In a quite remarkable statement on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison announced that the U.S. would consider destroying Russian missiles that are deployed in breach of a Cold War-era treaty.

Responding to Russia’s deployment of the Novator 9M729 intermediate range ballistic missile system, Hutchinson told reporters that U.S. “countermeasures would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty…. Getting them to withdraw would be our choice, of course. But I think the question was what would you do if this continues to a point where we know that they are capable of delivering. And at that point, we would then be looking at a capability to take out a missile that could his any of our countries in Europe and hit America in Alaska.”