In a move that seems timed more or less entirely to add to tensions with Russia, the Obama Administration has announced that it sent a letter to Russia accusing them of violating the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
The issue is a fairly old one, centering on tests Russia did of cruise missiles back in 2008. In January of this year, the US finally informed NATO that they were “conducting a review” of the tests, and it was only today that they finally decided the six-year-old tests were a “violation.”
The 1987 INF Treaty saw both the US and Soviet Union destroy a number of intermediate-range cruise missiles, both nuclear and conventional. Both sides have sought to sidestep the restrictions in different ways, with the US focusing on submarine-launched missiles as a replacement for ground-based ones.
When President George W. Bush began pushing for missile defense systems in Eastern Europe in the middle of last decade, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials suggested Russia could withdraw from the INF over the deployments, and the tests of the cruise missiles in 2008 appear to have been preparation for such a move.
Ultimately, Russia did not withdraw from the INF, and rather developed a multi-stage missile that attempted to comply with the letter of the treaty, as with the American sub-launched missiles, while adding capabilities meant to be banned.
That the US is just happening to get around to complaining about the 2008 tests now, in the middle of a diplomatic row over Ukraine, suggests officials are just trying to make matters worse.
I'm sure Mr Ditz is right in seeing this as just another part of the pressure on Putin and I doubt if very much will be made of it. Similarly, we have heard recently about mass graves in rebel-held areas and human rights violations in those areas (so much for the wonderful "referenda" held there!) and now, talk of prosecutions for organ harvesting in Kosovo. Like Donetsk-Lugansk (to say nothing of "Novorossiya" and "Eurasia"!), Kosovo was an earlier neocon scam designed to drive a wedge between Serbia and the EU which blew up in the neocons' (and lot's of other people's) faces. With every day that passes, Putin paints himself more and more into a corner, something no Soviet leader was ever so stupid as to do.
USA are searching war with Russia.All possibilities are used.Sanctions are first step as cold war.When Kiev will kill all separatists with the blessing of Obama ,Ukrainian army will march to regain Crimea.Then the WW3 will start.
Obama is a cold war promoter
Look who is talking, USG been violating every aspects in human abuses, killing of innocent people from Vietnam war to Yugoslavia to Iraq to Libya to Syria to killing of the Palestinians by free weapons given to Israel and USG other friends, starting wars in Ukraine by paying 5 billion dollars to Neo fascism and creating caliphate, a barbarian regimes in Iraq and Syria, but when it comes to USG sidelining their falsified democracy, their deceptive politics, their manipulative policies then USG needs to find a new enemy, this time is the Russia which violates 1987 nuclear treaty which Gorbachev signed with gun to his head, Ronald Reagan did threaten USSR, if you don't sign what we give you to sign we will bomb Russia to ruin, we will make a smaller atomic and hydrogen bomb to destroy the cities of USSR and countries that are controlled by communism or socialism in Europe. In a radio interview Ronald Reagan had said, "I wish I could start bombing Russia" or something in that nature.
USG, then as now politics are anti freedom from capitalism brutal social politics and social economics system, by USG being part of the social dominating elements, the democracy has lost its meaning which is the reason for USG-England being at war for last 65 years.