US, Russia throw out Cold War nuclear truce
The US just announced it’s backing out of a Cold War deal that was meant to last forever, and now Russia is too.
On Friday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made official what the Trump Administration has been hinting at for months: the US is done with the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).
The treaty was signed at the end of the Cold War, and has pushed both countries to destroy thousands of nukes over the years, as they came into compliance with its ban on land-based short- and medium- range ballistic and cruise missiles.
Last December, Pompeo gave Russia a 60-day ultimatum to start complying with the treaty, and now that time is up.
“Russia has refused to take any steps to return real and verifiable compliance over these 60 days,” Pompeo said Friday. “When an agreement is so brazenly disregarded and our security is so openly threatened, we must respond.”
The announcement means that in six months, the US will no longer be bound by any of the treaty’s rules.
After the US announced the back-out on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin took to Russian TV on Saturday and said since the US is backing out, Russia will do so too.
“The American partners have declared that they suspend their participation in the deal, we suspend it as well,” he said.
US President Richard Nixon and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev spent years drafting the plan, which aimed to eliminate all land-based missiles that travel anywhere from 500 kilometres to over 5 000 kilometres.—Business Insider.
