The United States officially withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty last week, ending a 30-year ban on a class of weapons that both the United States and the then Soviet Union, now Russia, recognized as particularly dangerous and destabilizing.
These land-based shorter- and intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles pose a hair-trigger threat to NATO and Russia by reducing decision and warning time for leaders, Ernest Moniz and Sam Nunn, co-chairs of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said. Now, with the dissolution of the INF Treaty, a key guardrail has come down, and the risks of nuclear blunder have gone up.
“As a result, the United States, our allies, and Russia will be less secure, and the world less safe. The costs of an accelerating nuclear arms race are unacceptably high. As the two countries with the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia have a responsibility to reduce nuclear risks,” Moniz and Nunn said.
They urge U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to intensify talks to reduce nuclear dangers. Specifically, they recommend extending the New START Treaty through 2026. Without New START, there will be no limits on nuclear forces and no verification procedures for either nation. The two leaders should also agree on core nuclear principles vital to mutual security and discuss additional measures to address new kinds of threats – such as new types of strategic nuclear systems, non-strategic nuclear weapons, space, cyber and other non-nuclear capabilities. In addition, they should also work with European allies to reduce the number of nuclear weapons deployed in and near Europe.
“The end of the INF Treaty is symptomatic of the accelerating breakdown in dialogue and agreements between the United States and Russia on issues of existential importance. Both governments must take concrete steps to reverse this dangerous decline and decisively confront the problems that threaten our mutual security. Congress and our allies must support this strategic reengagement with Russia as a necessary step to avoid crises and reduce nuclear risks that are no longer ‘unthinkable,’” Moniz and Nunn said.