The Demise of the INF and the Munich Security Conference

Jeffrey Lewis 0:01

Taylor Swift needs to cover Nena's 99 Luftballons. 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 Stein 0:29

And I'm Aaron Stein, the director of the program in the Middle East at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in a snowy, slushy Philadelphia.

Jeffrey 0:39

Oh, it is sunny and beautiful today.

Aaron 0:42

Yeah, you know, I had to get up early because I was too tired. So my Sundays now have gone from like a three-year-old swimming class to taking my three-year-old to like a mountain is far too kind, like Rolling Hill. On Sundays to get him on skis, and I was so tired I couldn't take the garbage out. So I got up at 6 o'clock in the morning to make sure I beat the garbage man, and I got to see highlights from the Pro-Am in Pebble Beach.

It was nice.

Jeffrey 1:12

Yeah, I don't know how long I'm going to be able to afford to live here, but if I have to move, it will be sad. This is just a stunning place.

Aaron 1:20

You know, it was...

Jeffrey 1:23

High definition ESPN Sports Center 6:45 in the morning, and I was kicking myself for forever leaving that place in 2010. Yeah, well, you know where we neither of us are. Neither of us are in Munich for the Verkunda, where it is snowy and cold, and people are talking inf.

Aaron 1:47

I have to say, if you are a follower of the Arms Control Wong podcast, we were cool with the INF before the INF was cool, if that makes sense. At least INF withdrawal or suspension.

Jeffrey 2:00

I am modestly frustrated that the analysis we did was too early.

Aaron 2:10

That's true.

Jeffrey 2:11

Because people are like, oh my god, this missile is called the 9M729. It's like, yeah, that was a while ago. So it's a strange kind of podcast that I think we're going to do because... While a lot of the things that we are going to talk about are things that we have talked about in the past, and maybe listeners would be like, yeah, you know, you jackass has already said that.

It feels to me like a lot of the things that we've said haven't, like, penetrated. And so people are kind of just now still discovering what's happening. And, you know, we have a nominal reason, which is display a missile, get a pod, right?

Aaron 2:55

Display a missile, get a pod. They didn't actually show us the missile, yes. There's a lot of missile stuff going on, but yeah, display a missile, get a pod. That was, for me, one of the lowest moments of the INF sort of back and forth was that display, although low in a good way.

Jeffrey 3:12

Yeah, so I think maybe the way to do this is we should talk a little bit about the nature of the problem at the moment. Because I find that people still don't quite understand what's at stake. And then I think we want to talk about the display and then maybe talk about some of the ideas that we had for fixing the problem, which I noticed that at Munich, one of our proposals from like eight years ago, seven or eight years ago, has been resurrected.

And it's kind of like, well, we got to talk about that. Okay, let's just jump in right there. Go for it. So, I mean, I think the first thing that I want to put back on the table, and I've had like no success of explaining this to people, is that there are two different missiles that are a problem.

Aaron 4:01

Correct. As we call them, the circumvention and the violation.

Jeffrey 4:06

And I think what has been lost is that the Obama administration chose to focus on the cruise missile because it was clearly a violation of the treaty.

Aaron 4:20

And the cruise missile is the 9M729.

Jeffrey 4:22

Right, which is a follow-on to the 9M728, which is the cruise missile for the Iskander system. Correct. Although it seems as though... Although it was a little actually unclear to me from the image that the launcher may be subtly different than the launcher for the Iskander. The Russians said it was longer, but I actually had real trouble in the video they provided confirming that.

It might be true. It's just... It was not easy to see. Do you want to say where that image came from now? So the Russians did a little show-and-tell where they showed the canister... And they showed the launcher, and they showed a diagram of the missile, which we'll talk about all of that in a minute, but that's all.

The diagram is, I think, approximately bulls**t, but we'll talk about that.

Aaron 5:10

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. Keep going.

Jeffrey 5:13

So that's one missile. And the issue here is that the intelligence community seems to have seen a longer... Cruise missile than the INF-compliant 9M728, which has a range of like 490 kilometers. So it's like right up against the range limit. And so when they saw a longer missile, really the only reason to make it longer is to add fuel.

Yes. And the way the INF Treaty works, and I see people continually misstate that, the range of a ballistic missile in the INF Treaty is the range to which it has been tested. But the range of a cruise missile is a calculation that's done.

Aaron 5:58

Yes. And the U.S. has had some success in standardizing that calculation.

Jeffrey 6:03

Right. Particularly in the MTCR context. That's right.

Aaron 6:06

Yes.

Jeffrey 6:07

Because it's a weird calculation. But, you know, the Russians keep muddying this because they say, oh, it's been, you know, we have never tested this missile to more than the INF range. It's like, that's not the standard. That is not, not the deal. And we all think that the 9M729, notwithstanding the diagram we've seen, is a ground-based variant of the Kalibr, right?

Which is the, like, 2,000 to 2,500 kilometer range cruise missile that the Russians fire off ships. And in fact, now the Russians have said, oh, well, if you're pulling out of the INF Treaty, which, you know, we're going to talk about Russian noncompliance, but this was a stupid idea. The Russians are now like, we're going to make a...

Land-based variant of the caliber which of course yeah we saw that totally free to do right right right yes yes yes and one has to question why so that's one missile right so it's like a 2000 to 2500 kilometer range cruise missile that is i think i would say associated with the iskander system even if i have a different launcher it'll probably go to the same units and actually yeah go ahead and i mean maybe it's just worth emphasizing again it it

Aaron 7:17

The test does not have to have gone greater than 500 kilometers.

Jeffrey 7:21

That's right. For the INF Treaty, for cruise missiles, the range is a calculation of flying the missile until its fuel is exhausted.

Aaron 7:29

Right, and so that calculation has come from air density, the altitude at which it flies, and the size of the fuel tank.

Jeffrey 7:35

Right, and that can be pretty tricky, right? Yeah, it's not easy. So, you know, there is a universe in which you could imagine... Two governments that wanted to save this treaty. One government saying, we think this thing can, you know, when flown to exhaustion, fly farther. And then, you know, then you could imagine a demonstration where you actually verified how far it could fly.

Right. And there would still actually probably be pretty technical arguments because my guess is the Russians would say like, well, the range is shorter when it flies an actual operational trajectory because, you know, maximizing your range isn't. And then the U.S. probably would say like, well, that's not really the standard here. And then, you know, whatever, you'd have a negotiation.

But none of that is happening. They're just showing us diagrams of missiles that none of us believe. But we'll talk about that in a second.

Aaron 8:23

Yes.

Jeffrey 8:24

But there is a second missile. And actually, last year at the Munich Security Conference, I tried in a small group meeting to get people to take the second missile seriously, and no one would, which is that the INF Treaty was, at the time, the missile that the Soviets were deploying that caused the crisis, that prompted the U.S. deployments in response, was something called the SS-20.

Aaron 8:48

Yep.

Jeffrey 8:49

And that was a ballistic missile That had an intermediate range, but what it really was is it was an ICBM and they took off the third stage and they packed it full of warheads so that it became an IRBM. The Russians have a new missile called the RS-26, which is exactly the same thing. They took off the third stage of the Yars, put one warhead on it, tested it to ICBM range so that it would count not as an INF missile, but as a new start missile.

Then they packed it full of warheads so that it was a clone of the SS-20. And by the way, this was like a well-known loophole in the INF Treaty, and it was supposed to be closed in start. And ultimately the conclusion that the U.S. reached in start was that if you kept the number of delivery vehicles very low, the Russians wouldn't want to circumvent the treaty in this way because it would cost them strategic missiles.

Aaron 9:50

We forgot that lesson in New Start.

Jeffrey 9:52

Right, and they forgot that lesson in New Start. They kept the number of delivery vehicles really high, and so the Russians had extra space, and then they availed themselves of that maneuver. Now, legal or not, that should be a mortal threat to the treaty, because this is a nuclear-armed IRBM. Like, it just is, you know? And then some people sort of dismiss it like, well, you know, it wouldn't really change the balance.

Like, that's fine, but then if you don't believe that nuclear-armed IRBMs change the balance, then you don't need the treaty. Like, if you believe that the treaty is stabilizing because you believe nuclear-armed IRBMs are destabilizing, this is one of those.

Aaron 10:35

Well, it also brings up, and we'll come back to this later, something that you've talked about a long time is that The interceptor missiles that we have and that we want to deploy to defend against these also cause problems for the INF, particularly because of how fast they are and how far they can fly.

Jeffrey 10:56

Wait, say that again?

Aaron 10:58

You've proposed this, and we'll come back to this. One of the other issues is sort of the point-counterpoint, you know, missile defenses as well for the INF, which the Russians bring up. Oh, right. But, you know, the modeling of how far missile defense interceptors can fly.

Jeffrey 11:14

Yes. So this is not an argument about a violation of the treaty. The Russians present it like it's a violation, but it's not. No, it's not. But the Russians have this paranoid fear that the US is going to take missile defense interceptors in Romania and Poland and convert them to surface to surface missiles with nuclear warheads. And it is true that the SM-3 is an IRBM, if you use it in a surface-to-surface missile role.

And, you know, depending on the block and future developments, you could eventually get to Moscow with a nuclear warhead from Poland.

Aaron 12:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not a violation of the treaty.

Jeffrey 12:06

No, it's not a violation. And frankly, I don't think the U.S. would do that. But it is a, you know, it's a sincerely held Russian paranoia. Yeah. Actually, David Wright did the modeling for us, like, back in the day.

Aaron 12:26

I think it was 2012 was when you posted it on your blog, but I may be... Forgetting the year.

Jeffrey 12:32

But anyways. That sounds about right. So we figured that an SM-3 Block 1 with a 50 kilogram payload would go 1,200 kilometers. And then the Block 2, you know, it depends on the actual capabilities, with a 200 kilogram payload, could go almost 2,000 kilometers. So, you know... A Block II with a lightweight W80 warhead could get to Moscow probably from the two missile defense deployment sites.

It's, like, really close.

Aaron 13:12

You know, I'd like you to do that for THAAD, too. I mean, that's just something that would be curious.

Jeffrey 13:16

Yeah. I think that would probably be a little shorter, but I've never modeled... I've never bothered to model it. And like I say, it's really sensitive to a whole bunch of assumptions about various things. And so, you know... It isn't a concern that I think the Russians should have. But again, it's not for me to tell the Russians what they should be paranoid about.

It's like the Russian version of escalate to de-escalate. We have this paranoid fantasy about the Russians that's really about what we would do. The Russians have this paranoid fantasy about us in terms of converting surface-to-air missiles into this covert INF role, because that's what they would do, right?

Aaron 13:54

Yeah, it's the worst case of mirror imaging ever.

Jeffrey 13:56

Yeah. And so actually, back in the day, I used to argue... That whether or not we thought this was a reasonable concern or not, I tried to convince the Obama administration to negotiate a ban on nuclear armed missile defense interceptors, because I would like the Russians to take down their nuclear armed ABM system around Moscow, which is a stability nightmare.

And I would, you know, it's already illegal for the U.S. to have nuclear-armed interceptors. Stevens-Feinstein prohibits it. But I would arrange or offer confidence-building measures. Let the Russians come in and see that the SM-3s in Poland and Romania really are SM-3s and they're really in a missile defense mode and there are no nuclear weapons on them or on site.

And I got nowhere with the Obama administration with that. I'm guessing I would get next to nowhere with the Trump administration on that.

Aaron 14:50

You're such a popular person inside the administration.

Jeffrey 14:53

I know. I know. It's actually funny. I, I actually think I have the same friend might be not the right word because you never want to presume. I think the number of people who I respect on the Trump NSC is probably about the same as the number of people I respect on the Obama NSC. So it's a, it's a small number above zero.

Aaron 15:18

Moving on, going back to the...

Jeffrey 15:19

I'm just saying, there are people in the Trump administration who I think are reasonable and wise. It's just there aren't many of them. But I generally don't find people reasonable and wise. But, you know, this came up, I think it was... Oh, who was it? Was it Uli? Uli Kuhn? Who suggested this?

Aaron 15:38

It was a Twitter exchange, I believe.

Jeffrey 15:40

Yeah, that we let... And he's great, and I love the guy. And he's like, you know, we should let the Russians come see... That there are no nuclear weapons. You know, if they really truly freaked out about this, they can come inspect the Aegis Ashore launchers. And it's like, yeah, yes, that is a good idea. Someone has been suggesting that for a long time.

Aaron 16:03

This is part of our shade and salt thrown at sort of the current INF debates.

Jeffrey 16:07

Yeah, but that's not thrown at Uli, because like... He and I had had this conversation before, you know, it's not like, I don't mean that in terms of the people promoting it, but I mean like, the time was like finally right for the proposal and people are like, oh, that's a good idea. And it's like, wait, why, when I said that, why didn't, you know, and I guess the answer is, you know, Uli's just more likable.

Aaron 16:28

Anyways, back to the RS-26 and the circumvention and the sort of, the treaty, the treaty's health.

Jeffrey 16:36

Yeah, so I think the treaty is screwed. Yeah, of course. The Russians wanted out, and they were content to violate it. And then the administration decided that they would like to leave it, and so there's no treaty to be violated.

Aaron 16:52

Which, and then, you know, the Russians, it seems like, are trying to rearguard, of course, and defend themselves against the U.S. charge about the cruise missile, about the 9M729. We just stopped talking about the RS-26. And so then that's when they give the, is it, does it rise to arms control wonk level of dog and pony show, or is it just sort of public trolling?

Jeffrey 17:16

Oh my God, it's public trolling.

Aaron 17:19

I took it as a troll. I really did take it as a troll. I measured. Well, set it up. So what'd they do?

Jeffrey 17:24

So the Russians, they gave a briefing. And the briefing was accompanied by a launcher and two canisters. We didn't actually see the missile, but we saw the canisters. And in the briefing, there was a slide. And the slide had a bizarre diagram of the two missiles. And the argument was the 9M728 goes to 490 kilometers. And the 9M729, which is longer, is longer because they added some kind of additional guidance package.

Guidance. Which makes no sense whatsoever, and that actually they had to make it longer, and all that extra weight actually reduced its range to 480 kilometers. And so I took the diagram, and first of all, the diagram is not to scale. The missile is much thicker and shorter than it is in real life, because we've actually seen it launched, and you can see the tube, right?

And so I stretched it so it was the right proportions, and then I measured the fuel tank shown in the diagram.

Aaron 18:34

It is a teeny, tiny, itty-bitty little fuel tank

Jeffrey 18:39

It has 100 liters of fuel, which works out to 26 gallons. It is the size of a fuel tank on a Winnebago.

Aaron 18:56

Yeah, it's about double the size of my Subaru.

Jeffrey 19:02

This is absurd. I'm just laughing. It's not really feasible. It's not clear to me... That the missile would actually fly. I mean, it has a little, like, solid booster on it to get it up and get it moving. So, maybe it would. But, like... I mean... Okay? You know, this thing is sort of... It's not exactly the same size, but it's basically...

Comparable in size to a Tomahawk missile. Not, not exactly the same size, but you know, sort of in the same zone. And the Tomahawk has like six times as much fuel. Well, the Tomahawk goes far, as they say. That's right. Yes, you're right. Actually, I should look up what the actual Tomahawk fuel tank was. I looked it up the other day.

It's like 600 kilograms. Or 600 liters.

Aaron 20:08

There were some changes. The tell was also sort of in... It was also a source of fascination amongst the open source people who were looking at pictures.

Jeffrey 20:17

Yeah, well, that's because... The canister is longer. And so if the canister is longer, the challenge you might run into is that the tell needs to be longer too. And we're kind of all hoping that it is identifiably different. I mean, now it doesn't matter. But we were hoping it would be identifiably different because I think all of us felt like if the Iskander launcher was used, Then getting Russia back into compliance would have required destroying all the Iskander launchers, which did not seem to be something that was very likely to happen.

Aaron 21:02

Right, and that's because of... The way the treaty's written. The way the treaty's written, yeah. Yeah. If you were actually trying to solve this thing, and they were using a common launcher between Iskander and the 9M729, the problem of destroying the launcher for the 9M729 would be a no-go for the Russians.

Jeffrey 21:20

I would think so. I mean, I think that at that point, it's just totally impossible. Oh yes, here, I wrote it down. So, we, or I, sitting in Vermont, calculated the fuel tank as shown on the diagram. Right. I mean, as all we can see, as all we can see, all they've shown us is as being 100 liters or 26 gallons.

And based on the actual like what we know about other Russian cruise missiles, I think it probably could hold another 300 to 500 liters of fuel. And the Tomahawk has 600 liters. So, you know, this thing should be between 400 and 600 liters, and that's kind of in the same neighborhood as the Tomahawk. And so, like, you can see why the U.S. intelligence community looked at this thing and was like, you're making this missile longer, and it's already at 490 kilometers.

And if you make it that much longer and add that much fuel, it very well could go much further.

Aaron 22:22

So this is an important point, right? Because this is where I see so many of the debates come around, is whether or not the U.S. watched a test go greater than 500 kilometers. And I think the point of this podcast is it doesn't f***ing matter. Yes, that's right. There's no... That's not the standard.

Jeffrey 22:43

It doesn't f***ing matter. It does not matter. That's right.

Aaron 22:46

Right. Because of what you just said, and I think that's really important, and so that if you watch... If the U.S. was watching, let's say, a 9M729 and saw it tested to 499.9, but can see that it's longer and that knows something about how much fuel or something along those lines, you can make logical inferences in confidence intervals.

Would you say that's accurate?

Jeffrey 23:11

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're at the point where the only way this missile is in compliance is if the Russians did something really freaking weird. And sort of inexplicable. And it's not, you know, it isn't like when the 9M729 allegations came out, what the Russians got around to saying in their briefing would have been easy for them to say on day one, right?

Like, they could easily have said... Yeah, yeah, we have a variant that's a little bit longer. And it's a little bit longer because we added a bunch of guidance but they didn't, I think they didn't want to say that because it's not very credible on its face. And, and, and so instead they, I mean they got the perfect outcome.

Which is the U.S. withdraws from the treaty. And so everyone now is blaming the U.S. for this. And they trot out this not very plausible explanation. And, you know, there are enough people who, you know, hate Trump and hate the United States are going to be like, you know, while the Russians have a perfectly reasonable explanation, you're the one leaving the treaty.

And that's like enough to muddy the waters. And, you know, like they're out of the treaty anyway. So like what's going to happen in like six years? The Russians are going to use one of these f***ing things in, like, Syria, and we're going to have the debris, and we're going to point at it, and we're going to be like, see, we told you the fuel tank is better, but, you know, by then nobody cares.

Aaron 24:35

Yeah, by the time it's over.

Jeffrey 24:36

And we'll do a pod about how we told you so.

Aaron 24:39

Right. The podcast will still be around. And no one will care.

Jeffrey 24:43

Yeah.

Aaron 24:44

So, I mean, the logical thing is, so we have always... I guess it's been two years since we've been doing INF pods on this podcast, is the Trump administration's handling of it. And I think initially we gave them high marks because at least they were coming out and calling a spade a spade. Is that the right idiom?

Whereas the Obama administration was less willing to be forthright.

Jeffrey 25:10

We can do it without an idiom. The Trump administration, to its credit, was willing to identify the missile in question, the 9M729, and take steps toward sanctioning the entities that were involved in the construction of the missile, which is something that I wanted the Obama administration to do, and they refused. They wouldn't name the missile and they wouldn't sanction the companies and they wouldn't, they made really, I know they will say they briefed them, but like, I don't feel like they made a serious effort to organize a NATO response.

And, you know, ultimately, I don't know if the Trump administration did either, but once Trump, or Pompeo, I guess, was the one who announced it, whoever ended up announcing it, that we were going to withdraw from the INF Treaty, that finally generated the level of European concern that has people engaging, but they're doing it too late. The time to do this was like three years ago.

Aaron 26:05

Yeah, 2014.

Jeffrey 26:07

I mean, the time to do this was when the U.S. began making the allegation, and the details were pretty clear. Not now that the U.S. has withdrawn from the treaty, and there are reports that there are four deployed battalions of the thing.

Aaron 26:24

Right, yes.

Jeffrey 26:26

Once they actually deploy the system, getting rid of it is going to be way harder.

Aaron 26:31

Yes. And so, I mean, the question now, we always try and end on sort of what to do now is what to do now. I mean, the U.S. is suspending its participation in the INF.

Jeffrey 26:45

The answer is Taylor Swift needs to cover Nena's 99 Luftballons. This is all you can do is, you know, get some good middling pop out of it.

Aaron 26:58

I played that for my son a couple weeks ago. I don't know why. I just wanted to listen to it. Maybe I was channeling my inner INF.

Jeffrey 27:05

She'll probably not do it in the original German because she's already... Right? Like, beloved by Nazis and she hates that.

Aaron 27:14

She's very much, her looks have engendered her to sort of the standout political class of 2018, right?

Jeffrey 27:22

Yeah, which I gather she hates, and so my guess is she'll probably, if we could ever convince her, you can find, you can cover it in English. It's better in German.

Aaron 27:29

There is an English version. I know, but the German version is better. It is better. It is better. We have German pop mornings.

Jeffrey 27:37

Do people know 99 Luftballons is about an accidental nuclear war in the middle of the Euromissiles crisis?

Aaron 27:44

Do people know that? Well, I do. We should actually include a link to the YouTube video because maybe some of our younger listeners don't actually know what we're talking about. Yeah, okay. No, seriously. I mean, I'm kind of getting a little tired of sort of the sort of Knee-jerk anti-Trump backlash to this, even though I don't like the way the Trump administration has handled this, because we shouldn't lose sight of who actually instigated this crisis, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey 28:22

That's right. That's right. It is... I mean... The entirety, not the entirety, but the vast majority of the Trump administration's approach to this has been incompetent and frustrating and upsetting. But they didn't violate the treaty. And they didn't exploit a loophole that at the time of ratification, the Senate made clear, even if it was technically only a circumvention, would be treated as a mortal threat to the treaty.

Like, it's the Russians who built the two missiles. And so at the end of the day... I mean, I hate the concern trolling that nuclear weapons enthusiasts do where they say, like, if you were really for arms control, you would be outraged that the Russians are cheating. You know, they do that thing and it's like, oh, please spare me because you're delighted the Russians are cheating because you want out of the treaty.

Yeah. But it is true that we don't focus enough on the fact that it's the Russians who created the two systems that are at the heart of the compliance dispute, and that when confronted with the nature of those systems, instead of attempting to resolve them, They basically invented compliance disputes about the U.S. that are, like, pretty middling.

And, you know, you get the sense that even if we could have addressed the Russian complaints, that wouldn't, like, that wasn't the reason they built these systems, and it wouldn't have changed how they felt about these systems. That was just their effort to distract attention from the systems. And so I think that, you know, attention needs to be put where it belongs, and that's on the Russians for cheating.

Aaron 30:02

Yeah, and I think in that sense, neither one of us were in favor of withdrawing from the INF, but to try and use all of its tools to just hold the Russians' feet to the fire. And then if we could go back to 2014, 2015, it would be to use those compliance concerns at the outset with the European allies to come up with a more coherent and cohesive response rather than just the boilerplate language that the allies put out.

Jeffrey 30:27

Well, you know, the way I think of it is this. Is that the Soviets believed that they could deploy the SS-20 and that the U.S. response would fracture NATO, right? Because we wouldn't be able to build the political support within NATO for undertaking a comparable deployment. So they thought they could get away with it. And when NATO was able to do that deployment, that...

Really freaked out a lot of people in the Soviet leadership. And Gorbachev particularly felt like the generals who had told him that they would get away with this had lost credibility. So, you know, I've always been of my mind that this was essentially a political test for NATO. Can NATO identify bad Russian behavior And can it act in concert to respond to that Russian behavior in a way that would make the case inside the Russian leadership that they had underestimated the resolve of NATO?

The answer to that was no. No, it could not. It did not even try. It flailed around helplessly, acting far too late. And I think that the lesson that Putin has learned from this is he does not need to give a f***. I think that's a bad lesson for him to learn, right? Because I think it conveys a lot of weakness and disunion, and it's not a great time.

It's not a great time for the transatlantic alliance.

Aaron 32:02

No, no, no, but... That's why you're on the Pacific, right?

Jeffrey 32:10

Well, this is not a great time for the U.S.-ROK alliance either. It's not a great time for the United States, our alliance system, and the idea of liberal internationalism.

Aaron 32:22

No, but maybe we can build the wall. Anything else that we forgot to include in this?

Jeffrey 32:27

Oh, I don't know. I don't think so. No.

Aaron 32:33

So, last question. Where is this going? I mean, it's over.

Jeffrey 32:37

Treaty's dead. The Russians are going to deploy a ton of these missiles. The U.S. will probably engage in a middling development program that will not match the Russian program. And, you know, I don't know. Nothing. Yeehaw. Yeehaw. I mean, and, you know, the positive thing I would say is none of this matters as much as whether... Whether Europe can keep its shit together, right?

I mean, if Merkel is replaced by, you know, some lunatic who loves Putin, and if the yellow vests in France succeed in, you know, doing in France what the lunatics did in Italy, I mean... You know, it's not the Russian missiles, I think, that fundamentally threaten Europe. It's Europe's own inability to govern itself, you know, in the face of some challenges.

But, you know, it's... I think that's the big problem. And the Russian missiles are an opportunity to stress test NATO, and it's a bummer that they failed. But, you know, if we fix governance in Western Europe and the United States, then I think we can deal with the missiles later.

Aaron 33:52

And, yeah, maybe we can get some cool new pop out of it about Luftballons.

Jeffrey 34:00

Yeah.

Aaron 34:01

And with that, I think that's all we're going to say. But if you want to continue this conversation, you can join our Slack channel, which you can do by heading over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast. And if you're a student, for as little as $3 a month, or for a regular person and not a student, at $5 a month, you can gain access to the Slack channel where we talk about these things on a day-in and day-out basis, and where we also post a second, shorter podcast, Brilliant Pebbles, about cool things that attract our attention but that we don't necessarily.

Jeffrey 34:33

Talk about for the full show so go on over to patreon.com slash acw podcast to check it out and with that jeffrey i'm going to head out into the snow to get some coffee all right i am going to post my little diagram showing that the russian diagram has the fuel tank of a winnebago on slack