A Serial Killing Spree That Threatens Us All

A Serial Killing Spree That Threatens Us All

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  BY JOE CIRINCIONE
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OCTOBER 22, 2018

Can John Bolton be stopped before he further undermines U.S. national security?

Just in time for Halloween, John Bolton emerges from the basement of the White House to continue his serial killing spree of arms control agreements.

In his first move, he engineered the horrifying U.S. withdrawal from the Iran anti-nuclear deal, over the screams of America’s national security leaders and our European allies. Now he is pushing President Donald Trump down the stairs, urging him to pull out of Ronald Reagan’s landmark INF Treaty. Trump announced his decision to do so after a political rally October 20. Bolton’s next victim will be Reagan’s entire START nuclear reduction process. Can he be stopped before he kills again?

The obscurely named Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 was a historic breakthrough. Negotiated by Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev, it was the first arms control agreement to reduce, rather than limit, nuclear weapons. The two leaders physically destroyed a total of 2,692 missiles after the treaty entered into force.

The agreement banned an entire class of ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles held by the two nations, not only in Europe where the majority of them were deployed, but anywhere in the world. Because of Reagan’s diplomacy, neither nation is allowed to field ground-based weapons whose reach falls between short-range and the ocean-spanning ranges of strategic weapons.

It was a remarkable achievement. “For the first time in history, the language of ‘arms control’ was replaced by ‘arms reduction’,” Reagan said at the signing of the INF accord, “We can only hope that this history-making agreement will not be an end in itself but the beginning” of this relationship.”

ALEX GORKA | 12.03.2018 | SECURITY / ARMS CONTROL

President Putin’s State of the Nation Speech Sows Seeds for Progress

It works! For so many years the calls for putting an end to arms control erosion and reviving a security dialogue with Moscow despite the existing divisions have been falling on deaf ears in Washington. The danger of unfettered arms race has become imminent. Other menaces emerge. In theory, they should top the Russia-West security agenda but they don’t. Now it looks like there is some light at the end of the tunnel. But why now? What is so special about March 2018?

Evidently, Vladimir Putin’s landmark address on March 1 did it. In words it was condemned and strongly criticized in the West but in practice sharing the information about the Russian super weapons spurred positive reaction. Those who never missed an opportunity to denigrate Russia and blame it for all the wrong things in the world are suddenly changing the tune. Looks like this time the Russian president nailed it.