Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the agreement has been discussed in the United States since 2017, and in 2018 statements about the intention of the American side to denounce the agreement were made by senior representatives of the Donald Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then National Security Advisor to the President John Bolton.
- Rocket launch of the American system HIMARS
- © Sgt. Bill Boecker / US Army
On December 4, 2018, Secretary of State Pompeo said that if Russia does not stop violating the treaty imposed by Washington, the United States will unilaterally withdraw from the INF Treaty. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin recalled that Washington first announced its intention to withdraw from the agreement and only after that began to justify its decision, shifting responsibility to Russia.
“First, after all, the American side announced that it intends to withdraw from the treaty on intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, and then they began to look for justifications why they should do this. The most important justification is that we are breaking something. Moreover, as usual, no evidence of violations on our part is provided, ”the Russian leader said.
In mid-January 2019, negotiations were held in Geneva over the problems of the treaty, but they did not bring any results, since the American side put forward unrealistic demands on Russia regarding the 9M729 missile for the Iskander complexes, in particular, to completely destroy all its samples.
Formal reason
Washington claimed that Moscow, in violation of the provisions of the treaty, tested the 9M729 missile for the Iskander complex, whose flight range allegedly exceeds 500 km.
- Launching the cruise missile of the OTRK Iskander as part of the Grom-2019 SKSHU
- © Frame: video of the Ministry of Defense of Russia
The Russian side has consistently refuted such allegations. At the end of January 2019, the Russian Ministry of Defense organized a briefing for foreign attaches, during which it showed the military representatives of foreign powers a missile and revealed part of its characteristics.
Representatives of the Russian defense department during the event said that 9M729 is a modernized version of the 9M728 missile, which is part of the Iskander-M complex. The maximum flight range of 9M729 is 480 km. This is 10 km less than the similar indicator 9M728 and does not contradict the allowable missile range established by the INF Treaty. However, military attaches and representatives of the United States and NATO countries ignored the briefing.
Later, the official representative of the American diplomatic mission in Moscow, Andrea Kalan, said that Russia would never be able to convince the States and NATO that the 9M729 missile does not violate the provisions of the INF Treaty.
“Since the demonstration of the rocket was carried out by Russia, its representatives distorted information about its technical characteristics in order to give credibility to its history,” Kalan said in an interview with RBC.
Arms Race Return
On February 1, 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the start of the withdrawal process. In his statement, he accused Russia of "unpunished violation of the INF Treaty" and of "secretly developing and deploying a banned missile system."
On February 2, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would suspend participation in the treaty in response to US actions. Putin also instructed not to conduct new disarmament negotiations with Washington until the States are ready for an “equitable, meaningful dialogue.”
It is worth noting that throughout 2019, NATO also blamed the termination of the INF Treaty on Russia, despite the fact that the United States was the first to withdraw from it. This position was confirmed at the jubilee 70th summit of the North Atlantic Alliance in London, which was held in early December 2019.
“We are taking and will continue to carefully and responsibly take measures in response to the deployment of new medium-range missiles by Russia, which led to the termination of the INF Treaty and pose significant risks to Euro-Atlantic security,” the text of the London declaration says.
Vladimir Putin sent the leaders of Germany and France a proposal to establish a moratorium on the deployment of INF Treaty in Europe, but they rejected this proposal.
As HSE professor Dmitry Evstafiev emphasized in a conversation with RT, the termination of the INF Treaty for the international security system means a sharp decrease in the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in Europe.
“The INF Treaty is a first-strike nuclear weapon with a short reaction time, which means it can disarm the enemy. Therefore, the main thing that happened due to the denunciation of the treaty was a sharp decrease in the nuclear threshold in Europe, in a region where the use of nuclear weapons or delivery vehicles was previously considered impossible, ”the political scientist explained.
In a conversation with RT, military expert Yuri Knutov noted that the termination of the INF Treaty for the international security system means a return to the US attempt to impose a military threat and talk with Russia from a position of strength.
“The planned deployment of medium- and shorter-range missiles in Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan, as well as Trump’s desire to buy Greenland, where Washington was already trying to build a powerful missile base in the 1950s, demonstrates that Russia will end up in the zone after the treaty’s termination reachability for American medium and shorter range missiles, ”the expert emphasized.
New rockets
Almost immediately after the United States withdrew from the treaty (Washington officially discontinued its participation on August 2, 2019), the US military began to test new missiles that had previously been banned by the INF Treaty. So, just two weeks after the denunciation of the treaty, a non-nuclear ground-based cruise missile was tested on the island of San Nicholas (California).
- Hypersonic ballistic missile
- © Lockheed Martin Corporation
Vladimir Putin subsequently noted that with such a step, the American side actually admitted that it violated the agreement, because for several months they did not solve such problems.
“I think that the fact that very quickly after the announcement of the US withdrawal experienced such a missile - a medium-range ground-based missile - indicates that they have been working on this for a long time ... This means that they have been working for at least several years. And all the rest - the pretext for an exit was searched, it was found, ”the president emphasized at a meeting of the Valdai international discussion club.
New tests took place on December 12 - the head of the Pentagon, Mark Esper, said that the rocket went from concept to testing in just nine months. The Pentagon also reported that the rocket detached from the launcher, flew over 500 km and fell into the ocean.
It is worth noting that in Russia they were also worried about the possibility of the RSMD being returned to service as a mirrored response. In this regard, Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu instructed to develop a ground-based version of the Caliber naval cruise missile.
According to Dmitry Evstafiev, the denunciation of the treaty means the actual dismantling of the international security system and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
“The INF Treaty was considered an untouchable, indestructible agreement. It turned out that there were no untouchable agreements, systems of arms restrictions in the world. In fact, we are facing the prospect of having an unlimited arms race, ”said the political scientist.
In turn, Yuri Knutov noted that now the situation is different from the situation of the Cold War before the INF Treaty in that Russia has more modern air defense systems.
“Like, for example, the S-400, the“ Shell ”of the new modification, the Buk-M3, which are automatically able to deal with such missiles. Today, Russia has means of protection, but they do not 100% guarantee the defeat of goals and in fact raise the question that the Russian Federation will have to strike back at decision centers, including the United States, which will mean a global nuclear war, which can lead to the destruction of all life on earth, ”the expert explained.
According to Yuri Knutov, Russia also has a significant advantage due to the latest developments in the field of supersonic weapons.
“There is a prospect that in the foreseeable future a new agreement will be concluded limiting the spread of missile weapons. But it will be associated with the development of the latest Russian weapons systems, which are not in the West, and not with the peace of the United States. When the United States realizes that Russian hypersonic weapons pose a tremendous threat to their existence, they will agree to a treaty, as was the case with START-1, START-2, ”the expert concluded.