{"id":43684,"date":"2019-02-09T06:42:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T11:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43684"},"modified":"2019-02-09T06:42:03","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T11:42:03","slug":"american-suspension-of-inf-treaty-is-aimed-at-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43684","title":{"rendered":"American Suspension of INF Treaty is Aimed at China"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/images\/news\/2019\/02\/05\/or-42183.jpg?75220\" alt=\"American Suspension of INF Treaty is Aimed at China\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.strategic-culture.org\/news\/2019\/02\/05\/american-suspension-inf-treaty-aimed-at-china.html\">American Suspension of INF Treaty is Aimed at China<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So it\u2019s done. The US has suspended its participation in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and Russia soon followed suit. This almost certainly spells an end to this late Cold War relic, which banned the two superpowers from deploying ground-launched ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with ranges of 500-5,500km. There have been recriminations all round. But in the end, so far as two of the world\u2019s three most greatest military Powers are concerned, upholding the INF Treaty could never have been done exactly to the letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The US has specified Russia\u2019s Novator 9M729 (NATO designation: SSC-8) as the offending missile that finally prompted US action. Russian nuclear weapons analyst Pavel Podvig&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/nationalinterest.org\/blog\/the-buzz\/novator-9m729-the-russian-missile-broke-inf-treatys-back-23547\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">has noted that<\/a>&nbsp;it is very similar to the Russian Navy\u2019s Kalibr-NK cruise missile, which has a range well beyond 500 km and has been touted as a potential \u201ccarrier killer\u201d. Podvig goes on to speculate that if the US had observed a test of the 9M729 from a land-based Iskander-M launcher \u2013 even if on just a single occasion \u2013 then all of them \u201cwould have to be eliminated\u201d by the formal terms of the treaty. This is obviously not something that Russia could reasonably be expected to carry out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moreover, any number of US missile systems can be considered to be in breach of the INF Treaty. For instance, the Russians\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/tass.com\/politics\/1032585\" target=\"_blank\">have argued that<\/a>\u00a0America\u2019s AEGIS Ashore program \u2013 a ground-based cruise missile, for all intents and purposes \u2013 can also be considered to be in systemic breach of the INF Treaty. Incidentally, this system was itself enabled by America\u2019s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2002, under the George W. Bush administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American Suspension of INF Treaty is Aimed at China So it\u2019s done. The US has suspended its participation in the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and Russia soon followed suit. This almost certainly spells an end to this late Cold War relic, which banned the two superpowers from deploying ground-launched ballistic missiles and cruise missiles [&hellip;]<\/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":[24359,130,149,22463,22461,694,8203,827],"class_list":["post-43684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-anatoly-karlin","tag-china","tag-cold-war","tag-inf-treaty","tag-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty","tag-russia","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43684","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=43684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43685,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43684\/revisions\/43685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}