When the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty earlier this year, it blamed Russia, accusing Moscow of violating the landmark Cold War pact with impunity for years, with its deployment of a mobile land-based cruise missile.
“Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this summer. “Dating back to at least the mid-2000s, Russia developed, produced, flight-tested, and has now fielded multiple battalions of its noncompliant missile.”
But one of the biggest drivers in the U.S. decision to bail on the treaty is that it was negotiated in 1987 between the U.S. and the old Soviet Union, and didn’t apply to China — which has amassed the world’s largest arsenal of short and medium-range missiles that the U.S. was banned from developing or deploying.
“China is developing a new generation of mobile missiles, with warheads consisting of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) and penetration aids, intended to ensure the viability of its strategic deterrent in the face of continued advances in U.S. and, to a lesser extent, Russian strategic ISR, precision strike, and missile defense capabilities,” said the Defense Intelligence Agency in a report issued in May.
Free from the constraints of the now-defunct INF treaty, the U.S. is moving quickly to develop a new generation of ground-launched mobile missiles that could be permanently based in Japan, Korea, or other bases in Asia-Pacific to counter China.
Thursday, the U.S. announced the successful test of a “prototype conventionally-configured ground-launched ballistic missile” from Vandenberg Air Force Base. “Data collected and lessons learned from this test will inform the Department of Defense’s development of future intermediate-range capabilities,” the Pentagon said.
The Pentagon still has to overcome concerns in Congress, and among America’s NATO allies that deployment of the new shorter-range missiles, especially in Europe, would be destabilizing.
In the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which President Trump has promised to sign, Congressional negotiators inserted language barring deployment of the missiles before 2024.
“The conference agreement prohibits the procurement and deployment of new ground-launched INF-range missiles and requires information on the analysis of alternatives to such new missiles, basing options and foreign countries consulted including NATO,” according to a summary of the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act provided by the House and Senate Armed Services Committee.
Read more from our senior writer on defense and national security in today’s edition of Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense.
