... in hand with arms control talks. The process of settling Germany’s post-war borders, the status of West Berlin, the success of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe were tangibly conducive to concluding ABM and SALT I treaties, the INF Treaty, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, START I, radical mutual withdrawal and elimination of tactical nuclear weapons of the U.S. and the USSR/Russia. The European military and political détente enshrined in the 1997 Founding Act and the 1999 Istanbul Document was encouraging radical reduction of nuclear weapons and bolstering the stability of the superpowers’ strategic relations in the 1990s–2000s ...
... United States but between the USSR and NATO. For their part, NATO allies would have included Soviet medium range and tactical nuclear weapons. Neither the Americans, or the two other NATO countries or the U.S.S.R could agree on that. Today's situation ... ... regarding such missiles is promote the moratorium that Putin recently proposed: missiles that were banned under the denounced 1987 INF Treaty should not be deployed in the European part of Russia and in the rest of Europe. For verification Putin suggested introducing on-site inspections. This, of course, is very different ...
The best possible next step for European countries would be to try to reach out, formally or informally, to Russia to clarify the technical parameters of the proposed moratorium
The Russian moratorium proposal
On 2
nd
February 2019, when the United States announced that it intended to withdraw from the INF Treaty on 2
nd
August, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a
meeting
with ministers Shoigu and Lavrov to discuss the possible weapons that might be developed in response, and
framed a ‘formula’
for the moratorium on their deployment:
“…Russia ...
... destroying the treaty system? Can the expired agreements (ABM Treaty, the CFE Treaty, the INF Treaty) be followed by the endangered START and TOS and then by the CTBT, Non-Proliferation... ... there are already attempts to undermine the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Russia is already being accused of secretly conducting some tests.
The Non-Proliferation... ... Treaty as such. The first is the provision for non-nuclear states: you do not develop nuclear weapons, and we help you with peaceful nuclear development; the second provision...
... to do it eventually anyway. Washington’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty is an opportunity to start considering ways to do this, because the demise of the treaty has a direct bearing on all members of the nuclear club.
And fourth, in this situation Russia and the United States should focus on preparations for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Withdrawal from the INF Treaty and, more importantly, refusal to extend the New START Treaty would create major risks for the global non-proliferation regime, and the next NPT Review Conference may turn out to be the last. This will not benefit Moscow or Washington, and ...
In a wide-ranging interview, Russia’s Ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov speaks about nuclear arms control, ... ... treaties were supplemented by further ones like SALT 1, 2 and 3, and, in 1987, the
INF Treaty
. We were also proposing further agreements, both bilaterally with the US... ... question: which country does NATO consider to be a greater threat, Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, or Iran, which does not. He thought for a while and said: I still think...
... which the New START will not be Renewed by 2021 and will thus Cease to Exist
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), one of the pillars of strategic stability in the world, fell apart before our very eyes. And now the foundations ... ... we started preparing ourselves for the possibility of waking up in March 2021 in a world where there are no restrictions on nuclear weapons.
The potential disintegration of New START would not be catastrophic for Russia, all the more so because the country could derive some benefit from the “inter-treaty” period and approach the next,...
... CTBT, START III, INF and ABM treaties on the road to the dustbin of history that is growing every year.
Dmitry Stefanovich:
The INF Treaty: Mirror or Abyss?
For a long time, sober-minded experts did not want to believe in even the hypothetical possibility of the death of arms control. Both in Russia and the West they proceeded from the premise that “this cannot be because this can never be.” Hence, they focused on ... ... of their authors than to their sense of responsibility. Some claim that a nuclear war is not so horrible after all and that nuclear weapons do not differ in principle from conventional arms. Others say that to revive nuclear arms control the human race ...
The possibility of countries like Russia and the United States negotiating a new arms control treaty will be nearly impossible considering the current geopolitical ... ... countries like China after deciding unilaterally to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Ivanov said.
The INF Treaty could have been saved because it had mechanisms to address issues disputed among the involved parties of the accord,...
... RAS Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies, retired Major General, RIAC expert, noted that the U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty threatens New START — an agreement between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive ... ... a new treaty,” said Zolotarev.
The speaker underscored the very vague prospects of The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: “While Russia and the U.S. were engaged in maintaining strategic stability in a bilateral format discussing ...
