Candidates for the 2020 presidential race have enough on their plates to consume their energy and talent. Let’s start with guns; racial tension; immigration; women’s’ reproductive choices; sexual harassment and general behavior; and economics, including income inequality, financial regulation, employment, fiscal policy and healthcare. Add to these domestic issues multiple foreign policy challenges.
Clearly, given our recent political history, these issues are far more than we can expect the next president and congress to effectively deal with.
With this, it is not surprising that a dominant issue of the latter half of the 20th century, the prospect of nuclear annihilation, has been swept under the rug — all but totally ignored.
My recent visit to Arizona with former Monroe residents Randy and Joey Schneeberger, and our visit to the Titan II ICBM Missile Museum in Sahuarito, was a grim reminder of Cold War tensions and the world’s narrow escape from nuclear annihilation.
Avoidance of nuclear disaster was the result of fortunate cool headedness of US and Soviet leaders, and narrow escape from two “Murphy’s laws:” Nature always sides with the hidden flaw, and if something can go wrong, it will.
We have escaped consequences of these two laws — so far, anyway. But there is no guarantee that cool heads will always prevail.
Effort to deal with the Cold War strategy of “Deterrence through assurance of mutual destruction” began before the end of the Cold War with the landmark INF treaty; shorthand for the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.
This treaty was significant because it eliminated an entire class of especially dangerous nuclear weapons of the US and USSR. It banned ground-based missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles that had short flight times and are very hard to detect. The US and USSR had each deployed hundreds of these weapons in Europe that could vaporize entire cities.
The second, more recent, major treaty is the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, dubbed “New START,” signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. The objective of this treaty was to slash both sides’ nuclear arsenal by a third, limiting each side to no more than 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers; no more than 1550 deployed warheads; and 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers.
Whew, we’re safer now — right? Wrong — both nations are still heavily armed, and the ominous news, swept under the rug amidst other stuff going on, is that Trump recently officially terminated the longstanding INF with Russia, potentially signaling the beginning of the end of the arms control architecture that has regulated nuclear weapons since the Cold War.
Before we lay it all on Trump, our NATO allies have accused Russia for years of violating the treaty by developing and deploying a land-based cruise missile believed to have a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
Arms control advocates say the decision to abandon the INF increases the risk of a buildup of nuclear and conventional missiles along Russia’s border with Eastern Europe, potentially undermining Europe’s security. But others, including Trump Administration officials, assert that there is no point in deferring to a treaty that Russia is violating. Furthermore, “experts” say that China is gaining its own advantage by developing its own intermediate range forces to deploy in East Asia.
Regardless of who deserves blame, it is ominous that the INF is abandoned, and more ominous that there seem to be no appetite for negotiations. Besides we still have New START, don’t we?
Yes, for now anyway. But it will expire in 2021 unless both sides agree to extend it. Termination of both the INF and New START could potentially provoke a new nuclear arms race.
Trump has not explicitly said whether he will allow New START to expire. Some administration officials have signaled that they don’t support it in its current form.
Trump has indicated that he wants to replace New START with a three-way nuclear weapons treaty that would include China. However, the fly in the ointment there is that it is questionable whether Beijing would agree to negotiate such a deal since it has a smaller nuclear arsenal than either Washington or Moscow.
A key figure, National Security Advisor, John Bolton who never met a war he didn’t like as long as he could view it from safe distance, apparently wants to abandon New START, recently characterizing it as “flawed from the beginning.” Some of us worry more about Bolton than we do about Trump himself. Despite Bolton, Trump has ostensibly dispatched diplomats to Geneva to conduct talks with Russian counterparts on possibly extending New START.
In sharp contrast to the hawkish Bolton who never had five minutes in a military chow line, US military leaders support New START. That treaty provides a verification process that includes notifications by each country each time they move a weapon, and includes on-site inspections. These would go away if the treaty expires.
Nearly all congressional Democrats support extension of New START. In contrast, hawkish Republican Senators Cotton and Cornyn have introduced legislation that would block funding on extending the treaty unless it expands to include China. Rep. Liz Cheney introduced companion legislation in the House.
Other Republicans, including Senator Todd Young, have urged the administration to extend New START and have, along with Democrat, Chris Van Hollen, introduced legislation to extend the treaty.
The whole nuclear situation is ever more ominous as members of the “nuclear club” now include China, North Korea, UK, France, Pakistan, India, and Israel. Others would like to join the club, including Iran. The Iranian situation was, if not resolved, at least delayed until Trump ill-advisedly unilaterally walked out on the deal.
The ever-dangerous nuclear problem still looms, buried under the multiple issues of the 2020 campaign. We should insist that candidates weigh in on it.
— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.
