The Foreign Service Journal, May 2020

30 MAY 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL based platforms than the Soviets. The Soviets thus had cause to consider what would happen should the United States choose to deploy an unlimited number of highly accurate warheads at sea, where they could not be easily tracked and targeted. MIRV technology, in my view, became the real impetus for the two sides to agree in the 1980s to Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. It had proved futile to try to limit strategic systems; they had to be reduced , and reduced in such a way that each side could be certain that the other side was not able to out-deploy it in warhead numbers. Destabilizing Developments and the INF Treaty The other potentially destabilizing development in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the advent of ground-launched intermediate-range missiles, both ballistic and cruise missiles. (Intermediate range is considered to be between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.) These missiles were destabilizing because they either had a fast flight time to target (the ballistic systems), or were stealthy flyers (the cruise systems, which were able to fly below radar coverage). In both cases, they did not give leaders time to make nuclear launch decisions. Thus, in theory they could be used for a “decapitating” first strike, destroying the command and control potential of the other country and leaving it helpless to launch a response strike. When the Soviets began to deploy their SS-20 missiles in 1976, it got everybody’s attention not only in Washington, but among the NATO allies in Europe: Could the Soviet Union now attack and destroy Berlin or Paris or London without warn- ing? Would this threat alone “decouple” NATO Europe from the United States—i.e., would the United States ever be willing to respond to such an attack on a NATO country by launching its intercontinental systems and bringing down a response strike on U.S. territory? Would it not be more likely to let NATO go? These are the debates that raged at NATO and among NATO capitals during the late 1970s and early 1980s. They led to one of the most significant decisions ever taken at NATO—the dual-track decision to deploy intermediate-range ground-launched missiles such as the Pershing-2 in Europe, and to push the USSR to begin to negotiate. This is the most significant period during which we built up weapons in order to bring the other side to the negotiat- ing table. The decision was very controversial, although it was in line with the Harmel approach—to be firm on deterrence and defense but also ready to negotiate. In the end, it brought many Europeans out into the streets to protest; but it also worked. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed by President Ronald Reagan and USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 was a global ban on such missiles in the hands of either the Americans or the Soviets. The treaty worked because the Soviets came to realize that, once the Pershing-2 and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) were deployed in NATO Europe, they faced the threat of a no-warning strike on critical command and control targets in Moscow. The decapitation threat had come home to them. It also worked because the United States insisted, and the Soviet Union finally agreed, that on-site inspections and other detailed verification measures were needed to ensure compliance with the treaty. This was a long-sought breakthrough in nuclear arms control. The treaty enshrining this great arms control victory remained in place for more than three decades, until the Donald Trump administration withdrew from it in August 2019. It is worth noting, however, that per the treaty’s provisions the on- site inspection regime had ended in May 2001, 10 years after all of the INF missiles had been eliminated. As verification expert John Russell noted at the time, “The treaty has now come of age and must survive the rest of its indefinite duration without the security of regular on-site inspections” (VERTIC Briefing Paper 01/02, August 2001). That proved to be a tall order: With no on- site inspections, the treaty was vulnerable to violation. We became aware after 2010 that the Russians were develop- ing a ground-launched intermediate-range missile in violation of the INF Treaty, the 9M-729 (SSC-8 in NATO parlance). I raised it more than 20 times with my Russian counterparts during the period between 2013 and 2016, when I left the State Department; but the Russians always failed to acknowledge the existence of the missile. When the Trump administration engaged with them, they acknowledged the missile, but said it was not a ground-launched intermediate-range system. However, we were able to prove not only to ourselves, but also to our allies, that the missile is indeed in violation of the INF Treaty, and so all NATO allies and the U.S. allies in Asia joined the United States in calling the Russians out. The United States determined Russia to be in material breach of the treaty, which means that Russia is violating the treaty in a way that defeats its object and purpose. A treaty that is being hollowed out from the inside is no longer in the U.S. national security interest, which must be the litmus test for any nuclear arms control treaty.