President Donald Trump has threatened
to pull the plug on one
of the most important arms treaties passed 30 years.
One side has not been adhering to it,
we have but one side hasn't.
Signed in 1987, between Russia and America,
the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
otherwise known as the INF contributed to the beginning
of the end of the Cold War.
For more than a decade, Russia has been cheating the terms
of the deal.
But what would be the death of the nuclear pact mean
for world peace.
.
In 1987, after the years of the negotiation
the super powers agreed to meet.
Today, I for the United States and the General Secretary
for the Soviet Union have signed the first agreement ever
to eliminate an entire class of US
and Soviet nuclear weapons.
We have made history.
Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev agreed to destroy
and never again produce land based missiles with a range
of 500 to 5,500 miles.
Some politicians and journalists
are already speculating as to who has won.
I reject this approach.
It is a throwback to old thinking.
At the time The Economist reported
that the world has crossed the Rubicon
of nuclear disarmament
but warned that the west should trend carefully
because west in public opinion may be lulled
into thinking that Russia is no longer an adversary.
In the Department of Defense, we've viewed Gorbachev
as someone we could do business with.
He was looking to the future and understood
it could not be based on confrontation with the west.
Frank Miller spent 30 years working
for the US government on national security
and negotiated nuclear deals with the Russians.
This is what the INF Treaty was all about.
But 30 years after the landmark treaty,
both sites blame the other for breaking the agreement.
In 1987 we were looking to work together
and there was a spirit of cooperation.
There is now a spirit
of confrontation emanating from Moscow.
Putin is using his intelligence services
in his cyber services to try to disrupt events
in the west and today the Russians actually believe
that nuclear weapons are useful weapons of war
and certainly they use them all the time as weapons
of coercion and intimidation.
Over the past decade, Russia has been testing
and deploying missiles that break the deal.
The Russians say that it is America
that's broken he treaty,
claiming NATO's defense shield in Romania and Poland
has the capacity
to fire intermediate-range missiles into Russia.
Relations between the United States and Russia now
are poor and are getting worse.
We need to make clear to Mr. Putin that aggression
against the United States is not a policy goal
he can pursue.
Both sides have six months to negotiate
before the deal is disbanded.
But if the treaty collapses,
the consequences could be severe.
Other countries who are not signatories to the INF
including China, India, and Israel
have been stockpiling missiles.
The US and Russia may look to catch up,
sparking an arms race that could jeopardize what is left
of global arms control.
Most worryingly, the potential death of the INF
has called into question the new start treaty,
a pact between Russia and America that deals
with long range nuclear missiles.
If this is not a greed,
there would be no constraint on the nuclear forces
of America and Russia for the first time
in almost 50 years.