Another Cold War throwback: a new arms race
Duplicity over adherence to the 1987 nuclear arms treaty reintroduces the spectre of MAD
Welcome back to the cold war. Russia announced over the weekend that it intends suspending its obligations under a Cold War-era nuclear treaty, a tit-for-tat response to US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s announcement that the US would withdraw from the treaty in six months if Moscow doesn’t destroy missile systems that US officials say are in breach of the pact.The pact, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, was signed in 1987 by president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to eliminate all land-based ballistic and cruise missiles. In all, 2,692 missiles were eliminated and 10 years of on-site verification followed.It was a landmark achievement underpinned by an economically weakened Soviet Union. The twist was that both sides maintained their sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) based on the notion that mutually assured destruction (MAD) meant that neither side would start a nuclear war. The result is a perverse nuclear truce, as lon...
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