Trump says US is ending decades-old nuclear arms treaty with Russia

[szechuan]

Remember when it was Hillary that was going to start WW3?

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the US is pulling out of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, a decades-old agreement that has drawn the ire of the President.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years," Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One to leave Nevada following a campaign rally.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/20/polit...sia/index.html

[Masark]

Astounding. Trump manages to be correct about something.

[szechuan]

Astounding. Trump manages to be correct about something.

More Nukes for all?

[Xeones]

What is next NATO?

[Templar 331]

Like I said in the other thread.

1. Russia, or likely China, is developing weapons that we can't and it's getting under his skin.
2. He's really backing out so Russia has a reason to back out and develop weapons. And Putin will give Trump a cookie for doing so.

[Draco-Onis]

What is next NATO?

Trump is desperate and trying to make PR moves along the republicans to win the house and the senate. If democrats win the house the investigations into his tax returns alone may bring him down so bribe farmers, bribe the country, pretend you hate Russia then reverse course after the election.

[Bullettime]

Like I said in the other thread.

1. Russia, or likely China, is developing weapons that we can't and it's getting under his skin.
2. He's really backing out so Russia has a reason to back out and develop weapons. And Putin will give Trump a cookie for doing so.

Yeah, both neocons (like Bolton) and Russia have been wanting out of the deal so they can go hardcore missile production but neither wanted to be the one to formally pull out, even though Russia has violated it.

Trump is doing both groups a favor.

[anveena]

How terrible of us to leave a treaty that the opposing side stopped abiding by years ago.

[szechuan]

How terrible of us to leave a treaty that the opposing side stopped abiding by years ago.

remember when it was Hillary that was suppose to escalate WW3?

[Deleted]

How does it not look like Putin put a call to his puppet in the White House, and told Trumpy to nix this agreement so that Russia won't be restrained by it anymore.

Trump has definitely been more beneficial to Russia than the entirety of the Cold War ever was.

[Bullettime]

How terrible of us to leave a treaty that the opposing side stopped abiding by years ago.

There's a right and wrong way to go about leaving the deal and reasoning for wanting out.

The US should have told Russia to fuck off after they violated it and used it as justification to further sanctions more and globally censure them, but they didn't because our leaders kept insisting on fresh starts with Russia.

Russia has violated it but still feels limitations imposed by the deal.

Both Bolton style neocons and Russia themselves have wanted out of the deal because both groups feel that an arms race is good for business and lines the pockets of they and their friends. Trump isn't pulling out because Russia violated it. He's doing it because his best friend and key advisor want him to pull out of it, and Trump is the only political stooge dumb enough to pull the trigger on the US's side without financially destroying Russia in backlash.

[Zaydin]

I thought cons told us that Hillary was the one who wanted WW3.

[Seiklis]

Yay a real thread on this...

Kk Skroe fire away

[Skroe]

Yay a real thread on this...

Kk Skroe fire away

Doing an achievement run. Later tonight. It's already half written.

I do wanna say though this is not a "Trump" thing although its style is. This is the culmination of over 12 years of events.

[Bullettime]

Doing an achievement run. Later tonight. It's already half written.

I do wanna say though this is not a "Trump" thing although its style is. This is the culmination of over 12 years of events.

Main concern, and this may just be pessimism based on how Trump handles everything else, is that this is seeming like a "doing the right thing for the wrong reason" situation.

[Skroe]

Main concern, and this may just be pessimism based on how Trump handles everything else, is that this is seeming like a "doing the right thing for the wrong reason" situation.

The lasting implications of this withdrawal won't be felt until the late 2020s. Trump will be gone for years before it's much more than just words. The US could field a quick and dirty INF-violating weapons if it wanted to, but it won't and it isn't planning to according to guidance issued by Congress this year. It'll buy a 30+ year system, and that means years of design review, prototypes and so forth before actual fielding.

Furthermore as a practical matter, it's always been more symbolic. The US technically doesn't "need" INF weapons because it can just park our SSBNs with Trident IIs off the coast of France and achieve, to a degree, much the same thing.

The INF Treaty eliminited land-based missiles in Europe, but it says nothing about sea based or air based. That was by design. Basically it was to make Nuclear War between the US and USSR not destroy Europe first... on paper. As a matter of practicality, if the late Cold War got hot, Russia would never have followed it, and neither would the US.

[Mormolyce]

1. Russia, or likely China, is developing weapons that we can't and it's getting under his skin.

Reminder: the only way the Chinese got an aircraft carrier is by getting a bunch of Russians drunk and buying one of their rusted out old junk buckets, then towing the dead hulk halfway round the world. At one point it went adrift and a guy died trying to reattach it. A year later it finally arrived in China, where they started refitting it and knocking off all its components in true Chinese style. Another fun chapter in this is the planes that it launches - Russia was going to sell a bunch of fighters to China but pulled out of the deal when they realised the Chinese were taking their demo models and using what they learned to knock off the tech.

Oh and the Chinese got a wealthy Hong Kong tycoon to put up the money for the whole deal and do all the work hauling the ship round the planet, and then stiffed him on the $120m bill. Apparently the Navy officers he'd made the arrangement with were all either dead or in jail by the time the ship made it there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chines..._Liaoning#Sale

That's what I think of every time someone tries to tell me a scary story about China and Russia's military tech.

[Skroe]

Okay so, before I begin, I just want to put out there this is going to be a thick read. I'm going to write it in a way that is relatable for both people who have read my posts on this over the years and people just joining us. This is not a post to be skimmed. This is very history oriented and wonkish. Thanks in advance.


Leaving the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty is, in the long term, by far the most important event of the year. Perhaps the most important event of the decade. Whatever Donald Trump's ultimate political fate, the legacy of him will be far out stripped by the legacy of this moment, which is a very, very long time coming.

Before I got into details about what's up, I need to put this moment in a context. The Cold War was brought to an end through a series of treaties with the Soviet Union on Conventional, Nuclear and Chemical Weapons. Russia left the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty back in 2007 (which placed hard limits on on major types of military hardware from the atlantic to Urals). START I was replaced with New START that will expire in 2021 (much more on that later), which covers strategic weapons. The INF is the only treaty that eliminated an entire class of ballistic missile and nuclear weapon, and brought an end to 50 years of risk of Nuclear War in Europe. With these and several other Treaties in place, the US and Russia were able to begin it's post-Cold War relationship.

The ending of INF is for all intents and purposes, the ending of the post-Cold War era. Forget the War on Terror. It's over. Forget Islamic Radicalism. Forget disarmament of all types of weapons around the world. Forget multilateral cooperation on threat reduction. If you think still, in those terms... if ISIS, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, or Iran, are things that motivate your thoughts when it comes to national or global security, you're outdated. This is what comes next. The official start of the New Era of Great Power Competition or Second Cold War. Some people say the 20th century ended on 9/11, or in the 2008 Financial Crisis. Considering the probable shape of the 21st century, this is far more meaningful.

At issue here isn't even so much Trump. It's China. It's the world's great powers, just like a Century ago when they were faced with the German Question, being faced with the China Question. The most important event of the 21st century is not anything that's happened yet. It's the coming Cold War between China and the United States, that may occasionally get hot, over mastery of the international system. The US holds most of the positions of power. China wants them all. But in this equation, there is a huge problem? Where does Russia fit?

Russia is a country that's been in decline for many years despite momentary plateus. Perhaps the best way of thinking about what has happened to "Russia", the historic entity that exists where the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation all exist, is that the past century of change for it has been what we look upon at other points in history with other falling empires - imperial reorganization. In order to perpetuate itself for another century, Russia reorganized into the USSR, which, 70 years later, in turn reorganized itself into the Russian Federation. Russia - in many ways an accident of history that implausibly stretches from Europe to Barrents sea, and encomposes so many autonomous regions, ethnicities and far flung, underpopulated domains finds itself in the 21st century in a truly unenviable position: squeezed between the rich and advanced European Union, and the rich and advancing China. China, which militarily, is rapidly outpacing Russia. China's military budget, several time Russia's, is financing "catch up" developments, mostly targeted at the US, that is surving the purpose of leapfrogging Russian advances too. Remember: Russia has talked about flying a stealth fighter for years, in the Su-50, which it decided not to buy because it's a failure. China is actively mass producing the J-20.

Which brings us back to the INF Treaty.

Russia cannot compete against NATO military forces in Europe. It is technologically over matched and once mobilzied, NATO would out number Russian troops about four to one. But Russia isn't really all that concerned about NATO. It is afraid of China lobbing off pieces of the Russian Far East. It has been taking steps to mitigate that for years, but it's INF Treaty breaking missile (more on that shortly), is chiefly about that.

Which brings us to America. In his remarks today, Trump mentioned China. Involving China in an arms control treaty like this - China having many INF ranged weapons - just further underscores the point. America wants Intermediate Range weapons because of China. Russia wants Intermediate Range weapons because of China. China wants intermediate range weapons because of both of them.

Welcome to 1911, all over again.

Before I get into specifics, this will not be the last end of Cold War treaty to fall. NewSTART will almost certainly be next, in 2021. The Chemical Weapons Convention could follow as well at some point. The fact is the infrastructure of the end of the Cold War has entirely broken down, in part because the United States has failed to defend it since 2001, and in part because the world is naturally transitioning to the new era of great power conflict.

The "natural side" of this must be stated. In one form or another, this has happened before. Decades of peace giving way to rapidly moving destructions of that peace, that lead to conflicts (of sorts) between powers. The United States, aloof from the world for much of its history, is new to this, but this is the order of the world. The (wrong) cliche is that "all empire's fall". A more historically accurate way of saying it is that hegemonies or imperiums see years of stability, but are invariably challenged by the other powers in whatever constitutes the "world" at the time. More often than not the imperium endures, even in a momentary defeat. But sometimes there is the "one" defeat that gets it. Few powers have ever escaped that.

What we're seeing now is the Liberal Democratic Order since World War II, an imperium of sorts that has been taken for granted, being threatened by illiberal rivals, and the main story of the 21st century is if it will endure through this challenge. This is how history works. We are living in the opening years of what comes next.


How the INF Treaty Came To Be


The short version of the 1980s geopolitical situation is that the early 1980s Reagan arms build up came head to head with instability within the Soviet Union due to generational leadership changes, an economic depression, and a technological deficit. Secondly ballistic missiles, which had spent most of the mid 1960s to 1970s being iterated through, emerged in their most advanced forms (many of which last to this very day) around the 1980s. This created a situation where the number of nuclear weapons the US and USSR had rapidly increased. Among the most notable of these were Intermediate Range Nuclear Weapons - ranges from 500km to 5,500km.

To understand what this is, you need to understand how nuclear warfare works sort of.





The further a ballistic missile flies, the more powerful engine it needs. This translates into size of the missile, type of fuel or amount of fuel. This also implicates a kind of minimum range as well.

The INF Treaty also banned land-based cruise missiles, BUT NOT sea or air based ones:


The Soviet Union's arsenal of ICBMs - Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles -, like Russias today were aimed at North America, over the North Pole, North Atlantic and Greenland. The image below is an example (SS-19 being a type of ICBM)



To put it simply, aside from ICBMs deep, deep in Siberia (where they typically weren't), Europe was "too close" for Russia to hit with an ICBM. At least, not without having it arc way, way, way up like North Korea did during its test last year. To hit targets close to Russia, it would need something with shorter range - Short Range, Medium Range and Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles being those weapons (see diagram above).

In this case, the US had a significant military advantage. Almost as soon as Ballistic Missiles emerged as a viable weapon, the US started to base them around Russia's periphery. The thought - and it was a good one - it would only take a few minutes for the US to wipe out Russia's nuclear arsenal using IRBMs and MRBMs, whereas Russia, which did not have a base in North or South America that was comparable, would be armed with missiles with much longer flight times.

This put the US in a position, by virtue of geography to have a "decapitation strike" option to it. If the US could launch from a closer range faster than Russia could launch at a further range, then there was nothing Russia could do.

To offset this the Russia developed all sorts of tactical nuclear weapons during the late cold war. The US responded in kind by deploying the Pershing-II missile to Europe in the 1980s, to an enormous amount of controversy. Pershing-II was a IRBM.

The destablization of the Soviet Union in the mid-to-late 1980s, caused by many factors, led to a series of treaties that amounted to the end of the Cold War.

The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (limited the number of military forces in Europe)
The Final Settlement with Respect to Germany Treaty
The Chemical Weapon Accord
What became Start I (in the 1990s)



The existince of the Intermediate Range Weapons was a hugely favorable military advantage to the US, but the elimination of them became hugely favorable to the US as well, because American sea and air launched cruise missiles started to get rather good in the 1980s, and advanced by leaps and bounds in the 1990s. Hypothetically speaking, an INF Treaty that covered sea based missiles as well would see the banning of the US Navy's main staples - Tomahawk Cruise Missile and variations of Standard Missile (SM-2, SM-3, SM-6). A hypothetical air-ban would get rid of the US's main nuclear weapon it puts on B-52s (AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missiles) and conventional standoff air launched cruise missiles, such as JASSM-ER. Russia did not, and largely has not developed comparable weapons, and certainly has not deployed them as prodigioously as the US has in the post-Cold War era.

In essence then, banning these weapons meant the US no longer had to defend against them in continential Europe - which significantly eases the defensive posture of the US on the continent - but only restrained the US in one of the three modes in which it could use such weapons. It must be noted that many of these weapons that the US places on ships or aircraft can be boosted to cruise altitude or have their range extended with a ground based booster or launcher. They are often tested that way, to save money. Even the Army's main conventional ballistic missile, the MGM-140 ATACMS, with a range of just 300km, is limited by treaty, not by design. An INF Treaty violating version would be pretty much the same missile with a modernized booster.

The INF Treaty also enabled France and the UK to retire their land based ballistic missiles, and banned the development of land based intermediate range conventional ballistic and cruise missiles by European powers. While they did press ahead with Air launched variants, this stablized their security relationship with Russia as well.


In short, at the time, the INF Treaty was a treaty that benefited everyone. Russia saw its most substantial security risk basically eliminated. The US got to give up something it really wouldn't need all that much anymore thanks to technological developments. Europe got to slash a big defense expendiature. And perhaps symbolically, it made it so that if there was to be a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia, it would be between the US and Russia, and hopefully Europe would be spared the devastation of being the first battlefield. In the real world, this probably would not have been the case, but the intent of the treaty was to do that.



The Changing World and the End of the Treaty
Let's be clear about something. Everyone who hasn't had their head in the clouds has known exactly how the 21st century was going to go since about 2001. The Bush Administration was concrned early on about China. Russia was concerned early on. Those lofty turn-of-the-millennium projections of China as the Worlds largest economy by 2017 (which didn't happen) had another side to it that the Davos crowd ignored on purpose: the world's largest economy would also buy a world class military force, just like every other global power ever.

Russia's solution to it's strategic shortfall versus China is largely the same as it is towards the US: doubling down on its nuclear forces. In turning the SSC-8 cruise missile into the R-500 by pairing it with an Iskander Launcher, Russia, typical to them, found a cheap and quick way to even the odds with respect to its strategic position with respect to China. Consider this image:



China has bout 70 nuclear weapons with any kind of range and potency. Up to this point (and that is changing) it never had the need for more than a minimal deterrent. Despite having nuclear weapons for 50 years, China is just now, in the past 5-8, perfecting the Solid Fueled ballistic missiles with global range that the US, Russia, UK and France have had a stable for many many decades. Solid fueled rockets are a hard technology to master when you scale them up - they're workable at smaller and limited ranged, but the larger they are, they have a tendency to blow up unless you carefully control the burn rate of the fuel.

That image above has only eight facilities that support ICBMs. All the rest - 30 more- support just theater and short ranged ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The ones at the coast are aimed at Japan, South Korea and US facilities in the pacific at various ranges. Those ones arrayed up north though all along the border? Those are theater-ranged missiles aimed squarely at Russian Forces in the Russian Far East.

And without the R-500 there is nothing Russia could do about that.

Still though, Russia is bound by the INF Treaty. It could not develop competitor weapons to aim at China in the RFE, because the INF Treaty is a global ban of a class of weapons, not just a regional one. Considering the the map above, an air launched solution would have been too slow and impractical, and a naval solution too far away compared to China (China could launch its missiles and land them on Russian forces before Russian missiles launched from the Pacific could reach them).

From the Russian perspective, having the R-500 makes a complete amount of sense. Especially when from their perspecitve, the US already has such systems, it just keeps them at sea and is able to capitalize on its superior air technology.

Still, the INF Treaty is symbolically important to the post-Cold War order and Security in Europe. The Bush Administration first found out about this violation as early as 2006, before the missile even flew, which it did in 2008. Both they and the Obama Administration slow walked dealing with it. They hid it from Congress and the Media intentionally, for years, in order to deal with Russia on it behind closed doors. The intent was to cajole compliance, one way or another, because if they found Russia in material breach, it would start a series of events that would see the entire treaty collapse.

The US was exceedingly patient - again over 10 years of quiet diplomacy, including through NATO, to get Russia to reobserve the treaty. I think they did the right thing, through I think it went on a few years too long.

But Russia has no interest in this treaty anymore, anymore than they had interest in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which they left in 2007. Philosophically, their leaders saw these as hugely beneficial to the US, and negotiated from a position of weakness. Strategically, even when relations with the US were good, like they were when Russia began its treaty violations, it was more concerned about the long term threat of China. Today, with NATO militarizing Eastern Europe again, it only reinforces, from their perspective, their need for these weapons.

Let's be perfectly clear. A Treaty for a Treaty's sake isn't anything of value. That the INF Treaty was still a reality was mostly a fiction at this point. The US has been waffling on abiding by it since 2015. Russia has been openly violating it since 2006. This withdraw represents the recognition of a reality that has been here, in this sense, rather than the creation of a new one.


So what now for Russia?
For Russia it is relatively straight forward. They'll build more and more units with the R-500. They'll creative more Iskander derivatives with longer ranges. And they will base them in Europe and in the Russian Far East. This is what they wanted. This is what they're going to get. And while it will erode their security position further in Europe, it will significantly enhance their security position relative to China in the RFE.

So what now for the US?
The US is in the midst of so many missile programs right now, what we do in the post-INF world is a big question. The end of the War on Terror - and if I have to say it again, let me be clear, it's over and that book is closed - has brought a surge in spending on weapons to fight against great powers at all sorts of scales and ranges. Almost all of them were conceived with China in mind, though they apply to Russia too.

The stop-gap solution, which the US is exploring doing, is take the nuclear warheads that used to be on the land-based Nuclear Tomahawks and put them on the far more modern and advanced Sea-based Tomahawk Cruise missiles. They could then put these cruise missiles either in either Attack Submarines (Virginia class) or Surface ships (Destroyers). If they based these in the Baltic Sea, it would allow Intermediate Range reach into the heart of Russia at extremely little cost. Perhaps a couple billion dollars.

A medium term solution, which was funded in this years defense budget, is creating a low yield variant of the Trident II Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile, by fixing one of its existing warheads (the W76) to a 0.5 - 5 kiloton yield. This would create a missile with excellent range, but low yield, at again, little cost. The big downside is that it would eat up an entire missile tube of a Ohio class submarine, the corner stone of our deterrent. Mattis says the US would only need a handful of these to make the point that the US has a proportional response to a IRBM attack, but any Ohio class sub with these at sea would have fewer strategic missiles armed at a given time.

The long term solution is more open. We've seen above how Russia creates a new weapon by merging a few existing systems in a new way. Russia does it for low cost, and because it doesnt intend to keep them for long. That's not how the US does it. The US buys 30+ year systems, at extreme costs, but are ultra reliable and upgradable. Currently the US is actively developing the following weapons:
-A powered-flight air launched hypersonic cruise missile (conventional)
-An Air Launched Cruise Missile with a nuclear warhead to replace the AGM-86 (LRSO)
-A hypersonic boost-glide warhead for ballistic missiles
-Surface and Air launched extreme ranged variants of JASSM.
-A replacement for the Army MGM-140 ATACMS, with greater ranger.
-An artillery cannon with a 1000 mile range, through use of a projectile that has a rocket booster, ramjet engine fired from a very long barrel.

Some or all of these would easily fit within the INF model. For example, early US hypersonic cruise missiles will have ranges on the low end of intercontinental at best. Maybe closer to the high end of intermediate. Basing them in Europe, with a smaller ground-based booster, rather than air launching them with a larger booster over the Atlantic from a B-52 as planned, would be a INF-Treaty violating weapon.

The replacement for MGM-140 ATACMS is perhaps the most mundane. It is just a new conventional ballistic missile... one not made in the 1980s... with a better engine, which, naturally, will be better performing. Which means more range.

The take away from this is that the US has options. Right now it is in the discovery stage. In a few years, it will narrow down to 2 or 3 systems. This will be most cost effective (and better on the supply chain), but will mean gaining or losing capability. For example, an even better ranged JASSM-ER, if bought (and if a variant is ground launched) could be useful in a wide number of scenarios and used in lower-scale conflicts. A hypersonic cruise missile would necessarily be a "luxury" item by contrast, probably costing at least twice as much.

Decisions. decisions.

And it is also important to remember the US is going to be buying about 20 B-21 Raider Stealth Bomers per year starting in 2025 - a program that is fast maturing, and a better option than a $4 million cruise missile or $6 million ballistic missile, is a $500 million bomber carrying 40 $100,000 bombs. So the entire concept could be moot for the US in the end. It's too soon to say.

All of these though, it must be said, will be viewed through a China-first lens, not a Russia-first one. When the US is thinking about a longer ranged conventional missile for the army, or giving JASSM more range, it's not to put them in Europe. It's to put them on Pacific islands and unconventional ships at sea, to strike Chinese assets.

So what now for China?
The end of INF is immensely destabilizing with respect to China. For those not paying attention, the US and China are on a collision course. Both are in an arms race in all-but-name and watching each others moves. If the Chinese see the US rapidly move to create an INF-treaty breaking system, it will move to respond. But because it already has these weapons and has them aimed at Russia, it won't have to make any decisive movements with regards to them.


For China this will be seen most of all, confirmation of the US's ill intent towards them, which is, let's be clear, absolutely true. If they do anything, it'll most likely be putting more missiles on islands they build.

The US-China Cold War though, is just getting started.

So what now for Europe?
France, the UK and Germany will probably express extreme discontent at this action by the US, but they're not stupid and they've been involved in this every step of the way, for years. They know Russia has been in willful violation for years. They know years of attempts at reconciliation have gone nowhere. They've been deeply involved in that effort. Preservation of the INF Treaty at this point would be perpetuating a fiction. But it's a fiction that serves Europe's interests.

What they're going to be most upset about is that it means in coming years, they'll be spending a lot more money on things they really didn't want to spend on. Cruise missiles. Land based missiles. A European Medium-sized Stealth Bomber has been under discussion for a few years.

European budgets are already under pressure between shrinking workforces and growing liabilities for its social programs. And now to add a big military commitment on top of it? And with the threat of nuclear annihilation returning to Europe in principle? It's the bad all days all over again, but Europe has seen it coming from years away: they tried to get Russia to play ball, but Russia did not want to.


The Big Takeaway
This is not a Trump thing that happened. It may have gone down differently under President Hillary, but again, with the INF Treaty in abeyance as a matter of practice due to Russia's cheating, this action is really a recognition of a reality that has been here. Hillary may have tied continued US INF observation to Russia agreeing to extending the NewSTART treaty past 2021, but it's become increasingly clear in the last two years that Russia is both likely cheating on NewSTART too (with weapon numbers above treaty limits) and extension won't serve US interests.

Two developments after 2020 will make the latter ever more true. First if the US takes position of 20+ nuclear bombers per year, it'll have retire 1 ICBM or SLBM per bomber past the first 20, for every new bomber that enters service. When the US only has 20 stealth bombers right now, that doesn't matter. But when it grows the stealth bomber force to well over 100 by 2030 under the B-21 program, the NewSTART limits would mean a big effective cut of US missile forces.

Secondly, in one incredibly deft act of diplomacy... and really the steal of a life time, the Obama Administration managed to con Russia into not counting Hypersonic Cruise missiles as launch vehicles under INF Treaty limits. Russia regretted it almost immedietly and would likely never agree to that again. With Hypersonic Cruise Missiles (not boost glide, but air breathing) likely to become a new and essential avenue of American power projection after 2025, extending NewSTART to include them would have been an impossibility.

The biggest difference is that the end dates are moved up. Instead of probably preserving the fiction, only to see it fail when NewSTART was not extended next decade, we live in a world where the INF Treaty fails now and NewSTART fails later.


Which gets us to the big takeaway: if you're still thinking along 1990s and 2000s modes of thought when it comes to global security and international relations, it's time to get with the program.

The infrastructure is broken down and won't be fixed for decades to come. The next round of international infrastructure of this type will likely have to be trilateral, rather than bilaterial. It will have to accommodate the US-China superpower tussel that defines the 21st century while simultaneously answering the declining Russia's security needs. That's going to be very difficult. It means higher limits, fewer cuts and more defense spending. A lot more.

Which brings me to the politics side of this.

If you're on the right and define American security challenges as some kind of ridiculous struggle against Radical Islam, it's time to wake up. The world left your outdated fears of the caliphate behind as history surged forward and the fate of the global system become embroiled in a struggle between American/European and Chinese visions for it. Fears about the caliphate or sharia law in this world are farcical. The threats in this world are Chinese cruise missiles and Russian artillery, not Suicide Bombers. That's last decade. That's the world that lived and died between the eras of great power conflict.

If you're on the left and define American security challenges principally as some kind of misunderstanding between the great powers, you need to get real and read a history book. You're about to live a particularly bad chapter of it. Forget about nearly every single liberal wishlist item that costs hundreds of billions of dollars more than we spend today. Americans are going to be spending more - a lot more - on defense. If $150 billion more in the last 2 years didn't drive that point home, $100 billion next year and likely $50 billion the year after that should. Expanding the Navy to 350 ships, the Army by a quarter, and the Air Force by a quarter, won't come cheap at all.

The expenses of the Cold War without a doubt inhibited America's economic growth and dynamism. Being on a joint peace-war economy for 50 years, on the back of high taxes, did not nearly see the total economic growth of cutting taxes, cutting defense spending, growing the debt, and investing it in commercial enterprises since 1992.

This is the cost of losing the peace to America. We will be a poorer country, that will tax higher, and spend less on the social safety net and much more on security (dwarfing the war on terror). And lest there be any confusion: this is not a good thing (and I don't see it as such). But this is what is necessary to get through this period. The US will not cede the field to China just so there can be $200 billion a year UBI.

This all gets back to what I wrote some time ago. America and Americans are fast coming to the time where America's needs are vastly exceeding its wants, and the available bandwidth for its wants is shrinking as its needs grow.

So let me now ask the 'gods eye' question. Is this all a good or bad thing? No. It's a historical thing. From ground level, where we are, this is plainly not a good thing. It's going to (and the violation already has) eroded global and regional security and lead to a series of very expensive moves and counter moves. But from a god's eye view, this is hardly at all different, except in specifics from the breakdown in relations between other great powers of other times, especially when that break down was caused by the emergence of a third power. Most notably in the past 200 years, the unification of Germany and the arising of the German Question, that directly led to World War I, was essentially this, as an industrialized, rich power disrupted the balance of Europe, much as the say the emergence of an industrialized, rich power in China disrupted the balance of the global community today.

When this is over, be it in the 2050s, 2080s, or 22nd century, it will be a matter of time before the victory is challenged yet again. And again. And again. It is history.

The greatest mistake Obama made as a world leader was placing his greater interest in Main Street over his marginal to non-existent interests in the management of the global commons that he, as POTUS, was responsible for. That needs to be a lesson for what not to do. For every American, European or anyone else interested in more dinner table issues than the "fate of the world" stuff discussed here, the most important lesson is that almost all progress made on those fronts over the past 400 years came during and DESPITE these ongoing great power conflicts, and denying that they are here and they are real doesn't actually make it so. You don't get to chose. Nobody gets to choose. It is the nature of great powers that they struggle for dominance. As important as healthcare may be to you, countries will buy more stealth bombers, place more troops in other countries, and not explore space in peaceful cooperation, because competition, not cooperation, is the only currency during these periods.

I say this not to be provocative, but because where these events leads is requiring a series of painful decisions to be made by all in the west. The next Democratic President, for example, may run on cutting nuclear arsenals, but as President will see their largest growth in in 40 years simultaneously with cuts to the social safety net. We already discussed Europe. Just like Kennedy worrying about a "missile gap" and Johnson worrying about a "cruiser gap", President Kamala Harris will have to worry about an "Intermediate Range Forces gap" or a "hypersonic cruise missile gap".

This is what the long tail of the end of the INF Treaty signals, and the end of the post-Cold War period as a whole entails. A time when needs exceeds wants.It's very sad, but the time we lived in was built on quicksand in the first place. Remember: the first stone in the avalanche was Russia - somebody else's country - deciding that a treaty signed 20 years prior by a different leadership wasn't working for it anymore.

Does anyone expect it to be the last time that happens?


One more thing, and something else to lament. The INF Treaty, as stated, was the only treaty to ban an entire class of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile. A Global Zero treaty - a global ban on ALL nuclear weapons would look very much like a scaled up INF Treaty. This represents the end of global zero. The fear of global zero has long been 'what happens if one nation cheats, or if 20 years later, after everybody has disarmed, one party decides that the treaty isnt in its interest anymore". We are now living that reality with INF. It will be a very long time between the US ever trusts Russia when it comes to disarmament again. Banning one class of weapons such as this, much less all classes, is something that will never come in our life time.

[Omega10]

The lasting implications of this withdrawal won't be felt until the late 2020s. Trump will be gone for years before it's much more than just words. The US could field a quick and dirty INF-violating weapons if it wanted to, but it won't and it isn't planning to according to guidance issued by Congress this year. It'll buy a 30+ year system, and that means years of design review, prototypes and so forth before actual fielding.

Furthermore as a practical matter, it's always been more symbolic. The US technically doesn't "need" INF weapons because it can just park our SSBNs with Trident IIs off the coast of France and achieve, to a degree, much the same thing.

The INF Treaty eliminited land-based missiles in Europe, but it says nothing about sea based or air based. That was by design. Basically it was to make Nuclear War between the US and USSR not destroy Europe first... on paper. As a matter of practicality, if the late Cold War got hot, Russia would never have followed it, and neither would the US.

I read your long post (replied to this one due to space considerations).

I HOPE YOU ARE COMPLETELY WRONG.

Even mostly wrong would be fine. Then again I should be careful what I ask for. It is likely that, if you are wrong about anything, it is in UNDERESTIMATING how much more we'll be spending on defense, not overestimating it. Especially, since, even though you say quite emphatically that the war on terror - the Middle East - is no longer important, I just can't imagine any scenario where we just leave that area. So all this additional funding that you are talking about will be OVER AND ABOVE what we are spending and doing militarily, rather than in place of it.

Your comments about Americans just having to basically give up on any kind of decent healthcare is quite chilling (much less UBI). The first attempts at slashing Medicare (and also our retirement system, Social Security) will happen next year if republicans do well in the election next month. You are very strongly suggesting that they are both toast anyways in the next decade regardless of who wins elections, meaning that November's election is really meaningless. You reinforce this idea when you say that President Hillary would be doing almost precisely what Trump is doing, with differences in style but not so much in substance.

[PosPosPos]

Your comments about Americans just having to basically give up on any kind of decent healthcare is quite chilling (much less UBI). The first attempts at slashing Medicare (and also our retirement system, Social Security) will happen next year if republicans do well in the election next month. You are very strongly suggesting that they are both toast anyways in the next decade regardless of who wins elections, meaning that November's election is really meaningless. You reinforce this idea when you say that President Hillary would be doing almost precisely what Trump is doing, with differences in style but not so much in substance.

The difference between Hillary and Trump is, the former is just another x years of Obama, the latter wants to throw the nation into the dumpster.

But yeah, it's bad for America regardless, that doesn't mean the extent in which they can get bad is the same.