US 'determined' to leave nuclear treaty with Russia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the United States is determined to leave a landmark Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty with Moscow, despite warnings that the move will trigger a new nuclear arms race.

Lavrov said on Friday that the Trump administration has made its decision and will leave the treaty "very soon."

US President Donald Trump has said that Washington would withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which was signed towards the end of Cold War in 1987 by then President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Trump also vowed to rebuild his country's nuclear arsenal.

The treaty – seen as a milestone in ending the Cold War arms race between the two superpowers – banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers and led to the elimination of nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles.

Trump cited Russia’s “violations” of the deal as the reason behind the plan to exit the INF. “We’ll have to develop those weapons. We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who held talks with US National Security Adviser John Bolton in Moscow on Tuesday,  said he would be forced to respond in kind and act to restore the balance of military power should Washington choose to exit the agreement.

“The US withdrawal from the INF, which has not been officially announced so far, meanwhile such an intention has already been revealed. But it became clear from the negotiations in Moscow and during the meeting of President Putin with John Bolton that this decision has been made but it is yet to be formalized. That will happen either very soon or in a month or month and a half."

According to Lavrov, during the meeting between Putin and Bolton, the president “reminded that this bad cycle was triggered when the USA withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,” in 2002, under then-President George W. Bush.

“That forced us to start developing items which will secure parity and will not allow the USA to put at risk our security and our strategic forces of nuclear deterrence by deploying the global missile defense system,” Lavrov added.

Lavrov warned that in the wake of Washington’s withdrawal from the treaty, which will also lead to halting prolongation of the START III treaty, “there will be no legal framework left to deter the arms race."

The START-III contract between the US and Russia, which limits strategic offensive weapons, will be expired in 2021.

"It will be bad if current intentions by the US administration, first of all, to withdraw from the INF and, secondly, their doubt over extending the START-III which expires in 2021, are realized,” Lavrov said.

Trump has so far withdrawn from the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, with the INF with Russia being the latest treaty discarded unilaterally by the US. 

‘US triggering new arms race’

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned that the US decision to scrap the INF treaty increases the risk of a nuclear conflict.

In an opinion piece he wrote for The New York Times newspaper, Gorbachev denounced the US move as "a dire threat to peace" that he still hoped might be reversed through negotiations.

He said the key treaty is “just the latest victim in the militarization of world affairs.”

“The INF Treaty is not the first victim of the militarization of world affairs. In 2002, the United States withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty; this year, from the Iran nuclear deal. Military expenditures have soared to astronomical levels and keep rising," he wrote.

"I am being asked whether I feel bitter watching the demise of what I worked so hard to achieve. But this is not a personal matter. Much more is at stake," he wrote. "A new arms race has
been announced."

The former Soviet president said that any disputes about compliance could be solved if there were sufficient political will. But it was clear over the past two years that Trump has been trying “to release the United States from any obligations, any constraints, and not just regarding nuclear missiles.”

Gorbachev, 87, said those who hope to benefit from a global free-for-all are deeply mistaken.

"There will be no winner in a 'war of all against all' — particularly if it ends in a nuclear war. And that is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. An unrelenting arms race, international tensions, hostility and universal mistrust will only increase the risk," he wrote.

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