Radio Free Europe:
WASHINGTON — Russia risks provoking “military and economic countermeasures” if it continues to stonewall over a U.S. accusation that it violated a bedrock of nuclear arms control, the United States’ lead arms-control negotiator says.
The comments by Rose Gottemoeller, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, highlight the seriousness that the U.S. administration has attached to the alleged violations of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Last year Washington formally accused Moscow of being “in violation of its obligations.”
Gottemoeller told RFE/RL in an interview that Russia had been engaged in a “fishing expedition” to learn “what precisely we know and how we obtained that information” instead of trying to resolve the dispute.
“We don’t make determinations on arms-control violations lightly,” Gottemoeller said. “So I want to make clear that this violation is not a technicality or a mistake as some have suggested. We are talking about a missile that has been flight-tested as a ground-launched cruise-missile system to these ranges that are banned under this treaty.”
Russia has denied the accusation, and in turn said Washington was at fault for missile-defense projects in Eastern Europe.
The INF treaty, the first to outlaw an entire category of already-deployed weaponry and allow for physical on-site inspections, is considered by many historians as a pivotal event in European security and arguably the life of the Soviet Union.
Its fraying comes with relations between Russia and the West at post-Cold War lows, marked by tensions over Moscow’s forcible annexation of Crimea and other actions in Ukraine and U.S. concern at apparent efforts by Russia to strengthen its foothold in Syria. Russia has also raised the profile of its military activities in and around Europe, while the United States has announced the deployment of advanced fighter jets and heavy weaponry to Central and Eastern Europe.
No Will To Confront Moscow?
Like many agreements, the INF treaty spells out a dispute-resolution procedure, called the Special Verification Commission (SVC).
But since Washington first formally leveled its accusations, there has been no meeting of the commission; the last time it convened was October 2003. More perplexing, or even worrisome in the eyes of many experts, some with long government experience, is that there has been no effort to convene it.
“The United States isn’t making a huge issue about it because it doesn’t know what to do about it,” says James Acton, a physicist and head of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The willingness to go toe to toe with the Russians seems like something the White House doesn’t want to do,” says Thomas Karako, a former staff member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Russians don’t think we’re serious. They think they’re going to get away with it.”…
