Taking our nukes and going home

I'm a bit baffled at the tactics in play here.

"For far too long, Russia has violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with impunity, covertly developing and fielding a prohibited missile system that poses a direct threat to our allies and troops abroad. Tomorrow, the United States will suspend its obligations under the INF Treaty and begin the process of withdrawing from the INF Treaty, which will be completed in 6 months unless Russia comes back into compliance by destroying all of its violating missiles, launchers, and associated equipment."

There's no question that the Russian Federation has been playing fast-and-loose; the 9M729 GLCM violates the 1987 INF Treaty's definition of banned weapons; "...all land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers..."

My understanding is that one thing that worries the Russians is China, which isn't bound by the INF and has some intermediate-range missiles that the Russians would like to counter. The USN has similar concerns about the tricksy Chinese, too, and may have been pushing for this. Our old pal Bolton hates arms control treaties - ALL arms control treaties - with a hate as huge as his mustache.

So there's no shortage of players who wanted this to happen.

But, as Kaplan points out, there's a huge difference between "...Bolton go(ing) to Moscow, formally declare the Russians in breach of the treaty, and give them a certain span of time to rectify matters, warning of consequences if they don’t." and reneging on the treaty ourselves.

For one thing, how does this "punish" the Russians? I mean, unless it means that the US is going to begin a GLCM arms race in Europe, which, I'm sure, will thrill the living shit out of the EU.

If China's the US's problem, as Kaplan points out:

"...we have plenty of other weapons, nuclear and conventional, that would deter a sensible Chinese leader from aggression against vital U.S. interests. (If the Chinese leader isn’t sensible, then all principles of deterrence are null and void anyway.)"

The other point is that this treaty bans LAND-based intermediate range missiles. Ships and aircraft? Not limited.

And the biggest thing about this is that it gives away the game to the Kremlin, largely because of Trump's preceding treaty fucktardry. The guy who spiked the Iran deal, the Paris accords, NAFTA can't realistically whine about other people breaking treaties.

This simply give the Russians a free hand to do what they were doing sneakily anyway.

That doesn't sound much like the Art of a Very Smart Deal to me.

INF Treaty

Back 31 years ago Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).   It actually predates Reagan as preliminary talks began under Jimmy Carter before Reagan was elected.  Although most of the credit goes to European leaders.  And I surmise they got their inspiration from the many protests throughout Europe against deployments of the USAF BGM-109G cruise missile, a land-based nuclear-tipped Tomahawk variant.   Even Iron Maggy Thatcher and Helmut Schmidt (an Eastern Front AAA gunner) had a hand in bringing Reagan and Gorbachev together.  They must have gotten tired of the many protests at Molesworth and Wueschheim.  INF got rid of the 109G and the Pershing IRBMs along with Soviet peers such as the RSD-10 Pioneer (aka SS-20) and several others.

Our Contract-Breaker-in-Chief, Donny, has decided to abandon our obligations to that treaty:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45930206.  Smells like the 'war horny' walrus in the White House, John Bolton is working the puppet strings from behind a curtain.  Donny blames the Russians.  Apparently for developing the Novator 9M729 aka the SSC-8 in violation of the treaty.  The 9M729 was reportedly deployed in early 2017.  It is not clear to me where it is deployed, but it has mobility. And with GLONASS, their GPS, there would be no need for pre-surveyed launch sites.

About a year before we blamed the Russians for violating INF, they blamed the US for violating the treaty.  Their claim is that ground based Aegis-Ashore system, deployed near their borders in Poland, Romania and soon in Japan, although primarily for ballistic missile defense can also launch cruise missiles.  Possibly true as Aegis-Ashore uses the same type Vertical Launching System (VLS) used aboard warships that can launch a Tomahawk or an SM-3 or even an ASROC.  Would there have to be major mods done in each VLS cell or tube to shift from a missile defense role to an offensive cruise missile?   Seems to me they could just load the cells with standard sized canisters with different internal payloads to suit the mission, but I'm no guru.   However Aegis-Ashore is NOT mobile like the 9M729, and would remain a fixed target.

By the way, this withdrawal from a nuclear treaty by the US is NOT a precedent.   Bush Junior did the same to the ABM treaty in 2002.  And Donny is infamous for breaking deals in order to try for a better advantage.  My hope is that he will do the same thing here he did with NAFTA, that is: break the agreement for political reasons then sign a new one that is damn near identical but with a new name and call it a victory.  He has a history of this, it is all about the PR.