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By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com  Aug 3, 2020,   In December 2019, a secretive group of elite Americans and Russians gathered around a large square table. It was chilly outside, as Dayton, Ohio, can get in the winter, but the mood inside was just as frosty.

Trump takes control, and trashes arms control

Nuclear war is a threat Donald Trump has often talked about over the years, and he has sometimes seemed genuinely concerned about it……..

When Trump took office on ‎January 20, 2017, three major arms control-related agreements were in force: the INF Treaty, a confidence-building measure known as Open Skies, and New START, the agreement Obama had negotiated just a few years earlier.

Yet, rather than continue the progress his predecessors made toward making the world safer from the threat of nuclear war, Trump decided to tear it all down, while pursuing an exit from the Iran nuclear deal and ineffective nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

Of those three US-Russia agreements, one is gone, another is almost gone, and the last, it seems, is on the way out. That’s not all bad, some experts say, as Russia did cheat on some of the agreements and the US showed those actions would have consequences.

But most experts I spoke to are concerned that Trump is tearing down an artifice with no new blueprints to make it better, or even rebuild what exists. “The whole arms control regime is under considerable stress,” former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who now leads the Nuclear Threat Initiative, told me. “It’s badly frayed.”

Let’s take each deal in turn.

The INF Treaty  The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987. It prohibited Washington and Moscow from fielding ground-launched cruise missiles that could fly between 310 and 3,400 miles.

Both countries signed the deal as a way to improve relations toward the end of the Cold War. However, the two nations still could — and since have — built up cruise missiles that can be fired from the air or sea………

Ultimately….. “the president made the decision to leave” the deal. That officially happened in August 2019.

Open Skies

Originally an idea by Eisenhower and made a reality in 2002, the Open Skies Treaty allows nations to conduct unarmed flights over another country’s military installations and other areas of concern. Entering into effect 10 years later, it has since helped the 34 North American and European signatories, including the US and Russia, gain confidence that others weren’t developing advanced weapons in secret or planning big attacks……..

In May 2020, Trump decided America would withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, kicking off a six-month clock before the US could officially leave the deal. ………….

New START

As a reminder, the New START arms control deal became effective in 2011 during the Obama administration. The treaty’s goal, essentially, is to limit the size of the American and Russian nuclear arsenals, the two largest in the world.

To ensure those limits are met and kept, the treaty also allows Washington and Moscow to keep tabs on the other’s nuclear programs through stringent inspections and data sharing, thereby curbing mistrust about each other’s nuclear and military plans.

At the time, it was heralded as a major achievement and is still considered such by top lawmakers…………

As of mid-July 2020, the two nations had exchanged more than 20,400 total notifications about the state of their arsenals.

Rose Gottemoeller, who led the New START negotiations for the US at the State Department, told me all that goes away if Trump decides not to stay in the agreement. “The Russians won’t allow for verifications and inspections without a legal basis,” she said. And without the ability to get deep insight into Russia’s nuclear forces, trust would surely erode.

“The exact thing which gives us an excellent understanding of Russian strategic forces is all going to break down,” said Gottemoeller, who in 2019 stepped down as NATO’s deputy secretary. “Unless you have access to verify what’s going on with the warheads on missiles or submarines, you don’t really understand what’s going on.”

Putin, Russia’s president, says he sees value in the deal. “Russia is not interested in starting an arms race and deploying missiles where they are not present now,” he told Russian officials in December. “Russia is ready to immediately, as soon as possible, by the end of this year, without any preconditions, extend the START Treaty so that there would be no further double or triple interpretation of our position.”

Trump hasn’t taken up Putin on his offer yet, even though those two could extend the agreement for up to five years without anyone else’s input………….. So why get out of a deal that almost everyone says is vital to keeping US-Russia relations stable? The answer is China……..

In July, top US arms control negotiator Marshall Billingslea extended an “open invitation” to Chinese officials to join the US and Russia in Austria for New START talks, even though Beijing has long said it won’t sign on to New START since its arsenal is so much smaller than Washington’s and Moscow’s. ……………

The new arms race

“Arms control creates an additional layer of insurance between states not getting along well and a possible hot war,” Samuel Charap, who served as a senior adviser to Gottemoeller after New START entered into force, told me. “If you remove the failsafe, you create more risk.”

Without the longstanding architecture in place, Washington and Moscow would enter a dangerous arms control hiatus and could see already poor relations spiral out of control. The US and Russia have many nuclear-tipped missiles already pointed at each other, but it would be even worse if both sides try to one-up their adversary by creating more deadly and usable weapons.

That, unfortunately, is exactly what’s happening. Welcome to the new arms race. ………………..

A review conference for the treaty was supposed to take place in April but was postponed due to the coronavirus. Whenever it meets, the lack of US-Russia arms control commitment could make it the testiest gathering in decades. Some may seriously push for the NPT to be dissolved. And if that’s the case, what’s to stop nations like Iran, Saudi Arabia, or others from sprinting toward the bomb?

Second, the end of an important era in global security fades away with nothing to replace or build on it. “The good old days when arms control was going hand-in-hand with a cooperative security relationship — which basically ties my security to your security — those days are gone, and I don’t see them coming back,” said the University of Hamburg’s Kühn. The only chance of a return to that time, he added, would likely be after Trump, Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping leave their offices……………….

There are reasons for optimism.

Washington and Moscow are having conversations now, including a working-level meeting in July in Vienna. Even though the administration is skeptical of arms control, and Billingslea is not a fan of the concept, Trump’s team at least hasn’t outright rejected negotiations.

However unlikely now, the two powers could come to an agreement before New START’s expiration on February 5. If they don’t, a newly elected Joe Biden could quickly reach a deal with Putin before the deadline, though he’d have limited time since his term would start in late January. “The election in November will be a major inflection point for New START specifically,” Moniz, the former energy secretary who helped strike the Iran nuclear deal, told me. “If Biden wins, I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t extend New START.”……… https://www.vox.com/world/21131449/trump-putin-nuclear-usa-russia-arms-control-new-start