Why Trump and Putin Blew Up Cold War Arms Treaty

A landmark Cold War-era weapons treaty between the U.S. and Russia has collapsed. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty banned an entire category of weapons: ground-launched intermediate-range missiles, which were then deployed across Europe. Washington says Russia has violated the treaty, a charge Moscow denies and turns back on the U.S. The Trump administration says it would like to bring China into a replacement deal, an idea Beijing rejects. The treaty’s demise, confirmed by both sides Aug. 2, raises fears of a revival of the nuclear arms race in Europe and the start of one in Asia.

Signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, it was a high point for superpower arms-control efforts. It had been preceded by a spiraling arms race: In response to Soviet deployments in the late 1970s of SS-20 intermediate-range nuclear missiles that could strike Western Europe, the U.S. put missiles of its own in West Germany, Italy and the U.K. After years of talks on limiting the weapons, Reagan and Gorbachev reached agreement to eliminate them entirely. The INF treaty, which had no expiration date, called for both sides to destroy and never deploy again ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (300 to 3,500 miles), either nuclear or conventional. The pact allows similar weapons fired from ships or aircraft. A total of 2,692 missiles were destroyed under the treaty in the first three years, according to the U.S. State Department.