Trump’s withdrawal from nuclear arms treaty is frightening
- Jul 31, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 2, 2024
August 1: On This Day In 2019
Trump’s damaging tendency to destroy whatever came before him reached its height, perhaps, when he announced that the U.S. would withdraw from our Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia. American presidents going back to JFK had negotiated and fulfilled many such arms control treaties to try to prevent nuclear war. Never had a president abandoned a nuclear arms treaty.
Trump blamed Russian actions for his decision to withdraw. But, the withdrawal took effect OTDI 2019, just weeks before the U.S. planned to test a new cruise missile system which would have violated the treaty.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN that the treaty’s end was a “serious setback” to NATO/Russian interactions.
But the bigger picture is frightening, as FP noted, because “Trump accidentally just triggered global nuclear proliferation…By withdrawing from the INF Treaty, the Trump administration has … (left Moscow) free to deploy as many intermediate-range missiles as it wants. U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to throw out the rulebook… greases the wheels for a return to U.S.-Russian nuclear arms racing—with potentially dire consequences for international security…It will undermine global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to countries that don’t yet have them.”
Trump’s actions = Slippery Slope. After Trump cancelled the INF, the only remaining nuclear treaty with Russia -- New START, governing the deployment of long-range weapons -- was set to expire in 2026. But when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 he decided that if Trump could cancel an arms agreement, so could he. So, Putin announced he was suspending Russia’s participation in New Start. For the first time since the start of modern arms control, the world’s two biggest nuclear powers were left with no remaining nuclear weapons agreements.
Yikes.
Note: This was just another in the long list of international obligations and agreements Trump tore up. And, no, that’s not a good thing.
Get Weirder; Dive Deeper
CNN reports on Trump's withdrawal from the INF treaty and NATO's reaction
NPR wrote about Russia’s withdrawal from last remaining nuclear treaty
On This Day In The Trump Administration: Trump withdraws from INF