February 5, 2019—New Arms Control Sheriff!

Various recent articles reporting on President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty have claimed that his decision was in response to Russian violations in the past 6 or fewer years — grossly understating the period of Russian violations that actually began over a decade ago and were mostly ignored by the Obama administration.

Click here for Paula DeSutter’s excellent August 9, 2014 article discussing the finally apparent Russian violations that were definitely recognized in 2008 but first acknowledged by the Obama administration after a January 30, 2014 New York Times article reported that Russia had been testing since 2008 its new cruise missile, the R-500, in violation of the INF Treaty.

This delayed report was contrary to long standing legislated requirements for regular reports to congress on such violations. This report to congress was founded during the Reagan administration after a major General Advisory Committee review of all arms control agreements identified for congress a major complex of Soviet arms control violations.

I’ve known Paula since those days in 1980s while we were both in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). She was following up close and personal overall verification and compliance issues of all our arms control agreements, and I was first back-stopping our negotiations with the Soviet Union (until they walked out of all arms control negotiations in November 1983 shortly after our INF deployments began to counter the Soviet SS-20s threatening NATO) and later was a Negotiator in the Nuclear and Space Talks that led to the 1987 INF Treaty. I think we were both in the room on December 8, 1987 at the Washington Summit when it was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

Dealing with these violations was a major component of our negotiations, especially the Soviet deployment of a large phased array radar near Krasnoyarsk that the Soviets regularly denied was a violation of the 1972 ABM Treaty and that our arms control community sought ways to rationalize its existence. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze finally admitted it was a violation in a 1990 Ministerial in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the first of the GHW Bush administration — and the last ministerial I attended.

An important lesson is that the Soviets persisted in this lie (and others) for many years — and we should expect the same behavior today from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, accompanied by a variety of excuses from our arms control community. We can expect the same in the current debate over Russia’s INF violations.

Paula knows these issues from the bottom up and speaks with great authority that comes from her close association with the issues ever since, including as Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance during the George W. Bush administration when near the end of that administration the Russian INF violations were first discovered and extensive reports to Congress were prepared and passed to the Obama administration for completion.

Thus, as she reported in 2014, the Obama administration knew about a Russian violation of a major arms control treaty for four years before it reported the violation to Congress, as long before was required by law.

Even then, the Obama administration acknowledged the INF Treaty violation only after the Jan. 30, 2014 New York Times article revealed that Russia had been testing its new cruise missile, the R-500, since 2008. That article reported it was not until the end of 2011 that it was clear there was a compliance concern, but Paula reported evidence demonstrating that the Obama administration has known since September 2010, if not earlier.

Paula goes on to demonstrate that the first Obama administration report to congress was a much watered-down version of the more than 500-page report essentially completed at the end of the Bush administration and passed to the Obama administration on January 20, 2009.

After over 18 months, the Obama administration’s first watered down report was submitted to Congress in July 2010; and it concluded only that: “The Parties to the Treaty last met in the Special Verification Commission in October 2003. There have been no issues raised in the intervening period.” Moreover, the same waffling language was used in the 2011 and 2012 reports.

The INF Treaty prohibited Russia and the United States from possessing, producing and flight-testing intermediate and short-range nuclear ballistic or cruise missiles. All declared missiles were eliminated by May 1991 and therefore the inspection regime ended. The treaty and provisions for monitoring by national technical means (NTM) are of unlimited duration. And NTM was sufficient to verify that the Russians were violating the INF Treaty in 2008 — over a decade ago. Nevertheless, these issues were not comprehensively reported to congress.

To the contrary, Paula’s article reports that the administration — especially Rose Gottemoeller, the assistant secretary of State responsible for producing the Obama administration reports — purposefully and clearly “hid the truth.” Moreover, her misleading reports to congress provided little if any data to back up their false reports to congress prior to 2014, which is the date to which many recent uninformed press accounts indicate was when the Russian violations were discovered.

Moreover, Paula noted in 2014 that while the Obama administration was also aggressively reducing American and NATO nuclear forces, Russia knew not only that its cruise missile violated the INF Treaty but also that the Obama administration had covered up the violation, for years. All this while it drew lines in the sand without responding when they were crossed. All part of “leading from behind.”

Click here for a slightly earlier (June 24, 2013) related article — entitled “Russian roulette.” This one was co-authored by Paula and John Bolton, now President Trump’s National Security Advisor. It apparently was in response to President Obama’s June 19, 2013 speech at the Brandenburg Gate that certainly contrasted with the Reagan “Peace through strength” approach to international relations that had led to the INF Treaty (and subsequent START Treaty) — and along with his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) brought an end to the Cold War.

They pointed out that the Obama administration failure to respond to a panoply of arms control violations — including the INF Treaty — while curtailing our missile defense and nuclear deterrent capabilities was courting disaster. Their article is also worth reading in its entirety, especially given John Bolton’s current role in advising President Trump on the full complement of national security matters. Consider the final two paragraphs of their important article:

“Russia’s apparent INF violations as well as continuing violations of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, among others, demonstrate its disregard for treaty commitments. Even today, well after the Cold War, Russia still repeatedly threatens to use nuclear weapons to defeat U.S. and European missile defenses and to develop and deploy new systems to do so. Yet despite Russia’s circumvention and violation of existing treaties — and efforts at intimidation — President Obama sees no stumbling blocks to new agreements, or even unilateral U.S. reductions. Moreover, the White House responds to Russian programs and threats to overwhelm our missile-defense systems in a nuclear attack with offers to share classified technical data about these systems that would enhance Russia’s ability to defeat them.

“While Russia’s belligerent nuclear rhetoric and policies are outrageous, it is even worse that the Obama administration is blissfully determined to further weaken our own nuclear deterrent and missile defenses in an effort to placate Moscow. There needs to be a reckoning about the pervasive history of material Russian violations of major arms-control agreements. And the time for that reckoning is well before any serious negotiations begin on any new agreement, and certainly well before congressional consideration of the implications of any agreement that might result.”

That day of reckoning may be coming with President Trump’s announced withdrawal from the INF Treaty and his Space Force initiatives that may revive the best of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.

At least that is my hope — especially to revive an expedited Brilliant Pebbles effort!

President Trump’s position is certainly Reaganesque, to say the least.

Bottom Lines.

The arms control community pants with great expressed concerns about dangers being associated with President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty because of Russia’s record of violations (and not only to that Treaty).

Actually, the President’s initiative is long overdue, given the long Russian record of violations to the arms control agreements they have signed. They actually are in keeping with the long Soviet record of violating arms control agreements.

Our hope for peace that all should understand is that Reagan’s “Peace through strength” approach is the policy we should follow. Happily, President Trumps’ decision to withdraw from the INF treaty is entirely consistent with that policy.

Putin has to get used to the idea that “There is a new sheriff in town!”

Maybe a few others need to notice that welcome fact, too!

Down with “Strategic Patience!”

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

Click here to make a tax deductible gift. If you prefer to mail a check, Please send it to 500 North Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314.

E-Mail Message 190205