Why America Must Stop Russia from Violating the INF Treaty

Steven Pifer

Security, Eurasia

The United States needs leverage to persuade the Kremlin to come back into compliance with the INF Treaty.

The thirty-year-old treaty banning U.S. and Russian ground-launched intermediate-range missiles is at risk of collapse. Russia has violated the treaty by testing and deploying a ground-launched cruise missile of intermediate range. The Obama administration sought to bring Russia back into compliance, but its efforts failed.

Preserving the treaty remains in the interest of the United States and U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, but it will be an uphill fight. If the Trump administration wishes to get Russia back into compliance—at this point it’s an “if” question—then the administration will need leverage. That leverage would ideally persuade Moscow that the military and political costs of continuing to violate the treaty outweigh whatever gains the Russian military hopes to achieve.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty in 1987. The deployment of Pershing II ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles to Europe in response to the Soviet deployment of SS-20 ballistic missiles helped convince the Kremlin to agree to eliminate those missiles. The treaty banned all U.S. and Soviet (now Russian) ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges between 500–5,500 kilometers. By July 1991, the two sides had destroyed nearly 2,700 nuclear-capable intermediate-range missiles, including all SS-20s, Pershing IIs and ground-launched cruise missiles.

In 2007, senior Russian officials began to express concern about the treaty, noting that third countries were beginning to acquire intermediate-range missiles in significant numbers. Those countries included China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Iran and Israel. They had one thing in common: all were closer to Russia than to the United States.

Given the large number of Russian strategic forces and other nuclear weapons, it was unclear why Moscow would need intermediate-range missiles to counter third-country forces. If the Russian leadership had genuine security concerns, however, it had a path forward: withdraw from the treaty as permitted by its provisions.

The Kremlin chose to cheat. It ignored the Obama administration efforts to try to get Russia back into compliance with the treaty and instead made charges of U.S. treaty violations (one of which may have some merit, but that is a different story).