{"id":40488,"date":"2018-11-14T06:40:09","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T11:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40488"},"modified":"2018-11-14T06:40:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T11:40:09","slug":"unwrapping-armageddon-the-erosion-of-nuclear-arms-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40488","title":{"rendered":"Unwrapping Armageddon: The Erosion of Nuclear Arms\u00a0Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unwrapping Armageddon: The Erosion of Nuclear Arms\u00a0Control<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

The decision<\/a> by the Trump administration to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement (INF) appears to be part of a broader strategy aimed at unwinding over 50 years of agreements to control and limit nuclear weapons, returning to an era characterized by the unbridled development weapons of mass destruction.<\/p>\n

Terminating the INF treaty\u2014which bans land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of between 300 and 3400 miles\u2014 is not, in and of itself, a fatal blow to the network of treaties and agreements dating back to the 1963 treaty that ended atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. But coupled with other actions\u2014George W. Bush\u2019s decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002 and the Obama administration\u2019s program to upgrade the nuclear weapons infrastructure\u2014 the tapestry of agreements that has, at least in part, limited these terrifying creations, is looking increasingly frayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaving the INF,\u201d says Sergey Rogov of the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies, \u201ccould bring the whole structure of arms control crashing down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynn Rusten, the former senior director for arms control in the National Security Agency Council warns, \u201cThis is opening the door to an all-out arms race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s rationale for exiting the INF Treaty is that the Russians deployed the 9M729 cruise missile that the US claims violates the agreement, although Moscow denies it and the evidence has not been made public. Russia countercharges that the US ABM system\u2014Aegis Ashore<\/a>\u2014deployed in Romania and planned for Poland could be used to launch similar medium range missiles.<\/p>\n

If this were a disagreement over weapon capability, inspections<\/a> would settle the matter. But the White House\u2014in particular National Security Advisor John Bolton\u2014is less concerned with inspections than extracting the US from agreements that in any way restrain the use of American power, be it military or economic.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unwrapping Armageddon: The Erosion of Nuclear Arms\u00a0Control The decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Force Agreement (INF) appears to be part of a broader strategy aimed at unwinding over 50 years of agreements to control and limit nuclear weapons, returning to an era characterized by the unbridled development weapons of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[22949,7844,22461,22950,2583,827],"class_list":["post-40488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-dispatches-from-the-edge","tag-donald-trump","tag-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty","tag-nuclear-arms-control","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40489,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40488\/revisions\/40489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}