WASHINGTON — The United States still intends to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty next week, unless Russia destroys weapons the Trump administration says violate the Cold War accord, a senior State Department official told reporters here Thursday.
The administration says Russia can only verify its compliance with the INF Treaty by destroying weapon systems that Washington says violate the pact. On Thursday, Andrea Thompson, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said Russia will “probably not” take that step.
Thompson spoke at a Defense Writers Group breakfast one day after Russia displayed an allegedly noncompliant missile in Moscow. During the display, which the United States did not attend, the Kremlin said the missile could not reach ranges prohibited by the treaty. Thompson said the display proved nothing of the sort.
The United States is now set to suspend its INF obligations Feb. 2. Six months after that, following a mandatory waiting period, Washington would withdraw from the accord entirely and be free to develop and deploy new missiles in the treaty-prohibited range. The U.S. has not yet talked to its European allies about potentially deploying INF-range weapons on their territory, Thompson said.
Withdrawal would “reversible,” Thompson said.
The INF Treaty prohibits the U.S. and Russia from developing and deploying ground-based missiles with ranges between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers, or roughly 330 miles to 3,300 miles. The treaty applies to conventional and nuclear-armed missiles, missile launchers, and support structures. Its ratification precipitated a massive drawdown of nuclear forces in Europe.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set the Feb. 2 deadline in January, after President Donald Trump said in October the U.S. planned to withdraw from the accord.
The Obama administration in 2014 publicly accused Russia of violating the INF Treaty in 2014. The United States then identified alleged violations dating to at least 2008, including development, testing, and fielding of systems such as the Novator 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile and the Iskander launcher.
In its Wednesday display of the Novator 9M729 to media and foreign officials in Moscow, Russia claimed the missile can only fly about 300 miles. On Thursday, Thompson said such a static display was like was like trying to guess how far a car can go by looking at it.
Even if U.S. officials observed a flight test of the 9M729, it would not prove that the weapon cannot operate in INF-banned ranges, Thompson said. For example, Russia could limit the missile’s flight range by modifying its hardware or underfueling it, according to Thompson.
“[T]he only way you can get the system back into compliance is to destroy the system, destroy the missile,” she said. “[W]e’ve laid that out to them repeated times.”
Thompson has been part of ongoing talks with Russia, but these have so far been unfruitful. Most recently, she visited Geneva to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
The visit “wasn’t the normal bluster, propaganda, the kind of dramatics that associate some of these meetings,” Thomspon said. However, the Russians in Geneva maintained that their allegedly noncompliant weapons “didn’t violate the INF Treaty, despite us showing them repeated times the intelligence and information, to include the dates of when the tests occurred in violation of the treaty.”
Thompson put blame for the likely failure of the INF Treaty squarely on Russia, arguing that leadership there ordered development of the 9M729, which Moscow has since deployed.
The likely U.S. withdrawal from INF, Thompson said, is an attempt to maintain arms control standards.
If the U.S. stayed in while alleging Russia violated the deal, it would be “accepting a new norm and setting a precedent for future treaties,” Thompson said. It would be like saying “‘I’ll sign a treaty with you, but go ahead and violate it, there’s no consequences.'”
Meanwhile, Thompson and Ryabkov are set to attend the meeting of nuclear powers in Beijing, China, next week. Thompson said the two governments are working on scheduling a bilateral discussion on the sidelines of the event.
Richard Abott, reporter for NS&DM sister publication Defense Daily, contributed to this story from Washington.
