The State Department is treating the fate of the Intermediate Nuclear
Forces (INF) treaty as a fait accompli, though officially the US won’t withdraw from the Cold War-era treat until early February. That withdrawal is built around US claims that Russia is violating the INF, though Russia denies this is the case.
Russia has been trying to save the treaty, to the point that they put the missile in question on public display
for foreign military attaches and the press this week at a military
theme park near Moscow. US officials insist it’s not enough.
US officials are offering a new round of arms control talks in Beijing
next week with Russia, but it doesn’t appear this is going to be in time
to save the INF, with the US still demanding Russia just abandon their
new missiles outright, or give them to the US for American military
testing.
This is expected to go about as well as it did the last several times
the US demanded this. Russia has repeatedly declined and noted that the
US has refused to give them even limited access to certain new US
nuclear assets for compliance questions.
The US is very foolish to pull out of the INF Treaty. It was bad enough when it pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, but this treaty with Russia’s quite more vital to our security and Russia’s, as well as to the entire world. Just because Trotskyists in the White House want to pull out of this vital nuclear arms treaty, it doesn’t mean that POTUS Donald Trump has to follow their lead ..after all, he’s the President, none of the Trotskyists is.
What Trump sorely needs to do is to kick these suicidal warmongers out of the White House – Bonkers Bolton and Pompous Pompeo with them, They should’ve been fired a month ago over the Syria debacle. There’s nothing at all wrong with the INF Treaty, it’s a whole lot better than a dangerous arms race. Trump simply has to accept this treaty as the best way to avoid a planet-destroying 3rd World War. Trashing it is suicidal, pure and simple.