Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
11/20/2015
The United States is considering “economic and military responses” to Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a senior State Department official said last week. Frank Rose, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, said Russia committed a “serious violation” against “one of the core tenets of the INF Treaty – not to produce or flight test intermediate-range [a] ground launched cruise missile.” As a result, the U.S. will consider economic actions – such as new sanctions – in addition to military responses, the details of which remain unclear.
The 1987 INF Treaty called for the United States and then-Soviet Union to eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The Department of State determined that Russia since last year has been violating the treaty. “Russia’s violation is not a technicality or an issue of mistaken identity,” Rose said at the World Affairs Councils of America annual conference. Meanwhile Moscow has accused the United States of violating the treaty by deploying certain launch systems and testing target missiles, a claim Rose called a “baseless” attempt “to divert attention away from its own treaty violations.”
“We will ensure that Russia does not gain any advantage over the United States or its allies through its pursuit of such systems,” Rose said. He added that the U.S. will “forcefully and factually refute Russia’s groundless and diversionary claims that it is the United States that is seeking to undermine the INF Treaty.” The latest version of the fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress specifically calls for the research and development of military responses to potential Russian violations of the arms control agreement.
Rose is currently in Europe for the second plenary meeting of the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification, where he is participating in “discussions on space policy, missile defense, arms control, and other bilateral and multilateral security topics,” according to the State Department. Rose said Monday in Norway that “by pooling together the collective expertise from states with and states without nuclear weapons, we can build confidence – multilateral confidence – in the tools, technologies, and methods that will enable us to monitor and verify future nuclear disarmament activities.”
