MOSCOW, October 22. /TASS/. The United States’ decision to quit the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty will foment many countries’ distrust towards Washington and undermine strategic stability, the chief of the European security section at the Institute of Europe under the Russian Academy of Sciences, MGIMO University professor Dmitry Danilov told TASS.
In his opinion this step "shakes loose the military-political situation in the most serious way."
"If the INF Treaty ceases to exist, there will emerge problems with finding alternative elements of maintaining the strategic balance, in the first place, nuclear one. In a situation like this it will be necessary to take steps that would enable Russia and other countries to compensate for the imbalances at the national level and neutralize the potential risks and challenges that will emerge," he said.
Danilov believes that the United States’ pullout from the INF Treaty would be tantamount to utter collapse of arms control.
"Trust towards the United States’ ability to act in a responsible way in the arms control space and to honor the existing international treaties will be hopelessly wasted," he believes. "Washington’s credibility as a partner will be considerably undermined. This is true not of only Russia-US or Russia-NATO relations, but of far wider problems related with the erosion of nuclear non-proliferation."
"The United States’ unilateral actions and pullout from the treaty will reduce to a critical low other countries’ certainty about the ability of great powers to maintain the nuclear and strategic balances, non-proliferation and arms control," Danilov said.
The United States’ decision to sever the INF Treaty, Danilov believes, may cause the most negative effect on Euro-Atlantic relations.
"Uncertainty in Europe now soars to record highs. Everybody understands that it will be extremely difficult to try to come to terms with US President Donald Trump and to safeguard one’s own interests," Danilov said. "On the one hand, the level of strategic distrust towards the United States is soaring, but on the other hand the European countries have no serious instruments and arguments to influence Washington’s policies."
"It is clear that Trump is splitting Europe. Germany fears that it will have to make a decision where and how to deploy the new US missiles to which the INF Treaty will no longer apply. If not in the territories of NATO’s old-timers, then in Eastern Europe. This will greatly change the situation," he said. "In this respect Trump undermines relations among the Euro-Atlantic allies."
INF Treaty
On October 20, Trump said that the United States would quit the INF Treaty, because Russia was allegedly violating it. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov described this as a dangerous move. Berlin and Beijing criticized Washington’s decision, while London expressed support for it and NATO blamed the responsibility for Trump’s decision on Russia, which in its opinion probably violated the treaty.
The INF Treaty was concluded on December 8, 1987 and took effect on June 1, 1988. It applied to deployed and non-deployed ground-based missiles of intermediate range (1,000-5,000 kilometers) and shorter range (500-1,000 kilometers). In recent years Washington has repeatedly charged Russia with violating the treaty. Moscow strongly dismissed the accusations and addressed the United States with its own claims over Washington’s non-compliance.