When Donald Trump gives his State of the Union address today at 9PM EST (4PM Hawaii), he will focus on his wall. Maybe totally ignored will be his decision to pull the U.S. out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.
The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989, and the Cold War officially ended on 3 December 1989 when Gorbachev and George Bush said so in a press conference at their Malta Conference.
The world in general might not today appreciate the momentousness of this event. From the frightening prospects of first strike...response...mutually assured destruction and nuclear winter, the only planetary fear of consequence now is global warming.
Has Donald Trump committed his greatest blunder yet? Yes, and no. He says the U.S. is withdrawing because Russia refuses to destroy their cache of missiles. NATO allies agree with him. Now, the U.S. will be begin to rebuild a stockpile of nuclear arms. Escalation will no doubt return.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pomeo said:
Russia has jeopardized the United States’ security interests, and we can no longer be restricted by the treaty while Russia shamelessly violates it.
To quote from Quartz:
The only winners of this withdrawal will be nuclear weapons’ manufacturers, said several members of Congress in a new bid to limit a new arms race. “Of course the Russians have been cheating on the INF treaty for years; the question is how we punish them for cheating,” said Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democratic member of Congress.
Putin has been cheating, and our only response is to bring back the prospects of nuclear winter. Surely, there has got to be a better way.
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