Tightening the Screws on the INF

Aaron Stein 0:01

I love NATO too.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron 0:23

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Khoury Center for the Middle East.

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Jeffrey 1:23

You know, we actually, we had Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov here at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey for a series of meetings earlier in the month. It was really interesting.

Aaron 1:39

Yeah, I think you took pictures, posted some in our Slack, and if I remember correctly from either Slack or your Twitter feed, he was not in a very compromising mood about the INF.

Jeffrey 1:51

Yeah, I think his attitude toward our concerns about Russia's violation of the INF Treaty fell somewhere between, we're not violating it, but if we are, it's your fault to go f*** yourselves.

Aaron 2:08

It's a very constructive attitude to have, and that more or less mimics their public statements, and so it sounds like he was staying on talking points.

Jeffrey 2:17

Well, you know, I heard that he was much better in some of the small group meetings with students, but this was an open meeting and there was Russian press there. And, you know, so much like Nikki Haley, when there are reporters in the room, ambassadors are going to ambassadorize.

Aaron 2:39

I think the difference is that Nikki Haley can be president, whereas he cannot be.

Jeffrey 2:44

Yes, that's almost certainly true. So I thought today would be a good opportunity to go back and revisit some of our podcasts about the INF Treaty because we got some confirmation.

Aaron 2:58

Yeah, you know, in our, I think it's our first and only in-person podcast at an undisclosed location in Washington, D.C., we talked about what we thought the Russian cruise missile was.

Jeffrey 3:11

So I think the place to start is that there are two different missile systems that are problematic from an INF point of view. And the one... To focus on initially is the ground launch cruise missile, because that's the clear legal violation that the State Department highlighted in its annual compliance report, what must be two years ago now.

Early on, we had talked about this particular missile and had speculated that it was something called the 9M729, which would be a follow on to the Iskander cruise missile. We had seen some open source reporting on that. Pavel Podvig's blog, Russian Forces, even though I think Pavel was unpersuaded, one of his commenters, Kept bringing it up over and over again because the Russians had made a reference to this on a pretty obscure defense industry website.

You know, I'd heard very much that that was, in fact, the cruise missile in question. And now Christopher Ford. Who had been on the NSC staff, but is now an assistant secretary at the State Department. I actually don't know which job he was in when he said it, because he just switched. But he confirmed for us that, yes, the cruise missile in question is the 9M729.

Aaron 4:32

Yeah, and if you go back to one of your earliest blog posts about this, what I always found, because I just went back and reread it, Is how you logically and sequentially use the designation that 9729 to try and figure out what it was. So you took that obscure posting in the comment section of Pavel's, you went and looked at it and you said, oh, that makes sense.

Jeffrey 4:58

Well, that's right. I mean, it's something called a... I always say GRAU number. I actually say it. I mean, it's G-R-A-U. I don't know if other people do that or not. But Russian defense systems have all kinds of different names. Sometimes they'll have a defense industry name when they're developing it. But the really useful number is the kind of formulaic number that Russian systems get, which is called the ground number, which is, you know, something in Russian that I can't say, which is the Russian name for a department in the Russian Ministry of Defense, which assigns a number.

And this number, 9M, is really useful. Because 9 is for army missiles, and 9M in particular is for missiles. So 9P would be a launcher, you know, 9K would be a system as a whole. So 9M, like, you know it's an army missile. And for whatever reason, all the Iskander systems have 720 numbers. So the Iskander cruise missile is the 9M728.

So it seemed pretty obvious that this thing was a follow-on. And, you know, you don't have to think about it too hard. The reality is that the 9M728 was capped at 500 kilometers in terms of its range, because that's what the INF Treaty limited. But Russian defense officials were pretty clear that, you know, if you just added some fuel...

Then the thing could go longer. So we always suspected that the 9M729 was like a land-based variant of the Kalibr, which is the sea-based missile that's got, you know, like a 2,500-kilometer range.

Aaron 6:54

Yeah, and I think that, I mean, obviously the issue is... The range is once you go over 500 kilometers, you are in clear violation of the INF. And for a while, the Obama administration and then leading into the Trump administration, for some reason, wouldn't spell this out. I think they were trying to protect methods or sources in terms of how they knew that there was a violation.

Jeffrey 7:16

Yeah, I think credit where it is due. I mean, we're pretty hard on the Trump administration for being fantastically incompetent, which is because, by and large, they are fantastically incompetent. But not everyone is. And this is a case where the Trump administration did something that you and I had wanted the Obama administration to do for a long time, which is just say its damn name.

Right. You know, you don't necessarily have to say how you know.

Aaron 7:40

Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, and it went on too long and then there was a debate and, you know, and I think it allowed the Russians to turn some of the narrative away and try and build up a case that they weren't actually in violation of it because the U.S. was sort of dragging its feet.

Jeffrey 7:59

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it allowed the Russians to just dodge the question because, you know, I mean, I think there's a pretty famous interview with Rose Gottmuller where she's asked about this system. And she gives this totally incomprehensible answer, which basically amounts to it's not an Iskander, which is sort of strictly speaking true because there is an INF-compliant cruise missile for the Iskander.

But, like, Obama administration officials spent a lot of time, like, saying that the Russians were violating this agreement, but then saying what this missile wasn't, which isn't helpful. Right. And so I don't think it led to a lot of... It didn't really, in my opinion, lead to much confidence. I mean, I believed them, but I just didn't think they were doing a great job of selling it.

And at least for me, the fact that a Russian defense industry source had admitted they had something called the 9M729 was a natural place to start because you can just start by saying, what possible reason is there for a follow-on? To your treaty compliant missile. Like it is maxed out in terms of range. So show us that missile.

And for whatever reason, they didn't want to do that. I think that was a mistake. And I, you know, I applaud Chris Ford and the rest of the Trump administration for going ahead and naming it.

Aaron 9:26

Yeah. And then, you know, we, I mean, I think we talked about this on another podcast before is that I think in the U.S. they gave it a funny, cool name that you had heard about.

Jeffrey 9:38

Yeah, I mean, for all Russian missiles, there are the names they give them, and then there are the names we give them, and the name we gave this was the SSC-8 screwdriver, which is hilarious because they used it to screw us.

Aaron 9:51

Right. I was at one of these D.C. meetings, and the INF came up with some former senior officials sitting around the room, and I used the term, and somebody across the room, you know, who used to be actively involved in this, eyes just shot up, you know, like, who told you the name? Yeah. Join the Slack channel.

Jeffrey 10:10

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's absurd that they wouldn't even say our name for that missile. I mean, I just don't. I mean, there is a lot I don't understand about how the Obama administration approached this issue. But the not giving the thing a name, like not giving it.

Aaron 10:29

Its name, and and not even sharing our name for it, you know, just make calling it the Glickum, I think made it feel like it wasn't real and made it easier for the Russians to ignore. Yeah and it's always been hard for people who don't, you know, live arms control or these things like we do, and I know that's odd for people who listen to this podcast to think about, is.

To think of the outright violation, which is the cruise missile, and then something that we've talked about here before, which is the circumvention, which is the ballistic missile.

Jeffrey 11:01

Yeah, and I think this is a really important distinction, because there really are two problematic systems, and The decision to name the Glickham, not to use its real name, but just to call it the Glickham, in the State Department compliance report, I think was a tactical decision. It was a decision to focus on the clearer legal violation, which is taking what we think is a 2,500-kilometer range sea-launched cruise missile and then deploying it for use with ground forces.

And by the way, I still don't know if they're deploying it on existing Iskander launchers or if they have a new launcher. That's a whole, whole other set of questions. Although I think most people imagine that it's going to be a new launcher, but I don't know. But, but that's a tactical decision. That's, you know, this is the clearest legal case that they're violating it.

I actually think the much more problematic system is the legal one, the RS-26. Yeah.

Aaron 11:59

And we should talk about why it's legal. First of all, because it, it, Because it's separate from the INF in terms of its legality.

Jeffrey 12:09

Yeah, I think, you know, the U.S. made a series of mistakes in the New START negotiations, maybe some of which would not have been avoidable. I don't know, you know. It's a little hard to judge, but the result was the new START treaty is configured in such a way that it provides safe harbor for an INF-violating missile, because what the Russians have done is they have taken an existing ICBM, the RS-24 Yars, and they've removed the third stage from it, so it's almost an intermediate-range nuclear force.

They put one warhead on it, And tested it once to the range of an ICBM, and sort of announced, see, it's an ICBM, it counts under New Start. And then they started testing it with multiple warheads, which of course reduces the range well into that of an INF system. And so technically it's legal, Because it's being counted as an ICBM under New START, but it's not.

It's not an ICBM. It's an intermediate-range nuclear force constructed in violation of the treaty.

Aaron 13:34

And I think it's important because it replicates the capabilities of the Russian missile system that the INF was conceptualized as taking off the table.

Jeffrey 13:45

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's a funny backstory. But the whole reason that we have an INF treaty in the first place is that in the 1970s, the Soviets started to deploy this thing, which we called the SS-20. And they took... An existing ICBM called the SS-16, which was a three-stage ICBM. They removed the third stage, put multiple warheads on it, and then deployed it that way.

And what was interesting is, at the time in the United States, we felt like that was an effort to evade the SALT interim agreement. You know, that that basically had limited the number of ICBMs they could have. And so their way of getting around that was to build these intermediate range nuclear weapons, which were just sort of sub-ICBM forces.

And so therefore they could build as many of them as they wanted and then target Western Europe from the relative safety of the Soviet Union itself. What's crazy is so that, you know, the treaty is really focused on eliminating this system. And when the INF Treaty in the 1980s is up for ratification in the Senate, it's really clear that even though it's designed to eliminate the SS-20 and it sort of identifies the SS-20, right, and says none of these, it left open the loophole to do the same thing, right, to take an existing ICBM Test it once to ICBM range with a single warhead and then, you know, pack on a bunch of warheads and violate the treaty.

And at that time, and I think this was the right decision, to be honest. At the time, you know, we had the START treaty was in the future, but like you could clearly see it coming. And the idea was you would just deal with this in the START treaty. You would just make sure. That the START treaty addressed the issue.

And the way that the START treaty ultimately addressed the issue, which I think is not the world's greatest solution, but it was sort of fine at the time, was to allow them to do that, but make sure that you counted it as an ICBM and then hope that if the Russians took this loophole to circumvent the INF Treaty, it would chew up, it would cost them launchers, it would cost them ICBMs.

Aaron 16:12

Right.

Jeffrey 16:13

Because you have to count it as an ICBM.

Aaron 16:14

Right. Which brings us to the Newstart negotiations and then the U.S. position that sort of shot this logic in the foot.

Jeffrey 16:21

Right. So fast forward and, you know, Lewis's dictum, the concession that you fight the hardest for in a negotiation, you will come to regret it in direct proportion to how hard you fought for it. Right. We forgot all this and decided that we really wanted a very high limit on delivery vehicles. The Russians wanted a lower limit, and we wanted a much higher limit.

And we won it, and we got the much higher limit. And so the Russians had a bunch of extra unused ICBM slots. And they were like, okay, we know what we're going to build.

Aaron 16:58

We're going to build the SS-20.

Jeffrey 17:00

Right, we're going to replicate the SS-20. And I mean, it is... Conceptually the rs26 is exactly the same as the ss20 right it is a it is a three-stage icbm that has been cut down to two stages with a bunch of warheads packed on it it is it is legal because the new start treaty allows the that particular safe harbor of doing that but like It replicates the very missile that this treaty was intended to foreclose.

And so legal or not, to me, it poses a very serious challenge to the viability of the INF Treaty going forward.

Aaron 17:43

Yeah, and it raises, I mean, I guess, stability, instability questions that were supposed to at least be addressed through treaty or arms control. Through the direct violation, which is the cruise missile. But if you peel back the cruise missile a little bit, it replicates certain naval capabilities. Whereas the RS-26, I keep saying in that same meeting I just referenced, does it take you back to a pre-INF status quo, and are we really seriously grappling with that?

Jeffrey 18:17

Yeah, and I think it does. One thing I occasionally hear is, If the RS-26 is legal, then why are you complaining? And at least from my perspective, that goes to the fundamental question of why you want to deny an F treaty in the first place. And there are two reasons. The first is that having dedicated intermediate range nuclear forces in the heart of Russia that can strike U.S. allies in Western Europe raises very classic decoupling fears.

If they use these INF forces against our allies but then hold in reserve their ICBMs, we have to decide whether we want to go attack their homeland with our nuclear weapons, knowing that that's going to likely trigger a retaliation. And so, you know, it's... I mean, you know, I'm not somebody who buys into a lot of the stuff I hear about the Russians having escalate to deescalate as a strategy.

But I do think that allowing the Russians to target U.S. allies in Western Europe from the security of... Russia itself raises some really difficult asymmetries.

Aaron 19:38

Yeah, and deep within Russia. So like this deep strike where they would force the use of strategic systems.

Jeffrey 19:44

You know, and I know people say like, well, you know, you could have used ICBMs in this way and there are other things they could do. It's sort of all true. But, like, that's... Taking existing systems and reassigning them and jerry-rigging them for missions that they're not optimized for, to me, is different than being able to build purpose-built systems optimized for a particular mission and then deploying them to units that train for that mission.

Aaron 20:12

Yeah, I think that's a good way to think about it.

Jeffrey 20:14

You know, and so I just... I think if this thing weren't called the RS-26 and didn't have this veneer of legality, you know, if you asked anybody, like, would you like it if the Russians built a bunch of SS-20s again, the answer would be no. This is a terrible idea. This is deeply destabilizing. And, you know, like, I don't want them to do that.

Aaron 20:42

Yeah. And just to keep up the Cold War nostalgia, it seems like the policy options being foisted upon the U.S. by both insiders and outsiders to the government is to try and replicate the dual track approach.

Jeffrey 20:57

Yeah. Well, and, you know, I mean, I have to say the second reason that I support an INF treaty is I don't like any of our options. You know, all of the things that we would deploy in response... Would be very threatening to the Russians, but threatening in a way to them that will be destabilizing. Because, you know, I mean, okay, they may be super excited about having these intermediate-range nuclear forces, but If we start deploying intermediate range nuclear forces in Europe, the decapitation threat to the Russians is going to be serious and is going to freak them out.

And I think, you know, the language I was using, which, by the way, a senior U.S. official in the Obama administration also used. And I can't tell if that's that we had some positive effect or if it's just, you know. Fools seldom differ. But there was a reason Gorbachev signed this agreement in the first place. A world of INF forces was not a good world for the Soviet Union.

It was a world in which the United States was deploying a really serious decapitation capability that was deeply alarming to the Soviets. And so why the Russians want to play this game again, it's like... I mean, I have my hypotheses about why they do... But I think the political leadership won't be happy about where this ends up.

And so, yeah, I would like to head off the various U.S. responses that seem likely to me.

Aaron 22:32

And I also think, too, the countries just running out our theory that would be willing to take this as part of NATO would exacerbate that fear of decapitation and instability, because in a way... I mean, where do you think that they would have to put these things?

Jeffrey 22:52

Well, look, if we were unconstrained by the INF Treaty, we could build them of basically any range we wanted, and we could put them anyplace. I'm talking about politically.

Aaron 23:00

The countries that are more politically amenable to an escalation with Russia and the increase of U.S. presence are countries that Russia views as illegitimate in NATO and thinks that NATO has expanded too far.

Jeffrey 23:16

Yes, that's right. I mean, I think if you are the Russians, you are taking a long, hard look at Poland. Yeah.

Aaron 23:26

The country has its own problems, but yes. Well, I'm not saying I think this is a great idea. No, no, I'm just running out of scenario to show how dark it is.

Jeffrey 23:36

But, you know, what's the... What's the, let's see, what is the range from the Polish border to Moscow, right? Like, Poland to Moscow is a JASM-ER. Right. And by the way, that's a treaty compliance system. Right, and they may get them. Yes. And, you know, giving them a JASM-ER on a truck would not be treaty compliant. But on an airplane or putting it on a boat, God forbid we sell them the LRSO.

Like all those things, I think if you're the Russians, you would hate for us to do. Now, I should say, you know, by the way, we don't have to go there. I had a very frustrating time. One of the things Republicans on the Hill wanted to do, which I thought was a good idea and I couldn't get anybody in the Obama administration to agree with me.

And which the Trump administration has now said they will do. And again, kudos to them for saying it. Although I have to say, given some of the broader political concerns about the president's ties to the Russians, I'm not sure these things will actually be implemented. But at least there's a commitment to try now. You know, one thing we should have done, I think, is sanction the entities that were involved in violating this agreement, which would have been Novator, which makes the cruise missile.

And I can't speak Russian, but it's like Titan Barricade, which is like Titan Barricades, which is the factory that makes the launcher.

Aaron 25:13

I'm sure your pronunciation was perfect. So we're going to leave that one there. But no, that's a good thing. I mean, that did pop up as well. In addition to the designation out loud of 9M729, The indication that one of the response options would be to sanction Novotor and the barricade. You know, Titan, I think we'll call it.

Titan, okay.

Jeffrey 25:34

But, you know, one of the objections that the Obama people raised, which really bothered me, and this was a really disappointing interaction, because I really didn't like what I was hearing from the Obama administration, but I also didn't like trying to then work with Republicans for different reasons we'll talk about, but like, You know, the argument was, well, no one in Europe will adopt those sanctions because the Europeans are not party to the INF Treaty, which is true, narrowly speaking.

But really, like, and maybe that would have held up in a court of law, like maybe Novotor would have been able to defeat any European sanctions, but really a historical, right? I mean, like, it is, it is not as though European countries weren't implicated. In the INF treaty, even if they didn't sign it.

Aaron 26:25

Right. I mean, that's exactly true. But there's another thing Congress has done, sort of independent of this, and I don't think that they had the INF in mind, but, you know, in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, you know, essentially the, oh, Donald Trump is going to lift sanctions, Obama era sanctions on Russia, we have to do something to stop it.

There is a section in there that includes, you At least language that would allow the U.S. to sanction countries that do business with Russian MOD or Intel-supported or affiliated companies.

Jeffrey 27:00

Yeah, I mean, I really wanted, though, to see them try to drive... You know, sanctions in Europe. You know, one of the interesting things is, so the Obama people just kind of said like, oh, well, the Germans will never go along with it because they're not party to the treaty. And then we'd have an argument about how like, well, you don't really know that because you're not trying.

And, you know, Like there's a value in doing something hard you know like the Russians might actually be surprised if the Germans went along and it might get their attention that this is going to be something that's going to be politically costly for them that was actually one of the big arguments by the way for why the Glickham deployments in the 1980s had such an effect on the Soviet leadership it wasn't so much that That the deployments themselves were balance-altering, although I do think that the Russians hated the decapitation thing.

But there was also shock that the alliance politically was able to undertake this very controversial step. You know, like the Russians looked at it and was like, oh, crap. Like, you are angry enough about these SS-20s that your political leadership is willing to, you know, deploy these systems even in the face of very large protests. You're willing to do this hard thing.

And so maybe that's a sign that, you know, we've gone too far. So I would argue with the Obama people about that. But you know what? I tried. It was really interesting. I didn't get very far. I kept looking for someone on a conservative side who would help make the legal argument. And by and large, they were mostly interested in making the Obama administration look bad.

They actually weren't super interested in trying to figure out how you would do this, because I actually have an idea.

Aaron 28:40

I have a few ideas, but – and just I want to pick up on one thing before you give your ideas. I think that there could be right now within NATO in particular – A galvanizing effect of the renewed Russia threat across the continent, and that a creative response option could be had to at least try and replicate the, they're taking this far more seriously.

And so I think there actually is a way forward if somebody can come up with creative policy options.

Jeffrey 29:12

All right. Well, I have a few. First of all, on sanctions, one thing that I discovered, which, right, nobody in the Obama administration had bothered to try to find out, you know, the Germans were actually required to give up German missiles that violated the INF Treaty as a condition of the Soviets signing the agreement. So the Germans are not a signatory to the INF Treaty, but a Soviet condition of signature was that the Germans abandon some of these missiles.

And they were German missiles. They weren't US missiles sitting in Germany. They were German missiles with US nuclear warheads. And the Germans did so with their own conditions. And their conditions basically were you had to actually implement a verifiable agreement, and then in that case they would give up their INF forces, and then the Soviets would be free to sign this agreement.

To me, it is crazy that as a policy matter we would say, OK, the Germans are legally entitled as a consequence of the Russian violation of the INF Treaty to get their own INF noncompliant missiles and put nuclear warheads on them. But they're not entitled to sanction the entities in the hopes of finding a diplomatic solution short of that.

Right. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, maybe maybe that's the law. Maybe that's what a European court would find. But I just feel like politically, you know, for Germany to say, look, West Germany had these missiles. We gave them up. That was a condition of the Soviet signature, and now the Russians who have inherited those responsibilities are in violation of this agreement.

We are legally entitled to have those missiles back, but of course we don't want to do that. We want them to return to compliance, and so we're going to sanction these Russian entities. I just... I mean, is that a terrible argument?

Aaron 31:09

I don't think that's a terrible argument. Do you think sanctions would be enough to galvanize this away? I mean, do you think that sanctions would prohibit Novator from selling its other systems and products around the world?

Jeffrey 31:23

Well, I think, you know, the reason I'm hesitating is there's then and there's now. At the beginning, maybe before any of these systems were deployed, Maybe, yes, right, maybe the specter of a real rupture with the Germans and sanctions being imposed on Russian defense entities might have led to a reconsideration of this particular system. We don't know because we didn't try it. Now that the system is reportedly deployed.

Yeah, I think it's harder to imagine. I think the sanctions are maybe too little too late. But then that brings me to my second crazy idea.

Aaron 32:13

Let's hear it.

Jeffrey 32:15

Okay, so all of the proposals that are made to respond to the INF violation involve the United States preparing to leave the treaty itself. Well, not mine, but yes, some of the dominant ones. Well, not yours. That's right. I mean, early on, there was sort of discussion about C-based systems that would be treaty compliant but would replicate the same capability.

But we're definitely at this point, the United States is beginning an R&D program that doesn't violate the agreement but would put the United States in position to build noncompliant systems if the agreement collapses. And it's phrased in the passive voice, which is – Always kind of a bureaucratic move because somebody collapses it, but whatever. Let's say the Russians don't give us satisfaction and we, they're never going to like pull out of the treaty because why pull out of a treaty that you're just wantonly violating, right?

But whatever, we might get so fed up that we do. But why? Like why, why do we have to build a 2,500 kilometer range cruise missile? I can think of a series of countries in Europe, That our NATO members, that I have just been very seriously told, are not, in fact, bound by the INF Treaty, which is why they can't sanction the Russians for violating it.

Why don't they build them?

Aaron 33:40

The question is always, within European domestic politics, is this something that they're willing to do? And what role of it is there within the United States to ask them to develop a system?

Jeffrey 33:56

Well, I think the U.S. can. I mean, I think this gets back to this issue, though, of like, what does this era of collapsed U.S. leadership mean?

Aaron 34:02

Yeah.

Jeffrey 34:02

You know, we've already seen the president shaking down NATO allies. We've seen the president acting like Article 5 is not a thing. I do not understand why our friends at MBDA, who make beautiful cruise missiles... You know, aren't marketing, you know, 1500 kilometer range cruise missile that I bet the Poles would love to buy.

Aaron 34:31

If they don't spend all their money on Patriot. But yeah, I mean, that's something out there. But does that get us back to this destabilizing factor? And then, like, once these things are fielded on the European side, how do you then bring the Russians back into INF compliance? Doesn't this then justify... Well, no, I think what happens...

I don't know how that works. Well, look, I think the Russians are out of the treaty. They're not going to comply with it. So you're just assuming the treaty is going to collapse.

Jeffrey 34:59

No, I'm assuming the treaty is going to live on like some kind of zombie while the Russians deploy dual INF systems in one violation of it. My answer or my reaction is like we're now in the business of trying to both provide military capabilities that meaningfully offset this Russian capability and to put pressure on the Russians. And I just think that the problem with U.S. systems, we actually don't need something of this range.

The problem is we're not going to want to start hitting targets in the Russian homeland if they aren't hitting targets in our homeland. So let the Poles do it. And I suspect that if the Russians realized... That they were going to face a world in which, you know, suddenly European countries are much more technologically capable than they were in the 1970s.

That they're going to face a world where there are going to be a bunch of INF range systems, maybe not with nuclear warheads, but proliferating, and that those were going to be acquired by lots and lots of their neighbors.

Scott LaFoy 36:10

I, you know...

Jeffrey 36:12

Maybe they're still going to go down this route, but I think that's a much more sensitive pressure point.

Aaron 36:21

Yeah, because one of the other things that's put out there is that the U.S. doesn't need to build, as you've said, its own INF-busting ground-launched cruise missile because it has capabilities that can replicate that elsewhere. But one of the potential ways to put pressure on them is improved missile defenses. And I think this could work together, you know, because missile defense starts at counterforce, right?

And this idea to build alliance solidarity around the INF issue, right? Could maybe be individual countries going after sort of INF range systems, but then within the alliance themselves, couching a sort of defensive posture for more capable, more in general, just by numbers, missile defense interceptors and capabilities throughout the continent.

Jeffrey 37:13

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, and it's a little hard to imagine all of this happening under this particular administration, because I think as, as Good as the staff people have been on this issue so far, and they have. They have done the things that I have wanted them to do, to name the cruise missile, to pursue sanctions on these entities.

The Hill has pushed them to start a research and development program, but they have stopped short of actually announcing that they're gonna deploy this thing in violation. Generally speaking, they've been pretty good. It is hard for me to imagine this particular president confronting Vladimir Putin about anything.

Aaron 37:52

Yeah. I mean, that's the ultimate weak point in this. But I mean, I guess this problem is you would hope.

Jeffrey 37:57

It's not hard for me to imagine the polls doing it, though.

Aaron 38:00

Yeah. And then if you think about this problem, you know, bureaucratically will outlast, you know, Trump and whatever he's got going on with with Putin and that this sets you up within the alliance.

Jeffrey 38:11

Well, that's exactly what I imagine. I mean, if you think that there's a good chance Trump doesn't get reelected or, you know, the whatever, like 12 Diet Coke sea drinks a day vaguely compromise his health. Well, I don't know. I mean, he's, you know, it's really interesting. He got elected. He's the oldest person ever elected president, right?

Yeah. And that we did that without even discussing the fact that that's, you know, usually considered News. News, yeah. Butter emails. Yeah, butter emails. That letter from the doctor doesn't make me feel any better. So, you know, there are a variety of reasons to think this won't last eight years. And if that's true, you know, then I guess the question is, how do you use the next two to four to six years?

And, you know, maybe it ends up being eight. To prepare yourself for... To have a serious conversation with the Russians, which, by the way, I mean, like, shit happens, you know? I mean, Putin could drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow.

Aaron 39:17

Beaten by a bear out there in the wilderness doing his thing. His submarine can implode.

Jeffrey 39:22

I mean, like, we joke, right? But, you know, he doesn't look like he's in, like, the world's greatest health. Like... You know, like, he may live another 20 years, he may not. You know, and I think you just, you don't count on sudden and unexpected change, but I think you do need to put yourself in a position to take advantage of it if it happens.

And so, you know, Europe, I think, you know, I was at the Munich Security Conference last year. And there was a lot of standing around, waiting to see what this administration would do. And I think my crazy idea is that Europe stops standing around and waiting. These nuclear weapons are targeted at them. They are not parties to this agreement, but they have a lot of standing to complain about it.

And so, you know, I'd love to see an extended range ground-based storm shadow. Ha ha ha!

Aaron 40:20

You love the storm shadow. But yeah, no, I mean, that's definitely an option out there. I mean, my brain always just goes into I just don't want to see the U.S. violate the treaty to try and bring the Russians back into INF compliance. I just find that logic circular and stupid. So maybe your crazy idea finds our own loophole.

We get as creative as the Russians and therefore we don't have to violate the treaty because Europeans aren't party to it.

Jeffrey 40:46

Yeah, well, I mean, look, I think if we, you know, the Russians have a bunch of not very persuasive arguments about how we are in violation of the treaty. But if we are the ones who leave, I do think it muddies the waters. I mean, I think our goal is not, our goal here is a political one.

You know, the threat that this missile poses is political. And our response ultimately needs to be political. And it needs to show that the Alliance can act in a unified manner and do tough things Like, politically costly things to respond to Russian aggression. Because you want the Russians to not... You don't want the Russians to get in a position where they think that, you know, we just... We're fighting so much that, you know, we're not even going to notice when they roll into Estonia.

Aaron 41:37

Yeah. That's right. I mean... Is that a happy note? I mean, that's like a rallying cry to go do something. So I think that's a happy note.

Jeffrey 41:48

I'm an Atlanticist and I love NATO. I love NATO too. I want to see NATO respond in a strong and unified manner. I mean, generally speaking, I'm like the nuclear disarmament hippie. But man, in the early 80s, I would have been on the other side of that fence at Greenham Common. Yeah. I love NATO too. Let me help you put those glickums in.

Aaron 42:15

I'm a big fan of NATO too, and I'm with you. I want them to do something. This should be something that galvanizes the alliance. We threw some crazy ideas out there. They got smart people. They can come up with some different crazy ideas, but this should galvanize response from the alliance. Even if the U.S. is slow, this is something that can bring everybody together because they aren't sitting around and waiting for us.

Jeffrey 42:40

I mean, we have a lot of challenges, right? I mean, we have challenges in terms of getting NATO together, and we have challenges, I think, here at home in the United States, particularly organizing opposition to some of the many other crazy things the president wants to do.

[Sponsor message]

Hey Scott, maybe we should put some of these crazy ideas into the Slack channel.

Scott 43:31

Then I think they'd be right at home with our lovely, crazy Slack channel members. And if you would like to be part of the Arms Control Wonk Slack channel, support the Arms Control Wonk podcast and allow us to keep doing what we do, if you head over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast, that's patreon.com slash acwpodcast, you can kick us $3 a month if you're a student, $5 a month if you're anyone else, and you can come join us on the Arms Control Wonk Slack channel.

All right. Thanks, Scott. Hey, Aaron.

Jeffrey 44:02

Yes? Thank you for joining me. Always a pleasure. And thank you for listening.