Long-dormant fears of a nuclear arms race in Europe were awoken on Feb. 1 when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was suspending its obligations under the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty – or INF Treaty.
The landmark treaty, signed in 1987, banned an entire class of weapons, eliminating all land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, and their launchers, with ranges of about 300-3,400 miles.
Putin’s announcement came a day after the United States said it planned to withdraw from it due to repeated Russian violations of the agreement.
During his State of the Union Address on Feb. 5, U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. pullout of the agreement would be part of a strategy for military buildup. He blamed Russia for violating the treaty.
“The United States is developing a state of the art defense missile system, and under my administration, we will never apologize for advancing America’s interests,” Trump said.
“Decades ago, the United States entered into a treaty with Russia in which we agreed to limit and reduce our missile capability. While we followed the agreement and the rules to the letter, Russia repeatedly violated its terms… That is why I announced that the United States is officially withdrawing from the INF Treaty.”
Fallout for Ukraine
The likely demise of the INF Treaty has security implications for Ukraine beyond the obvious fears of possible redeployment in Europe of nuclear weapons by both Russia and the United States. As a successor state of one of its signatories, the Soviet Union, Ukraine was bound by the treaty’s terms.
But it might not be for much longer, Mariana Budjeryn, Research Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, told the Kyiv Post.
“For Ukraine, the collapse of the INF … (means its) hands are untied to consider developing a missile of a 500-1,200 kilometer range – something that would come very useful for bolstering its defenses vis-à-vis Russia,” Budjeryn said.
“Such missiles could carry high-precision warheads with conventional payloads (the INF Treaty says nothing about nuclear – it only regulates launchers, although traditionally INF-range launchers have been associated only with nuclear payloads).”
“(But) on the other hand, (the collapse of the treaty) might produce a less secure Russia that will be more tenacious in trying to keep Ukraine in its orbit, or at least destabilized, messy, and therefore unattractive to Europe and the United States.”
“(And) the collapse of the INF Treaty does not automatically mean redeployment of INF-range missile to Europe by either NATO or Russia,” Budjeryn added.
“One of the solutions that has been aired is for the United States and Russia to sign a memorandum of understanding, committing not to proceed with deployments if the other side doesn’t. This seems reasonable.”
Kyiv responds
Nevertheless, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin on Feb. 5 made it clear in an interview with Voice of America that if intermediate- or shorter-range missiles are deployed in the region by either Russia or the United States, Ukraine would respond.
“This behavior on the part of Russia has led to a new logic in the arms race,” Klimkin said, like Trump blaming the collapse of the treaty on Russian violations.
“In this situation, Ukraine will need to respond to new challenges,” he said.
“And we must respond to them (appropriately), because we have experience, we have the necessary intelligence, and we have the need to protect our country. We already have certain potential in the field of missiles, and it is we who will decide which missiles we need for the future.”
He said Russia has been violating the treaty over the years, deploying intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.
“It completely changes the whole sense of arms control … We must use everything to protect ourselves,” Klimkin said.
Balance of power
The development of new missile defenses by Ukraine would alter the balance of power in the region radically, and erase disarmament gains made a quarter of a century ago.
In 1991, Ukraine possessed the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, having inherited 175 long-range missiles and more than 1,800 nuclear warheads after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But after two years of talks between the United States, Russia and Ukraine, a breakthrough agreement was reached between U.S. President Bill Clinton, and his counterparts Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine, and British Prime Minister John Major. Under the agreement, Ukraine agreed to remove all nuclear weapons from its soil in exchange for assurances that Russia would respect its sovereignty.
The Budapest Memorandum – the agreement that officially dismantled Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal – was signed on Dec. 5, 1994. Afterwards, images of Ukrainian army officers inspecting destroyed missiles started to be printed in the country’s newspapers. By the end of 2001, Ukraine had destroyed all 46 of its intercontinental ballistic missile silos.
Some officers cried as they viewed the destroyed weapons, fearing the threat of aggression from Russia.
Their fears proved well founded: Just over 12 years after the last of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal was scrapped, Russia invaded and started to occupy the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and then attempted to seize swathes of Ukraine’s east in a military intervention disguised as a local armed uprising. Only a dogged defense by Ukraine’s ramshackle army, supported by volunteer units, stopped the Kremlin taking control of the whole of Ukraine’s two easternmost oblasts, and perhaps more.
But by the middle of 2018, fears of Russian attack had moved from land to sea, after Russia on May 16 finished building a road and rail bridge across the Kerch Strait. The bridge tightened the Kremlin’s control over access to the Azov Sea, and the Kremlin soon demonstrated its new power – attacking and capturing three Ukrainian naval vessels and their 24 crew on Nov. 25 after they attempted to traverse the strait and gain access to Ukrainian ports on the Azov Sea.
While Russia’s naked aggression at sea exposed Ukraine’s vulnerability on its southern coastal flank, the country has for years been developing a short-range anti-ship cruise missile, which is not covered by the INF Treaty.
A prototype of the new weapon, called Neptun (Neptune) was first displayed at the Weapons and Security 2015 defense exhibition, and the first tests of the missile were carried out in March 2016.
The latest successful tests of the missile were carried out on Aug. 17, 2018, with the military reporting that a target was hit at a range of 100 kilometers. The missile reportedly has a range of up to 300 kilometers, and can be launched from ground- sea- and air-platforms against vessels of up to 5,000 tons. Other characteristics of the weapon are secret.
Now, with the collapse of the INF Treaty, Ukraine is potentially free to develop longer-range missiles, as Klimkin told Voice of America.
A Ukrainian Neptune cruise missile is launched at a Ukrainian firing range in Odesa Oblast on Dec. 5, 2018.
A win for Putin?
But while the collapse of the INF Treaty could have profound implications for the shape of Ukraine’s future defense, Russian President Vladimir Putin is also certain to respond to the new security environment, said Budjeryn.
“Putin will certainly use the United States’ withdrawal from the INF rhetorically to his advantage, pinning the blame on the U.S. for dismantling the arms control regime and destabilizing Europe. I’m sure the 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty will be invoked, too, to demonstrate a pattern.”
The United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty on June 13, 2002. The ABM Treaty had been signed in 1972 by Washington and Moscow to slow the nuclear arms race. It barred the two countries from deploying national defenses against long-range ballistic missiles.
The then U.S. President George W. Bush and his senior officials at that time described the ABM Treaty as a Cold War relic, painting it as a major obstacle to building a national missile defense system, especially under the shadow of the 9/11 terror attacks less than a year before.
“We now face new threats from terrorists who seek to destroy our civilization by any means available to rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles,” Bush said.
However, there are downsides from the collapse of the INF Treaty for Russia too, adds Budjeryn.
“With NATO now expanded, and Poland eager to host U.S. medium-range missiles, should the U.S. make a deployment decision, Russia is staring square at being drawn into another arms race, a race it cannot afford.”
“I’m sure the lessons of the Soviet Union’s collapse under the burden of its military-industrial complex are not lost on Putin.”
