FROLITICKS

I was in public school when the Cuban Crisis took place in 1962. President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev almost started a nuclear war over the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba and the subsequent American naval blockade of the waters off Cuba to Soviet shipping. Both countries had enough nuclear warheads and intercontinental missiles to wipe each other out several times over.  In school, we were even practicing in the event of a possible nuclear attack.  Scary stuff!

After that, level heads thankfully prevailed and the Soviets dismantled and withdrew their missiles from Cuba, and the U.S. quietly did the same in Turkey. Both sides recognized the concept of “mutual nuclear deterrence” which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy’s use of those same weapons. Subsequently, both the U.S. and the Soviets began negotiations to limit and reduce their respective nuclear arsenals. This also led in 1987 to the signing by President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of  the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The INF was to limit the deployment of all ground-based nuclear weapons with a certain intermediate range, particularly those that allowed the Soviets to hit European targets or NATO forces to hit Soviet targets from locations in Europe.

Unable to reach a new INF agreement with Russia, the Trump White House announced that it’s pulling out of the treaty, only to be followed immediately by Vladimir Putin’s announcement as to Russia’s withdrawal from the agreement and negotiations. Most experts believe that Russia had been wanting out of the treaty for more than a decade, especially given Putin’s aggressive policies in Europe as exemplified by Russia’s military intervention in Eastern Ukraine.  There appears to be little doubt that the Russians have been “cheating” under the INF by developing cruise-missile-style low-flying weapons covered under the Treaty’s intermediate defined ranges. The U.S. now intends to conduct the R&D and work on the systems they haven’t been able to use because of American compliance with the treaty.

With the lost of such arms-related treaties, the world may very well be entering another arms race compared to that during the Cold War. Do we really need this situation at a time when global peace initiatives have been threatened in numerous ways?  It will also allow other countries, like China and North Korea, to further justify the continuation their arms development. Let’s just hope that we are not heading for the brink of another crisis like that which happened over five decades ago.