COLD WAR II: When Will the United States Cease Wasting Billions of Dollars To Comply With Dead and Violated Arms Control Agreements?
Contrary of the illusions of the Arms Control Association, the current situation as stated by senior White House official Pranay Vaddi in June 2024, is that, “Russia, the PRC [China] and North Korea are all expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck pace—showing little or no interest in arms control.” In August 2024, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Vipin Narang observed that “…we now find ourselves in nothing short of a new nuclear age—an unprecedented mix of multiple revisionist nuclear challengers who are uninterested in arms control or risk reduction efforts.”
Nonetheless, the Biden Administration continues to believe that there is an arms control solution to our security problems. This is pollyannish. The United States faces more than a refusal to negotiate. The record of Russian (and before it Soviet) compliance with arms control agreements is extremely poor. In 1987, President Ronald Regan told the Congress that, “The Administration’s most recent studies support its conclusion that there is a pattern of Soviet noncompliance. As documented in this and previous reports, the Soviet Union has violated its legal obligation under, or political commitment to, the SALT I ABM Treaty and Interim Agreement, the SALT II Agreement, the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, and the Helsinki Final Act. In addition, the USSR has likely violated provisions of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.” In 2023, the bipartisan Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States pointed out that “…there is no prospect of a meaningful arms control Treaty being negotiated with Russia in the foreseeable future,” and, “Over the past 20 years, Russia has either violated or has failed to comply with nearly every major arms control treaty or agreement to which the United States is or was a party.”
The recognition of Russian arms control misconduct has become somewhat bipartisan.
Much more at the link.
While China is barely mentioned, Beijing has shown zero interest in arms control and is currently in the midst of a “strategic breakout” with its ICBM force and enjoys a “massive…advantage in ground-launched INF-range missiles.”
