European
Leaders React to the Death of the INF Treaty By Perfecting Their Ostrich
Impressions
I ’m old enough to
remember the excitement that most of the world felt when Ronald Reagan and
Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Treaty Between the United States of
America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their
Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles — better known as
the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. It was one of
those epoch defining moments, with two seemingly implacable enemies, having
stared each other down across the so-called Iron Curtain, and having engaged in
a costly and potentially disastrous arms race, actually concluded that it was
all rather pointless and certainly too dangerous to continue, and that a much
better idea — and indeed a perfectly feasible one — was to sit down and come to
an arrangement that benefited both sides, and made nuclear confrontation far
less likely.
The result was a
treaty, signed by the leaders of both countries in 1987, which eliminated
missiles with a range of 500-5,500km, fired from land-based launchers. The
purpose of this treaty was to guarantee (as much as such guarantees are
possible) the security of Europe, which until that point had become a focal
point of possible nuclear confrontation between the two sides, with American
BGM-109G ground-launched cruise missiles based in Great
Britain, West Germany, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherland, and Soviet SS-20s
missiles based in East
Germany and Czechoslovakia, as well as on the territory of Russia.
Yet here we are,
just 30-odd years later, and that treaty has now vanished in a puff of smoke.
But the truly astonishing thing about this is not so much that it is now dead.
Nor is it that we have headed back to the situation that existed prior to 1987,
only this time even worse because — in my view — the United States is under the
control of deranged neoconservatives (nothing conservative about them by the
way) who are quite incapable imagining a world in which the US does not have
full spectrum dominance, and who certainly don’t possess any of the kind of rational
thinking and political savvy that the Reagan administration possessed. No, the
thing that really staggers me is the reaction of European leaders and the
European media to an event that in one foul swoop threatens to shatter the
security the continent has enjoyed as a nuclear-free zone for nearly a third of
a century. What reaction? Crickets and tumbleweed.
I’ll comment on
that more in a moment, but let me first say something about why this treaty is
now dead.
According to
Washington, the participation of the United States in the Treaty has been
suspended because Russia has allegedly breached its terms with the development
of a particular missile — the 9M729 — which they say has a range in excess of
the 500km maximum permitted by the treaty. For its part, Moscow has refuted the
accusation — even going so far as to invite Mike Pompeo to a public exhibition
of the missile to see for himself — but has itself accused the US itself
of breaching the Treatyby the
placement of the Aegis Ashore missile-defence system, along with Mk-41 Vertical
Launching Systems, on the territory of Romania and later this year Poland,
which can be fitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles (with a range exceeding
500km). Who is right?
This is not
actually a difficult question. One doesn’t even need to discuss the relative
merits of these claims and counter-claims to come to the answer. The proof in
the pudding is in the words of the US President, Donald Trump, who having
accused Russia of violating the Treaty, then made the following comment:
“I hope we’re able
to get everybody in a big, beautiful room and do a new treaty that would be
much better…”
Remember, these
comments were made just after the US had announced its
suspension of the agreement, not before. In other words, after saying
that the US was walking away from the Treaty, and after saying
he was doing so because the other side was violating it, in the next breath he
said he wanted to sit down and talk about it. What’s going on here?
The first thing to
note, is that this is just another example of the way Trump does business. And
when I say “does business”, I mean that everything he does in life, whether
negotiating a New York property deal, or talking about a nuclear arms treaty,
is done in the same way. Someone (I can’t remember where I read it) said that
if you really want to understand Mr Trump, what you have to get about him is
this: he simply doesn’t have a moral compass in the ordinary sense of right and
wrong; no, his “moral” compass is entirely driven by a sense of winning and
losing. Right for Mr Trump is winning. Wrong for Mr Trump is losing. That’s it.
And what he was
clearly doing in accusing the Russians of violating the Treaty, then announcing
the pullout, then talking about sitting down together in a “big, beautiful
room”, was treating the issue of nuclear arms proliferation and security in the
same way that he treats everything: just another “Art of the Deal”. Had he
really wanted to sit down in a big, beautiful room to discuss the deal, I
understand there are plenty such rooms in Washington and Moscow, or even in any
number of other capitals around the world that this could have taken place. But
no, in his usual crass and cack-handed way, he threw a grenade into the room,
expecting that this would put him in a strong position to get what he really
wanted.
Lest you be under
the impression that this is just Mr Trump doing what Mr Trump does, well yes
and no. He is merely an extreme version of what US Governments have been
doing for years now, having given up doing diplomacy somewhere around the turn
of the century. In Reagan’s day, the US had some extremely capable diplomats.
Now they don’t have them because they don’t need them. Geopolitics is conducted
by sanctions, threats, regime change, armed proxies and bombs.
But the second
thing to note is his use of the word “everybody”. He’s not just talking about
the US and Russia here. “Everybody” includes the Chinese. See, the problem the
US had with the INF Treaty is that it was made between the only two countries
who possessed the capability to produce vast quantities of those weapons at
that time. But now of course China does have that capacity, and it does indeed
have those weapons. And America — quite understandably from a geopolitical standpoint
— doesn’t very much like that. My guess is that the Russians don’t particularly
like it either. But instead of sitting down in a “big, beautiful room” with the
Russians to try to work together to persuade the Chinese to enter into
negotiations to include all three countries in the Treaty, like a bull in a
china shop (pardon the pun), he charged into the “big, beautiful room” and
wrecked it completely. Expecting to gain leverage over the Russians, instead he
merely antagonised them to the point that they have announced their withdrawal
from the Treaty, taking us back to the pre-1987 situation — only worse because
the US no longer has any grown-ups left who are capable of thinking and acting
rationally, and talking with others on equal terms.
But back to the
Europeans. The INF Treaty is chiefly about preserving security in Europe.
Pre-1987, the threat of confrontation on European territory was very real. This
is why the whole of Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief when Reagan and
Gorbachev signed their deal. Missiles which once faced each other across the
divide, which could have destroyed Europe and Russia, were removed and
destroyed. What’s not to be welcomed about that?
So you might have
thought that now that the Treaty has been broken, by a US elite who don’t do
diplomacy, and who are essentially playing a game of chicken, that European
leaders and the European media would be up in arms. After all, it’s European,
not American security which is essentially at stake here. But other than the
odd sniffle here or there, there’s been no great outcry and no great outrage
that Mr Trump and his neocon handlers have just undone in a moment the work
that their wiser and better predecessors spent years negotiating.
Does it really
need to be spelled out to European leaders and the supine European media what’s
actually at stake here? Perhaps it does.
In case they
missed it, the Russians have already stated that since they now consider the
INF Treaty to be null and void, they will be developing a number of
land-based missiles with a range significantly more than 500km,
using their existing air and sea-launched missiles, Kalibr and Kinzhal. The Kalibr is
a supersonic missile with a 990-pound warhead or nuclear payload, that can
perform evasive mid-flight manoeuvres, instead of making a straight-line
approach, and which can accelerate from a cruising speed of Mach 0.8 to Mach 3,
descending to just 4.6 meters before hitting its target. The Kinzhal (dagger) is
reckoned to be the world’s first hypersonic missile, capable — so it is said —
of reaching speeds of Mach 10, and again able to perform evasive mid-air
manoeuvres. Both missiles are said to have a strike range of up to 2,600km,
which if you measure from Kaliningrad, basically covers the whole of Europe.
Not one European country possesses anything that would have the remotest chance
of stopping such fearsome weapons.
Although the
Russian Government has stated that it will be developing these weapons with
immediate effect, they have also said that they will only deploy them in the
event that the US recommences stationing its own missiles on 500km+ missiles on
European soil. The question is, are any European leaders so stupid that they
will actually allow the US to station these weapons on their soil?
Unfortunately, the recent history of these great supine protoplasmic
invertebrate jellies — to quote the immortal words of Boris Johnson — rather
suggests that there are.
Somehow, European
leaders seem to be quite capable of believing that by hosting US missiles on
their territory, they will increase their security. Yet, with
missiles like the Kalibr and Kinzhal pointed back at them, all they will have
succeeded in doing is painting whacking great crosshairs on their territory.
And so once again, the spectre of nuclear catastrophe, hangs over Europe.
Is it possible to
wake these people up? Is it possible to get through to those who blindly
support the United States, even when its leadership shows that it cares for US
geopolitical interests, and doesn’t give two hoots about European security as
it plays its game of nuclear chicken with Russia and China? They don’t even
have the excuse that this was done by a President whom they really like. They
hate Trump. In which case, why are they not kicking up a terrific stink at the
fact that this President, in his contemptible way of dealing with the nuclear
question like he was haggling over a piece of land, has just returned us to a
situation that we all celebrated being rid of more than three decades ago? Do
they relish the idea of crosshairs on their territory? I’m not sure I have
the answer to that. Any ideas?
PS. Before anyone comments that it’s a myth that Ostriches bury their heads in
the sand, I know. But it’s a nice picture anyway.
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