The INF, NATO, and the MSC

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

You know, what they don't have is a clean U.S. government presentation like we're about to do now. 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, a senior fellow at the Atlanta Councils for the Career Center for the Middle East. But we're at neither. That is true. That is true. We're down the street from my office.

Jeffrey 0:39

Sort of semi-neutral territory doing our first live in-person podcast.

Aaron 0:44

That is right. We are overlooking K Street at the moment from an undisclosed location in Washington, D.C. It's the CNS offices, but it's closer to your day-to-day job than mine. That is true. That is true. You're slumming it on the East Coast, although we have spring weather. I think it's 70 degrees.

Jeffrey 0:58

Yeah, you people who live out here and think that this is spring, there's something deeply, deeply wrong with you.

Aaron 1:04

We've become acclimatized to it should be about 30 degrees, but because of the non-existent global warming, it's just a solar flare.

Jeffrey 1:12

That's what's going on. A solar flare. I'm trying to figure out what your equivalent of the beach is. Is it the Potomac River?

Aaron 1:24

I'm from Los Angeles. We have no beaches on the East Coast. We have little plots of sand. I want to look out the Atlantic.

Scott LaFoy 1:29

It's a bar. It's a bar. It's just a bar here.

Aaron 1:35

There must be some beach-themed tiki bar somewhere.

Jeffrey 1:38

Maybe that's it. It's like the sand in a playground with little bits of broken glass and a homeless guy sleeping there, right?

Aaron 1:47

For people who don't follow Jeffrey on Facebook, I think the beach is your second office.

Jeffrey 1:51

It is. It is. You know, it's very close to my home. Yeah. And it's a good place to go and reflect on things, which I do quite a bit.

Aaron 2:00

Yeah. The water is cold, but it's a nice crescent-shaped white sand beach. I used to live in Monterey, so I know exactly where you're – I can geolocate you with ease.

Jeffrey 2:07

Yeah. I can't believe we gave you a degree. Yeah. I had to do it. I had to stop by because I'm on my way back from Munich. That's right. And I brought back – actually, I didn't bring back any gifts except for this damn cold.

Aaron 2:23

That's right. You're playing hard today. But it's a big deal. I mean you go off to the Munich Security Conference. Can I say something? I was following you on Twitter and I was getting flashbacks to the last nuke fence in Carnegie with your snarky tweets from sort of overlooking the audience.

Jeffrey 2:41

Yeah, the meeting I don't go to anymore. Yeah.

Scott 2:43

The best is if you look at other people's pictures of that, you can actually see Jeffrey angrily tweeting or snarkily tweeting from the other side of the picture.

Aaron 2:53

No, but seriously, that's a big deal to go to the Munich Security Conference. Congratulations.

Jeffrey 2:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, if Davos is for the jet set, I think the Veracunda is for the jet bomber set. It was great, though. You know, I mean... I think there's this incredible value in seeing what people look like. Like Angela Merkel is short. It was about two feet from her and she's a tiny, tiny human being.

Boris Johnson, you know, he does that like aristocratic buffoon thing. It's a total act. I was looking at his tie, which was, you know, mistied. It was the most carefully mistied tie I have ever seen. Yeah. Along with the hair, right? Uh-huh. And we had Bono, who used to be famous. That was a tweet. He doesn't know he's not famous anymore.

Aaron 3:45

What was he talking about? World peace. World peace.

Jeffrey 3:52

Actually, you know, I'll tell you what. It wasn't as shallow as most rock star speeches. I mean, I should give him credit. He did a fine job. I mean, it was a collection of platitudes by a person famous for something else. But it wasn't – he certainly didn't embarrass himself.

Aaron 4:10

Yeah.

Jeffrey 4:11

Yeah. But like it's cool, right? Because you get to see the real allies as opposed to the ones that we invent in D.C. to score political points.

Aaron 4:19

Right. My day job is Turkey. I think the notion of ally comes into question almost every single day around here. But it's just mantra. But expand on that thought. I'm actually curious. We're talking about the soft pod and you didn't tell me what you were really thinking.

Jeffrey 4:33

Well, I mean – so – This meeting has this incredible lineup of speakers. And at one level, there is a conversation that's happening in that room. And, you know, Bill Gates is there. But like not even Bono can steal the show from the most important person who wasn't actually at the meeting. And that was Donald Trump. Everyone was looking at the U.S. delegation, which, by the way, that's worth an explanation all in and of itself, right?

If you wonder if America is still a superpower, just look at how the U.S. delegation is treated at the Munich Security Conference compared to every other delegation. And everybody wanted to try to understand what Trump meant for transatlantic security.

Aaron 5:26

That was obvious from people just following it on my Twitter feed is – He was in every room without being in any of the rooms. And for those who are nervous about him, John McCain was treated like a hero because he gave the speech and he obviously was standing up to him. It was obvious as well as the members of the U.S. delegation, I think it was Mattis, we have two-headed foreign policy coming out that at times is a contradiction with one another.

Jeffrey 5:57

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that came through – well, two things came through really clearly. John McCain hates Donald Trump.

Aaron 6:04

Yeah, that was obvious.

Jeffrey 6:06

I mean, I have seen his remarks on TV and I have read things he has said. But just the look on his face when he is saying them, you know, he really hates him. But he also – you could tell, and this is kind of the second point – Tried very strongly to say that, in his view, Mattis and Tillerson and whoever the next national security advisor would be were a pretty standard Republican team and that we ought to try to work with those people to get a more standard Republican foreign policy, which I think he presented as how he felt, but I think it was clearly he was trying to talk to the audience.

Yeah. Right. To say assembled friends who care about transatlantic security pay no attention to the orange chimpanzee flinging feces at the wall. You know, look, look at Secretary Mattis, who, you know, does know how to tie a tie and appears to chew with his mouth closed and hasn't humiliated himself or the country. And, you know, the like six hours he's been here, you know.

And obviously he doesn't say it quite like that. But like that was clearly the message. And I think the takeaway – Pence's speech was helpful but terrible. I mean it like – I mean if you wanted to do an impression of a parochial congressman from Indiana who had never been in Europe before and wasn't quite sure why there was so much fizzy water – He did a pretty good job of that but that said it just kind of fell flat rhetorically but I think both the substance of what he said and the substance of what Mattis said the words were reassuring but what really came through is people were like okay well that all sounds good but you know you still have the crazy chimpanzee and so like Sounds good.

You said most of the right things. You omitted some things you needed to say. But generally, the words are good. But now we're waiting for actions.

Aaron 8:14

Was this like the side conversations that was going on sort of at the bar, you know, where the people would gather and just chat? Was it really like, that was great. You know, McCain sounded good. That was a bread and butter Republican American speech. But you have... The orange one sitting around – basically the non-existent entity in every room.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

Jeffrey 8:34

You would ask people – and I mean like it's not like they didn't have criticisms. Pence totally failed to mention the European Union in his speech, which led to a natural kind of anxiety about like what's that mean? And I think Pence – I also said this on Twitter. He got scattered applause when he called upon Europe to spend more money.

It wouldn't surprise me if the only people clapping were the Americans sitting in Liberty Lounge, which is what they dubbed the area they had roped off, and maybe Mrs. Pence. But having said that, yeah, you would talk to people afterwards. And look – It's a big conference. There are a range of views on display, just as there are a range of views among allies.

But I think generally the takeaway was, well, those guys were OK and they wouldn't represent a kind of discontinuity in American foreign policy. But now the question is, do they matter? You know, will that actually be backed by words or by actions? And that's what, you know, people were saying and talking among themselves about at the bar, which, by the way, I bought a cup of coffee at the bar.

What do you think? A cup of coffee?

Aaron 9:47

I spent two years in Geneva, so you can't shock me. The Intercontinental during the Iran talks, it was like $10.25 for a cappuccino.

Jeffrey 9:54

Yeah, it was like nine euro for a double espresso at the bar. After that, I basically stuck to the free BMW provided coffee, drank at the receptions that I was invited to, and otherwise headed out to Munich beer halls because I could not afford to get hammered on my own dime. Munich beer halls are great. Oh, they're fantastic.

Aaron 10:16

Fantastic. I was there last June and I spent all my non-time in the quote-unquote track two about solving the U.S.-Turkey relationship in a Munich beer hall. Did you learn about the stomp-tish? No, I didn't learn about this.

Jeffrey 10:29

I was alone drinking. Well, that's why. So... Marcus Schiller, who listens to the podcast, hey, we went to his favorite beer hall, and it was spectacular. I won't ruin it for Marcus by telling the whole world where the best beer hall in Munich is located, but this is amazing. And he has a Stomptisch there, which is a monthly reservation.

They reserve a table. If you are a local of good standing – And you go to a beer hall frequently enough. And I found out about this because I saw that people had steins there. Not Aaron Steins. Beer Steins. Mugs. That they kept at the bar. He said, well, if you go enough, eventually you can talk to the owner.

And you can say, I'm interested in a stomp dish. And they will reserve a table for you once a month. And now you have to show up. And there are all kinds of elaborate rules like courtesies. Like if you're not going to show up, you need to call them in advance. If you're missing pretty frequently, they're going to have a conversation.

If you're going to be a small group, you need to let them know so they can seat other people at your table along with you, which is very common. But you've got a standing reservation at this place.

Aaron 11:48

It reminds me of that bar in Monterey where you can get your own mug on the wall.

Jeffrey 11:52

Oh, the Trident Room.

Aaron 11:53

The Trident Room. Yeah, on the ceiling. That's right. Yeah. Back in the old days.

Jeffrey 11:57

Yeah. But, you know, that was... That was really fun, was to hang out in those places and have those conversations. And like you said, you think after three or four beers that you've solved all of the world's problems. Oh, yeah. Then you wake up the next morning and you don't remember what you talked about. Yeah, that's the downside.

People think that it's an illusion, but you really have solved the problems. It's just that you forget.

Aaron 12:19

That's right. Before we – there was – Why were you there? I mean, it's a big deal to get invited to this unique security conference.

Jeffrey 12:27

Why were you there? I got invited. And we – one of the reasons I think I got invited – I mean, I'd like to think it was my sparkling personality. This is a podcast. Yeah. Well, it's stuff we talk about on the podcast. We worked with the Nuclear Threat Initiative to take our models of North Korean missiles and the range estimates and the numerical estimates to put together a graph for the Munich Security Report.

And so we had a page in their report, and this was my kind of opportunity to be an evangelist for open source information. I actually carried around, we do these eight and a half by 11 handouts for our OSINT presentations, and I carried them around with me. And anytime I'd start explaining, I'd be like, oh, well, I just happened to have a little presentation right here.

And I would do like a 10 minute impromptu version of the presentation. Did you give it to Mana? I, I had dinner at Amano's well, it wasn't really a table. We Lucina Zerbo and Amano and the CTBTO staff and I were all at the same tiny little cocktail table at the reception the first night. Okay. Yeah, that's good.

And so I, I pitched him a little, but, but I, that, that was too hard to get out the presentation. Right. I gotcha. I gotcha.

Aaron 13:51

Okay. If I had to venture a guess, is there the second ghost in the room? There were two ghosts, unnamed people, at the conference, at least again from Washington. One was our president.

Scott 14:04

The second, the specter of communism?

Aaron 14:06

It's the specter of communism. Yeah. There was a pretty feisty speech given by the Russian foreign minister while I was there.

Jeffrey 14:13

Yeah, I mentioned the advantage of seeing people. So, first of all, Lavrov smokes like a chimney. Yeah, I saw him in Geneva. He was going to the talks. Yeah. But one of the things I noticed about Lavrov in person is on TV, he looks sort of at ease and in command. And, you know, you see pictures of him laughing.

In person, he looks like a devil. And he looks like the kind of guy who 10 years ago would have mugged you for your wallet in a dark street in Moscow. And now he looks like the kind of guy who would shake down the guy who mugged you for your wallet to make sure he got his taste.

I mean he really – his interpersonal demeanor is much more unpleasant than I've seen on TV.

Aaron 15:03

That was – in the few meetings I've had in Moscow, that has been my – Sort of big takeaway of interactions between American and Russians interact to things is that Americans go there like Americans are so happy to be here. Moscow's wonderful. We look forward to cooperation. And the Russians are just hard as nails.

Jeffrey 15:22

Yeah.

Aaron 15:23

Hard as nails. And Lavrov fits that mold for at least the stereotype I built into my own head about just rough. And his speech was rough. Just shoved it right in our face and didn't make any...

Jeffrey 15:38

I guess secrets about the intention of what they're trying to do. Yeah, the European security situation is in deep, deep, deep trouble, right? And I, it's funny, I was having this conversation at a bar and someone was like, you know, I think you're a little tough on the Russians. And I was like, I would like Vladimir Putin to stop killing people. I know, right? You know, like, like, and I, at least to me.

While I do believe in trying to build a constructive relationship with Russia, and I certainly think our policy is not perfect, I think it is such an unpleasant fact to deal with that people don't really want to engage with how hard over the Russians are at the moment.

Aaron 16:22

Yeah, I mean, it certainly seems like that. And I think that builds into… One of the work you've been doing, we talk about in the podcast all the time, is the new security threat to Europe. It's not just populist politics from the right, but it's a new missile threat.

Jeffrey 16:34

Yeah. You know, one of the things that I really was thinking about in this context was – It is easy, I think, to try to imagine strategic reasons that we're seeing this series of things the Russians are doing with their nuclear forces. And for me, the list of particulars are the two INF missiles, which we should probably talk about in some more detail, but also the heavy ICBM, renewed interest in rail mobile missiles, and that god-awful underwater drone with a 10,000-kilometer range and the thermonuclear warhead.

When we look at those things, one of the main questions I get is what's the strategy behind those? You know, is there some Russian military policy that is served by this suite of systems? And, you know, what really came through in Munich where people are really talking about the atmosphere and the bigger political questions was for me, I don't.

I don't think that the systems are something they want to build because of their military value. It's more like democracy in Russia has failed and Russian authoritarianism looks a lot like Soviet authoritarianism. And there is this resurgence of Soviet habits and patterns of thought, right? And so listening to Lavrov, it was like, Holy crap. That speech, you know, you got to change the particulars a little bit.

But that – the tone is 1983. And, you know, the thing I kept thinking about is do you remember at the very beginning when Putin brought back the Soviet national anthem? Yeah, I do. At the time, I thought it was like nostalgia. Yeah. But actually, I think like, no, he wants to resurrect that particular political system because that's what a strong central rule looks like to him, right?

That's his default model. And so we can talk about this. We can impugn Scott's mentors. I don't – when I look at that, the reason the Soviets built all those systems, I don't think the Soviets built all those systems – Because they had some plan for them. They built them because a Soviet authoritarian system had a really strong defense industry and a relatively weak political structure that was happy to exaggerate the threat from the West for its own domestic reasons and delighted to roll these systems through Red Square.

And I think that's back again. And so the Russians are in this – that system is pushing them in this direction. And like Lavrov's job is to come out and blame us for that. And it's kind of like they've got their own thing going on and I'm not sure that we have a lot to do with it.

Aaron 19:24

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that's when you – when we were talking about earlier on a podcast, which I actually went back and listened to before this one, which is – God, it was a couple months ago. I went back and listened to an old podcast, which is about the nature of their INF violations.

And it's hard to grapple with, even for those people who are following it closely, because there are the two systems. I mean, there is the one that sort of Say violates the spirit and then it doesn't violate, but it sort of goes against the spirit of the treaty. And then the even harder one, which is the cruise missile, because it's hard to unpack, you know, a cruise missile that uses the same launch system as the Iskander, which actually isn't covered by the INF.

You can go on and on and on. So I think we should start with this general misperception about what the Russians are doing and how they both circumvented and then violated the INF.

Jeffrey 20:15

Yeah, I, you know, one of the things I find with North Korea, and it's true also with this INF violation, is that if a country does one thing that undermines a treaty, people can get their head around it. But if they do, if the country does two things, it's really hard for people to separate like two different missiles.

Aaron 20:32

Especially ballistic and cruise and lopping off a stage.

Jeffrey 20:34

Yeah, because suddenly there are two things to think about and they have different technical characteristics and people struggle to keep them straight. That's not really a criticism. It's just like the human brain, it's only so big, right?

Aaron 20:47

When I did the original research for our INF podcast, it was about a year ago, before Super Producer Scott came on board. I had to go back and reread everything that was going on. I mean, it's tough.

Jeffrey 20:57

And it's also not easy because a lot of the information that we do on the open source side, we can ferret out. But, you know, you don't have a clean U.S. government presentation where they say, look, we've got these two missiles. You know, what they don't have is a clean U.S. government presentation like we're about to do now.

Aaron 21:17

This is coming out on your guys' side or just on the show? No, I think just on the podcast. Oh, right, right. I thought that this was something big OSINT stuff that you guys were working on that I hadn't heard about.

Jeffrey 21:25

Well, maybe we should. You know what we should do is we should make a beautiful graphic like the one we did for the Munich Security Conference, but for Russia's INF violations, and we can put it on the Slack channel. That'd be great. I'd learn from that. I got a big thumbs up from Super Producer Scott.

Aaron 21:41

Yeah.

Jeffrey 21:42

All right. So there are two missiles. Yeah. One is a ballistic missile. One is a cruise missile. They are different kinds of missiles. We'll talk about the ballistic missile first. You, very careful with your language. What do you mean? I'm complimenting you. The ballistic missile is what the House Republicans said was a circumvention.

Aaron 22:05

Circumvention. Yeah. They called it a circumvention. Not a violation. Circumvention goes against the spirit.

Jeffrey 22:10

And I think that that's a good description of what that missile is. Although I noticed in the Tom Cotton – Bill to burn the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty in order to save it. The last bullet point is calling for a policy review to determine whether the RS-26 is countable under New START, which I think is a way of getting at this problem.

So the RS-26 is the ballistic missile. Yeah. That's the circumvention. Right. And to me, this is a really interesting case because – What the INF Treaty was originally designed to deal with was a Soviet ballistic missile that we called the SS-20. And that missile started life as an ICBM with three stages. The Soviets agreed to limits under the SALT Treaty.

That constrained, well, really the SALT executive agreement. And then we were negotiating the SALT II treaty. And that agreement had a limit on the number of ICBMs. And so the view in the U.S., and I know some of our Russian colleagues think the U.S. view is a little simplistic, and it's fine. But the view in the U.S. was the Russians took that third stage off and put up New combat payload with a bunch of warheads on it so that the range would fall below the limit and so it wouldn't count under SALT.

And they could build as many of these things as they wanted. And the strategic threat that they posed was because they were an intermediate range nuclear force, you could sit in the Soviet Union and you could nuke London and Paris. And that created a political problem because, of course – We didn't have an answer, and it would force countries to hit the Soviet Union, which would escalate the war.

Right. Allied countries. Right. So that was an enormous political problem, and we undertook the dual-track decision or the double-track decision whereby we wanted to put our own intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe so that if they launched an intermediate-range attack – From Russia on Germany or Italy or the Netherlands or Belgium or the UK, then they would have their own intermediate range nuclear forces to strike back.

That's quite a kerfuffle in European politics. Right. Which actually, you know, I think in a weird way is the advantage of doing something hard, right? Because the Russian generals, as far as I understand it, who pushed ahead with this basically said, look, This gets us around this SALT limitation and it gives us this capability, which we like, and NATO won't be able to do anything about it.

And they were delighted by the anti-nuclear protests in Europe and then freaked the hell out when the deployments happened anyway. Right. Because now suddenly later Gorbachev could say, you said it wouldn't happen, but it did. And now you say it doesn't matter, but it does. Right.

Aaron 25:28

Which gives us right back to the Ionet.

Jeffrey 25:30

Right. Well, and so, you know, the RS-26 is exactly the same idea where they took a Yars ICBM, which is three stages. They took off the third stage. They tested it once with one warhead to the bare minimum range to count under new start. And then they packed a whole bunch of warheads on to create, you know, what is...

Basically an SS-20, but using a modern Russian ICBM as the basis and not an old Soviet one.

Aaron 26:00

And this is separate from the missile we're just about to talk about. One of the advantages of this is the same thing as the SS-20, is that you are able to sit and hide in Russia, and they're hard to find.

Jeffrey 26:10

Yeah, I mean, it is... I want to say it is precisely the same as an SS-20. I mean, obviously it has a different, better missile as the underlying basis, but the design conception is precisely the same. And so what's irritating is the Russians were able to get it counted under New START by testing it once to an ICBM range with the one warhead and then packing on all these warheads.

And so technically it's legal.

Aaron 26:38

This is where I admire Russians so much is Because this is so entirely cynical. Again, hard as nails. And then it's one thing we talked about in the New Start podcast. They know these treaties backwards and forwards and they know every loophole and that they are prepared to exploit those loopholes to their own technical advantage. They are smart people.

Jeffrey 26:59

Yeah, I was really frustrated by this because if you go back and look at the – Debate about the INF Treaty in the Senate, they knew this could be a problem again. It wasn't a Yars, it was the Topol, I guess, where in the ratification debate, people said, look, there is nothing to stop the Soviets from taking this new Topol and And taking off the third stage and putting one warhead on it, testing it to an ICBM range, declaring it as an ICBM, and then putting a bunch of warheads on and making an SS-20 clone.

Right. So this precise scenario was foreseen. And the answer was, which actually I think was very reasonable at the time, look, that's a problem. We are still getting rid of all the SS20s now. And so if you care about this hypothetical future problem, then the way to head that off is to deal with it in the START treaty.

Scott 28:00

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 28:01

But like that little bit of don't forget to deal with that problem in the START treaty seems to have gotten forgotten along the way. And so when we negotiated the new START treaty with the Russians, we didn't close off that route. So we left that opening for them to exploit and they took it. Yeah.

Aaron 28:22

And I think this leads us right segue into one of the things that we pushed for in START was the cruise missile debate. Yeah. And so you can see where – and I think you call it Lewis's dictum. Yeah, I do. I do. Which was our insistence that cruise missiles, because of our advantage at the time and what would become their heavy use conventionally, is that you don't classify them as strategic systems.

And then thereby you put in place a mechanism – That incentivizes the development of cruise missiles on two levels. I mean, one is the accounting mechanism for bombers. And two is that, hey, Russia, we have this really great thing called Tomahawk that can fly a long ways and fly through a window. And we're going to pack it out with a conventional warhead so you don't have to worry about it.

But we can do decapitating strikes or hit all these things without a nuclear warhead from standoff range.

Jeffrey 29:17

Yeah, so then that brings us to the second missile. That's the second missile. Which is the new cruise missile, which we are told the U.S. calls the SSC-8. And I think, you know, my best guess is that the Russian designation is 9M729, although we don't know that for a fact. Well, boy, they used it to screw us.

Aaron 29:40

Yes, they did. Yes, they did. They're turning the screws. Yeah. Yeah. That thing is a screwdriver if I've ever seen one. But I think this is important because it's a tricky system because it builds off the launchers and then they put these things in Kaliningrad with Vadim. Yeah, maybe with Vadim in his bag. With Vadim in his bag, right.

Jeffrey 30:07

Yeah. Vadim, we have a new shelter. Extra space for bags. We'll have to reference that. If you go to the Slack channel, we'll tell you what that means. I just imagine the bottle openers lined up on the wall of the tent mobile shelter. Right. So Russia has a second missile, which the United States has said is a violation of the treaty.

You know, the 2014 compliance report says this is a serious noncompliance issue. And as best I can tell, And, you know, we're still arguing about this. Not everyone agrees. There's a little Twitter debate. There is always a Twitter debate. But my best guess, what I think the new cruise missile is, is a land-based variant of the Russian sea-launched cruise missile known as Kalibr, which has a, like, 2,500-kilometer range.

Scott 31:14

Which in previous episodes, I think you nicknamed the Ivan.

Jeffrey 31:18

Bigger than, yeah. Well, right. So my view is let's imagine that there is just one Russian cruise missile made by Novator, which I've learned is Russian for innovator. I had no idea. Sounds about right to me. I don't speak Russian, right? So imagine there's one Russian cruise missile named Ivan, and it's a family and comes in many variants.

So if you put Ivan on a ship and it's the full range version, it's the caliber. If you put Ivan – if you want to sell Ivan, right, as a navalized cruise missile, you have to reduce the range, right, because it would violate the MTCR. And so what they do is they don't actually change it externally as far as I can tell.

And in fact, there's a nice slicky by the Office of Naval Intelligence that says the caliber and the shorter range club version are visually similar. And there may be some small differences, of course. And so if they sell it, they call it Klopp. But it's the same missile, it's just they've reduced the range so it's legal to sell it.

Yeah, the internal guts look differently. At least we hope.

Aaron 32:28

We hope.

Jeffrey 32:28

I mean, they might just say, you know... They might just decrease the fuel tank size. He's 300 kilometers.

Scott 32:33

Well, you know... He has to stop halfway before they sell it.

Jeffrey 32:36

It's very unclear what the French did to reduce the range of the... They call it scalp.

Aaron 32:42

Scalp. Storm shadow. They just sold another version through their Mirage fires to somebody else. Yeah, I should know this. I'm a damn pot, but I forgot. Yeah, if only we had a Middle East expert on this podcast... No, I just saw it pop up as if they just sold it to a third customer. I think it's Egypt.

Jeffrey 32:56

Yeah. Well, that's a fine, fine missile. It is Egypt. It's a MTCR Category 1 system. Yeah. And the French and the British claim that it is not, or at least the versions they sell are not. Just got the fuel tank in hand. And I suspect that's an easily reversed thing. And my guess is that's what the Russians are doing too.

And so you have Ivan and this is totally legal, right? To have an intermediate range nuclear capable cruise missile just as long as it is launched off a ship. Now, the Russians have this shorter-range cruise missile that they launch off the Iskander, which usually gets called the R-500. Yeah. It's a 500-kilometer-range missile. Well, what I think is the short-range export version of the navalized cruise missile, which is 300 kilometers, and the 500-kilometer-range version for the INF, they're just cut-down versions of Ivan.

Right? They're just short-range versions of Ivan. And so there is a land-based variant... That is at the heart of this dispute. That is probably just the land-based version of Kalibr.

Aaron 34:02

And just to put it in perspective, they just fired these things off in Syria and they fired from the Caspian.

Jeffrey 34:07

Right. There's no reason that you couldn't put that thing on a truck. And indeed, that's what the U.S. did, right? We all talk about the Tomahawk because that's what's left. But the Tomahawk has an air-launched variant that we still use. And the U.S. had a ground-launched variant, the Griffin variant. Spelled with a PH, which was the cruise missile that we eliminated under the INF Treaty.

It's the Stephen to your Stephen. It's Steve. It's Steve. That underlying missile is Steve. Right? So we got Steve and Ivan. God made Adam and Eve, not Ivan and Steve. That's true. I forgot about crazy right-wing talking points from the 1990s.

Aaron 34:56

But I'm obsessed with cruise missiles because I think they're sort of the outgrowth both of just technological – God, I hate to use Thomas Friedman, but sort of the flattening of the technological spectrum.

Jeffrey 35:12

Oh, did you get this from a cab driver? I did, I did. I was taking a cab in Munich and in flawless English over an espresso. He turned to me and said, I really think that the Russians are building these cruise missiles because of the loophole you left.

Aaron 35:27

Right, well, just the spread of guidance. I did have a cab driver in Munich, by the way. Did he speak English?

Jeffrey 35:35

...

Aaron 35:36

Sort of.

Jeffrey 35:36

He told me really filthy jokes about women that I was obliged to sort of vaguely laugh at so I didn't end up dead somewhere in Munich. Pushed out the back of what I assume is a black Mercedes. And instead of dropping me at Marion Plotz, he dropped me at the McDonald's near Marion Plotz and strongly recommended I get a cheeseburger.

Because Americans must go to McDonald's. I had to navigate back to Merriam-Platz and then to my apartment. I'm sorry I cut you off, but that was quite a night.

Aaron 36:10

It's the logical follow-on to the spread of Hit to Kill, which we talked about before. It's, sorry, the flattening of sort of the technological expertise needed to launch things a long distance and hit something. Even if you're not as accurate as Tom and Huck, you're close enough. Which I think, again, segues back into how the Russia decides to turn and shove it in our face.

Right. Because they have the answers to all this. No, we didn't do this. You have to prove it, yada, yada. But even if we would do it, you're violating the treaty, too.

Jeffrey 36:45

Yeah, and they really like to make a big deal about the use of a – Boy, trying to do this without jargon. Scott, you're going to have to help me out. The Tomahawks launcher at sea is the basis for the launcher for our missile defense interceptors ashore in Poland and Romania.

Aaron 37:10

Oh, it's the common launch system. And it makes sense because you have to fit it onto a ship. And you want everything to come out of the same damn tube. Otherwise, you have to have multiple tubes. And the ship has a sort of defined area. Right.

Jeffrey 37:24

And if you ask the United States Navy to then take the missile defense interceptor off that ship and put it on a land-based site, as we have discussed before, the Navy will do its damnedest to make that runway look exactly like a ship. We're talking about the podcast. But it –

Aaron 37:47

And this is my problem with the Johnson thing. Sorry, the Tom Cotton thing is... Oh, Ron Johnson's a co-sponsor. Right, and so is Marco Rubio and a few others. I mean... Their response options are to reintroduce – the response is that they want to demand a U.S. response. And this feeds the Russian argument. This is why I don't understand the need to immediately meet force with force.

But it also brings up one of the contradictions that we talked about at the opening, why you were at Munich and the American delegation, which is reassurance to our European allies. One of the centerpieces of it – Will be, at least for the Bolts on the east of the NATO periphery, is missile defense. And so I see us in a cul-de-sac here where we just go in circles.

We need more missile defense. It's a common launch system. You can launch Tomahawk. Well, you have a ground – you see what I mean? We have an arms race going on here.

Jeffrey 38:42

Well, one of the things that I think is worth saying is – so the Mark 41 VLS is – Vertical launch system, sorry. The Mark 41 vertical launch system, I do not think is a treaty violation, but there's a but coming, right? So, you know, what the treaty says is that a launcher becomes accountable under the treaty if it launches a ground-launched cruise missile or a ground-launched ballistic missile.

And that thing has never launched A ground-launched cruise missile or a ground-launched ballistic missile. It has only launched sea-launched cruise missiles, right? And so as long as it stayed at sea, it did not violate it. When they brought it ashore, it never launched a ground-launched cruise missile. It's launching an air defense missile, and the treaty has an exception for air defense missiles.

And so at one level, I think that is totally permissible. Now... In some way, it is also exactly like the RS-26 because it is legal, but the Russians are scared to death. And I think this is a legitimate – well, I think this is a sincere and partly legitimate fear that we are going to covertly put nuclear weapons – On cruise missiles that are then put in these launchers, and we are going to use those as covert INF forces to strike them.

Aaron 40:11

You could even make the argument that conventional should scare them because of decapitation.

Jeffrey 40:16

Right. And so they're frightened. And I think – and this ultimately gets to your point about what our response is because we have to, I think, separate – How much of that accusation is genuine Russian fear, in which case, if we're not careful, we feed into that cycle? And how much of that is politicking, in which case we excuse their behavior?

It may be that it's unfair of them to claim it's a violation, but I think the Russians certainly think that by raising this issue, they create this sense among our European allies that both sides are doing it, which then becomes an excuse for our European allies to do nothing. And what I think of in this case is, do you remember that crazy story about the US moving nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania?

How could I forget? You're the Turkey wonk. Yeah. How could I forget? It was a great story. Entirely made up. Yeah, right. It was called – the website was Euractive. I was going to say EU Active or Euractive or something like that. Yeah, which I think it's more like Euractive Measures. Yeah. I think it was Russian disinformation that was designed to feed into that narrative that the missile defense system in Romania was actually a covert nuclear capability.

Just to give background.

Aaron 41:39

False. When that story came out – Four or five journalists start WhatsAppping me going, what the hell is this all about? I'm like, no, it's not. It's all total bullpucky, all total nonsense.

Scott 41:53

Fake news.

Aaron 41:54

This was before fake news and alternative facts. But it literally, like Russian, actually, literal at Russian fake news, right? And I was like, this is just, I was like, you can look at it. I was like, it's ages to shore. There's not even a storage. You can just go through it. But it didn't matter. That was booming around my Twitter feed all day.

Jeffrey 42:10

Yeah. English and Turkish. Plug for our friends. We used images from Planet to make sure that there was no new construction. And yet – and somebody brought this up to me in Munich, right? They said, you know, it's funny. The first result is – if you search for nuclear weapons Romania, the first result is the disinformation and your debunking is the second result.

All right. Well, yes, not in the second, but it's not first, right? It still comes up that it's there. And so what I took away from that is the Russians think that this is a – Successful propaganda strategy, that they can use the missile defense interceptors in Poland and Romania to divide NATO and to excuse their own violations of the treaty.

And it brings up this bigger conversation I've been having, which Munich really reinforced for me, which is like, what is our goal here? Because the reason I find the cotton INF bill so unpersuasive is Is to me, it feeds precisely into Russia's goal, which is not about nuclear weapons. The Russians are not building the weapons to divide NATO.

They're building the weapons because their defense industry is out of control, but they've adopted a political strategy to use debate about nuclear weapons to break NATO. And so if you turn around and be like, yes, Germany, we are going to make you take new nuclear-armed intermediate-range nuclear forces— That's going to hurt Merkel. Right. The point of the Russian strategy is to divide NATO.

They don't care about the bombs. That's just a way to do it. And this bill seems to me to reinforce that. I actually think we should be much more supportive of disarmament measures, you know, firstly, because disarmament measures are in fact important. But secondly, for the same reason NATO did the double track.

Scott 44:07

Yeah.

Jeffrey 44:08

Right. Which is the way to keep our European allies together is to simultaneously be strong, but also make it clear that we would settle for a diplomatic solution. We are not the ones who are driving this arms race. And so it makes me crazy. And, you know, I just, you know, the Obama administration did this when we show up at the NPT and we collude with the Russians.

Right. And the other members of the P5, like that makes the Russians so happy. That's a permission slip for them to do all this bad stuff.

Aaron 44:35

Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious, though. And we have awesome conventional weapons, so we don't have to do this. And we have better weapons than they do. I mean, but I'm curious, you know, I think listeners of the podcast will be shocked to find out that I am a Democrat and I did not vote for Donald Trump. And I also think listeners of the podcast will be shocked that I'm deeply uncomfortable with the president's Twitter feed and his sort of Let's say, mysterious behavior of his campaign around contacts with the Russians that we find out more and more about.

But I am curious what the Europeans were saying in your side conversations, because everything that we hear is that they are doing something similar. And so in the context of trying to divide NATO through surreptitiously influencing the far right, Of all of our Western polities, are they not sort of strengthening the people that we – we talked about on the other podcast before.

It's like we should not be kowtowing out to the Marine LePens and the Nigel Farages and the Donald Trumps. But it should be the act of saying people on the left and the right for that matter, John McCain, to go after the European left.

Jeffrey 45:57

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean obviously a group like the Munich Security Conference, that's going to be – A fairly friendly crowd to the idea of a strong U.S. role in Europe. That's just a friendly crowd. But one can make a couple of observations about the nature of that crowd, which is it is certainly alarmed about Russia, but that alarm comes from the center-left.

I mean, the center right and the center left, but it's much stronger among the center left than I think it had been in the previous period. And there is a general concern about the rise of the far right in Europe, which maybe wouldn't have been the case 40 years ago. You know, 40 years ago, the harder right was seen as being pretty reliably anti-communist.

And then the other thing is – and I was walking with a friend outside of the conference because it's always good to get around, right? So you leave the conference and you run straight into the anti-conference, anti-nuclear protesters, right? The anti-NATO – the best ones were the steampunk anti-NATO protesters, right? German Code Pink? Yeah. I mean, they literally – it was like they had a steampunk vehicle and they had the goggles and the outfits and I don't really understand – How – I mean I guess there are no nuclear – there are no steampunk nuclear weapons, right?

There could be. So maybe that's the conceit is that – That's just a design choice, Jeffrey.

Aaron 47:41

You want a nice lamp piece on a nuclear weapon. You can add some sort of twisted metal to it. Wouldn't be aerodynamically sound.

Jeffrey 47:49

Yeah. But I mean, what was really clear, right, was that there is now this new pressure on the transatlantic relationship from both the far right and the far left. And my argument has been that – If we're going to preserve this transatlantic relationship, we can't just rely on the right anymore, you know, which I think is kind of the classic American view is, you know, ah, you know, yeah, the greens, the greens in Germany, you know, they're, they're, they're hippies.

Forget it. I'm like, no, no, we, we need the greens, right? Because Merkel is bleeding support on her right to the, the, the what is it? The AFD, right? The, the, the Nazis. And, and, You know, there's a kind of shrinking social democratic party, right? And the Greens are still there, but then you've got these, you know, pretty solidly left-leaning groups.

I think that's where we're going to pick up the votes. And the way to pick up that support is, at least to me, by making it clear that people standing in the way of disarmament are the Russians. And it bothers the hell out of me when we treat the efforts at disarmament as though they are hostile to strengthening our transatlantic relationship, because a lot of the countries pushing for disarmament are our NATO allies, and their politicians have made the decision that their political situation is stronger if they are seen as being helpful to disarmament, not harmful.

And so, you know, again, I mean, I've said that like three times, but I love Rose Gottmuller, but when I saw her doing her P5 thing... It's like that's the worst possible thing we could be doing, right? Because we are presenting ourselves as being one with the Russians at a time that they are about to go on a giant nuclear weapons binge.

And we are putting ourselves in no position to criticize them. And we are doing everything we possibly can to give people in Europe who don't want to stand up to the Russians precisely the excuse they need to do nothing.

Aaron 49:55

I foresee... One potential pitfall to this, because I completely agree, but the pathway to doing this is that the people are going to show up to the NATO meetings in their steampunk costumes. No, I'm okay with that. That would make it a little more fun than the black suit, sort of the red power tie. As long as it doesn't go down, I'm just imagining this at the Munich Security Meeting. I said, what the hell are they there like? Look, okay, these are the only transatlantic supporters we got. All right, I'm fine with that. Big, big 10. All right, you know, I spent six years in San Francisco as little steampunk people showing up for the thing. That was, that was my day at the

Jeffrey 50:28

What are these guys doing here? Hey, look, we were this close to getting the nudists. That's right.

Aaron 50:34

It could be the day to break this crowd, guys. But one thing I see is the argument will be made that if you want to lessen your reliance as the underpinning of the transatlantic relationship on tactical nuclear weapons or nuclear guarantees will be conventional. Yeah. And missile defense systems, which again brings us back to the Russian canoe.

Jeffrey 50:57

And which Cotton calls for, yeah. Yeah. Well, look, you know, I mean, the way that I think about this is that I actually think that the dual – I like dual track better than double track, but everybody says double track. That decision strikes me as being fundamentally the model that we should follow because on the one hand – The Russians do have to experience some pain for what they did, right?

And Gorbachev called the INF systems we put in a gun to his head. And while, you know, Gorby's a nice, reasonable guy who we probably could have gotten a good deal out of, I don't think it hurt having a gun to his head. But also, as I said earlier, the Soviet generals thought NATO couldn't respond. And they were shocked when, despite the protests, NATO government still had the political strength to make the deployments.

And so you had this really effective form of leverage on them. But you could only do that if you sincerely believed, and not everybody, I think, in the Reagan administration sincerely believed this, but Rick Burt did. Actually, I had lunch with Rick Burt while I was there. You could only do it if you sincerely believed in a diplomatic solution being the best of all worlds.

If you were willing to do these things, and then when the Soviets said, okay, we give up, then you take the deal. Right. And if we'd not taken the deal, I think that would that would have been a catastrophe. So on the one hand, I don't object to doing new systems. And I would certainly be willing to consider more appropriate missile defenses.

But I think also we should look at at least initially treaty compliant responses that will put a lot of pressure on the Russians. You know, like air launch cruise missiles aren't prohibited. You know, like we could absolutely sit those things in Poland. Our allies could certainly purchase intermediate range missiles of their own from states that aren't parties to the treaty.

Cough, cough, a Jericho missile. Right. And, you know, we definitely could do conventional responses. And I think all that would be stronger because politically it would make it more likely you'd respond. But the trick is you have to be sincerely willing to agree. And so, you know, if part of the deal is our architecture for missile defense changes so that that third site isn't in Poland and I guess I'm calling it the third site, but it's in two places.

Site 3AB isn't in Poland and Romania. It's in some Republican congressman's district on the East Coast. Like if that's the deal you got to cut, then I think we ought to be willing to do that provided you get a verifiable treaty that they're not going to cheat on for – what did we get? We got 20 years out of them, which wasn't bad, right?

And so I think – I just think you got to do both. I mean I don't like the Cotton Amendment because it strikes me – or Cotton Bill because it strikes me that it's – Exactly what the Russians want to hear for their propaganda purposes. And that doesn't mean that I think a reasonable strategy doesn't have a component.

Yeah. Better conceived components. And actually, Toby Harshaw at Bloomberg News, who kind of has, I think, established himself as the columnist who reps for the Scowcroft Republicans, which I take that as a compliment, sort of said, yeah, the dual track, that worked. So you kind of got to do both. And I kind of want to get back to that point.

I got to teach. That's peace with strength. Yeah. And if that's what you want on your bumper sticker, OK. I think it's peace through, you know, strength and negotiation. But, you know. One could call it the art of the deal. Oh, God, I weep for our country. Yes. If Donald Trump won. Yeah, that's the other question is, you know, I've sketched out this very careful strategy, but like.

Do we think these guys can do it?

Aaron 55:16

No, in fairness, and I think we should wrap up here, he has a competent group of guys around him. Guys. White guys. White guys. But no knock on the white guys around him. They're all smart people. They obviously can work through this. You're right. If they can't do this, this is on the president. Right. And he has a smart group of guys around him.

And so there's hope. You know, we should all be rooting for the home team here. He's just down the street, you know, unless he's in Mar-a-Lago. But, you know, he's just here and we should all be working for the home team. And there's a way forward.

Jeffrey 55:49

Aaron, you ended on a happy note. I tried. That's my job. Utterly hollow. I tried.

Aaron 55:54

There's a way forward.

Jeffrey 55:56

Yeah.

Aaron 55:56

All right. Hey, Aaron.

Jeffrey 55:59

Yeah. Thanks for joining me. It's great to have you in person. And Scott, thanks for being here and setting this up and making this possible.

Scott 56:07

Thanks for coming down to DC. Welcome to the swamp. Welcome back to the swamp.

Jeffrey 56:13

Great. And thank you for listening. If you like the podcast, why not leave us an iTunes review? It helps get the word about the podcast out. And if you really like the podcast, come over to our Patreon page and make a small donation for a mere three bucks a month. You can have access to our Slack channel where we discuss these things in painful, painful detail.

And for a little bit more, we got some subscriber benefits. Scott, you want to say anything about that?

Scott 56:37

Yeah, now we have at the $15 a month level, at the beginning of the month, we are sending out our first round of... What did we decide they were called? Arts. They are pieces of the arts. A set of... Well, that doesn't work as well in audio. Just show it to me.

Jeffrey 56:57

Aaron is showing you the item. Let me put the microphone real close to the frame. Take a picture.

Scott 57:03

Photos are up on both the Patreon page and for... It's up on the Slack channel as well. But it is a set of groundburst nuclear weapons equations. The equations that explain the lethal radius and the single shot kill probability of a groundburst nuclear weapon. Beautifully done in artisanal hand calligraphy.

Jeffrey 57:27

And answering the question, how do you write pi in calligraphy?

Scott 57:31

Yeah, that was an important thing that came up. It's just, what is... Do we have Greek calligraphy now? Oh, and that would have been a shortcut to answering that.

Jeffrey 57:41

Yeah, so... Scott discovers this in real time. So yeah, head on over to the Patreon page and get a nice piece of art and then come play with us on the Slack channel. As always, thank you for listening.