Good day all. Back during the Reagan Administration, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in an arms race. It was this race that eventually caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. They ran out of money. One of the things the Russians did was try and negotiate away America’s nuclear weapons.
This used to work, (See the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks or SALT), with the basic promise from the USSR being, “What we have is ours, what you have is negotiable.” Then came Ronald Reagan. He put an end to that nonsense and actually negotiated a real treaty that removed an entire class of weapons, It was called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty or INF.
This caused the United States to scrap the Pershing missile and nuclear armed land based cruise missiles and the Russians to scrap the SS20 missile. The only problem has been, particularity of late, the Russians have be caught cheating…as usual. Now, after three presidents have tried to get the Russians to comply with the treaty, President Trump has said “Enough is enough.” Here are the details from the Thomas Reuters Foundation News:
The United States will suspend compliance with the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia on Saturday and formally withdraw in six months if Moscow does not end its alleged treaty violations, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday.
The United States would reconsider its withdrawal if Russia, which denies violating the landmark 1987 arms control pact, came into compliance with the treaty, which bans both nations from stationing short- and intermediate-range, land-based missiles in Europe.
“Russia has refused to take any steps to return (to) real and verifiable compliance,” Pompeo told reporters at the State Department. “We will provide Russia and the other treaty parties with formal notice that the United States is withdrawing from the INF treaty, effective in six months.
“If Russia does not return to full and verifiable compliance with the treaty within this six-month period by verifiably destroying its INF-violating missiles, their launchers, and associated equipment, the treaty will terminate.”
Most of you probably won’t remember, but back then the Soviets were pouring huge amounts of resources into Europe and the United States to kneecap Reagan’s conventional and nuclear buildup. The United States forces had been run down badly after Vietnam and were obsolete and undermanned. The Russians wanted to keep it that way.
With the Reagan Buildup underway, the Russians started backing, very quietly, the “Nuclear Freeze” Movement. The goal of the “Freezeniks” was to freeze the nuclear forces at their current levels. This would have put the United States way behind the Russians, to the point that they might have launched WW3 and initiated a nuclear first strike.
Once the Freeze movement took off, the Russians backed away from it to maintain their “Deniability.” The problem was, even though the Democrats were backing whatever the Soviets wanted, Reagan flat out wouldn’t. This eventually led to the INF talks and the treaty for both sides to actually end an entire class of weapons for the first time. Surprising no one, the Communist backed anti-nukes refused to support the treaty. (The term “hypocrite” was a perfect fit for all these leftist fellow travelers)
Some experts believe the collapse of the INF treaty could undermine other arms control agreements and speed an erosion of the global system designed to block the spread of nuclear arms.
The “Experts” are the professional Milquetoasts who think that the best thing in life is expensive retreats and negotiating away our defenses. They’ve also been wrong every single time. Every turd world country is wasting huge resources developing nukes, with Iran being the most notorious. Where the major Nuclear powers, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Israel would rather not need these weapons, countries like Iran, Pakistan and North Korea not only want them, if they see an advantage, they will initiate a nuclear first strike. They also don’t care about any treaty obligations.
So now what? Does this mean the United States is going to put Nukes into Europe and start building a new class of weapons? Probably not. We currently have no need to do so and no reason to spend the money developing the class. This doesn’t mean that some basic engineering won’t be done, it just means we aren’t going to build prototypes or production weapons.
What this does do is put the Russians on notice that we will no longer play by the rules when they won’t. They have been caught lying and cheating repeatedly, and the breaking point has finally been reached. So, tell me again how President Trump was colluding with the Russians? This is the last thing they wanted to see happen. Under Obama and Bush, they got away with it, and now they just got a smack to the back of the head. It’s about time.
Thatisall
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