The Washington Post:
The Trump administration is trying to fix a badly broken nuclear-arms-control treaty with Russia, which has been violating the agreement for years. And part of the U.S. plan to counter Russia’s building of treaty-violating missiles is to develop some treaty-violating missiles of its own.
The U.S. government has known since 2012 that Russia was in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Signed by President Ronald Reagan, the bilateral U.S.-Russian pact bars construction, testing or deployment of missiles or delivery systems with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. For years, Republicans in Congress pressed the Obama administration to confront the Russians.
Last November, Obama administration officials met with their Russian counterparts to demand that they admit to building a new cruise missile in violation of the treaty, but the Russian side denied it. In February, U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russia took another step forward and actually deployed the missile, which could threaten large parts of Europe.
