With the expiration of a key nuclear treaty on Friday, the Department of Defense is now free to pursue intermediate-range nuclear weapons, but some are concerned that a new arms race is on the horizon.
The Pentagon is ready to test a new non-nuclear mobile-launched cruise missile, according to a CNN report, which is a direct counter to Russia’s development of similar capabilities while the treaty was still in place.
President Trump announced he was removing the U.S. from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty earlier this year. The agreement, originally signed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1987, effectively banned both sides from deploying missiles between the ranges of 310 and 3,400 miles.
“Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement, so we’re going to terminate the agreement. We’re going to pull out,” Trump said in February.
Though the Kremlin has denied it, U.S. officials and national security experts have long suspected Russia of violating the agreement. President Barack Obama accused Russia of breaching the agreement in 2014 after it tested a cruise missile that fell within the treaty’s range restrictions. He reportedly considered removing the U.S. from the agreement, but ultimately chose not to after being pressured by European leaders.
“Russia has been cheating on this agreement for about a decade. It’s already built and deployed missiles in this category,” Matthew Kroenig, deputy director for strategy at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center, told the Washington Examiner.
China and Russia are both known to have intermediate-range missiles, but so does Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, according to Kroenig.
“So the United States is really the only major power on earth that doesn’t have missiles in this category,” he said.
But some are concerned that without the decades-old treaty in place, a potential arms race could result, particularly given recent tensions between the U.S. and Russia.
“Withdrawing from the INF treaty with absolutely nothing in its place to contain the expansion of these destabilizing systems is a serious mistake and could spark a new arms race,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in February.
Kroenig denied U.S. missile development would start a new arms race, noting, “If there’s an arms race going on, the U.S. has been sitting it out.” If anything, he said he believes it will restore deterrence for the U.S. and its allies, particularly in Asia.
“Such systems could contribute to deterrence by reducing China’s confidence that attacks on U.S. bases and ships could significantly reduce U.S. combat power in the Western Pacific for a period of time,” Chris Dougherty, a former Pentagon official and current senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, told the Washington Examiner.
Some have called for a new agreement to be signed between the U.S. and Russia in order to prevent further proliferation of intermediate range missiles, but Dougherty is skeptical.
“The United States is reluctant to reenter a bilateral treaty with the Russians, given that the Russians cheated on the past agreement and that great-power competition is now a trilateral affair with China,” he said.
“On this latter point, China is extremely unlikely to relinquish or limit its intermediate-range systems, since they are so vital to China’s warfighting strategy.”
China has prioritized missile development as a cost-effective counter to superior U.S. capabilities. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is believed to have approximately 2,000 missiles that fall into the intermediate-range category.
Given the current deployment of these missiles across the globe, Dougherty agreed that an arms race the likes of which were seen in the Cold War is unlikely.
