Following Friday’s announcement that the US is withdrawing from the
Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has announced Russia will reciprocate and also stop following the treaty as well.
The US had been accusing Russia of a “violation” of the treaty based on
the disputed range of a single new missile design. The INF forbade
nuclear missiles with ranges between 500 km and 5,000 km.
Putin says that now that the treaty is being scrapped, Russia will specifically design new weapons within the INF range
as part of their response to the US scrapping the treaty. With the US
already out of the INF, they can no longer claim it’s a violation, after
all.
This raises questions about why the US bothered to scrap INF at all, as
doing so only encouraged Russia to go from a single putative violation
to openly designing missiles that would’ve violated the treaty.
While scrapping the INF means the US can also develop such missiles,
it’s unlikely they will develop any for actual deployment. The US
replaced intermediate-range land missiles with submarine-based ones
after the INF began, and the land-based missiles would only be in range
of Russia if they were staged out of Europe. European countries after
unlikely to eagerly host US nuclear arms aimed specifically at Russia,
as it would make them a target.
If it’d be really dangerous I’m sure the military would stop us. Or the civilians. Someone.
It’s been going on for 70 years and we’re still here. And the people running things don’t appeared worried. So I guess it’s under control.
Sometimes I worry the place suddenly goes boom and nobody ever figures out what went wrong but it must be just me.
Not at all-you are right. Watch the Real News Network series of recent interviews with Daniel Ellsberg to reassure yourself and keep worrying!
Thanks. I know Ellsberg and I was not really describing my own thoughts , rather thoughts I consider representative.
My own thoughts on the matter are much more radical.
Of course, nobody is worried. There us no leadership — just bureacracy. War is a bureaucratic operation. Thinking not required. Weapons manufacturers ecstatic— Wall Stree ecstatic. After all, there is a glut of goods and services people are buying less and less, as debts grow more and more. We have global overproduction and global underconsumption. Contries like China and Russis can move funds into military, or foreign investments, as it is just a consumption by other name. But we have debt — both on state level, corporate and personal level,
Getting out of INF is corporate happiness and lame democrats are moaning — while really cheering — just so they can blame one more thing on Trump.
But all it will take is one unpredictable variabe, one event out of the ordinary — to launch nuclear annihilation.
INF was only constraining Russia, never US. It was designed to protect Europe from Russian short-range strike, and teoretically Russia from European land based short range missiles. US immediatelly increased its submarine nuclear assets, thus making the distance irrelevant. In Baltics, or north, from Norwegian borders, we have sumarines with a view of Russian beaches. US then started land based missile assets in Europe to protect from “Iran”. This is a violation, as missile “defence” becomed offence in a matter of minutes configuration. A short range missile is a missile, and there are no missiles specializing in defence alone.
The only people who SHOULD worry, are Europeans, But their bureaucracy is no different then ours. It will use procedures, charts and graphs — to deal with reality. It knows nothing else.
I think that the reason for cancellation is — our bureacracy found itself jolted and disoriented with a number of things —. Russian new wespons, Chinese weapons, fallling back in space technology. They want a dialogue — but do not know how to do it, unless they appear big and bad. They must set agenda. Or kick start inmovation. “Innovate, or Heads Off”, scream out Red Wueens and Perfumed Princess. So, Trump may get his talking to Russia after all.
But since his every move has been a forced one, his reelection prospects are dimming.
But demicrats better be carefull what they wish for — they will not have a subdued Russia to deal with. Russia will be better off without worrying about Trump’s good intentions.
I was talking about groupthink effects . It’s an entirely social behaviour that if nobody seems alarmed about something then it is hard to be alarmed yourself. This applies to the individual citizen who sees nobody is alarmed as wel as to the warmongering politician who feels that he or she can afford to monger because there is safety in history and the military know what they are doing.The military also feel safe because apparently they are still alive.Bureaucracy plays a factor too because it distributes responsibility and reduces ones own responsibility and indeed leadership can overcome that.
This is precisely the era we live in. Groupthink is reinforced by media,
It is all one enourmous bureacracy— or a collective of bureaucracies. This is the only way bureacracy knows how to function — have their procedure manuals, computer algorithms, decision trees, hierarchy. War mongeriing is a comfortable business, as per our charts, we have the span of control that indicates we are in control. Anyone thinking differently in that machinery has no chance.
All it will take is one out of the box event. One black swan. Will that expose their bureaucratic feet of clay? Iraq did not. In spite of nearly universal mea culpa — same people, same power structure stays on, group think as solid as ever. May be just a few more groups added to the mix.
thanks for explanation of defense versus offense missiles; was not aware of that.
Russia`s answer
Meeting between Putin, Lavrov and Shoigu.
“Listen to me now! ” Remember March 1, 2018. The USA’s toys are ALL vulnerable to Russia’s advanced defenses. Even the passive Europeans will not be stupid enough to locate nukes to be targeted by Russia, so the USA’s escalating expensive “improvements” will serve no purpose but adding to the profits of the MIC, and Russia carefully budgets for quality, not showing off.