US, Russia back off nuclear treaty. Is arms control coming to an end?

When the United States informed Russia Saturday that it was formally suspending a landmark nuclear arms control treaty that had been a centerpiece of European security for three decades, it was more than just the demise of a cold war-era accord.

The US pullout from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 was also a sign of the waning interest of the world’s two nuclear superpowers in arms-control agreements more broadly.

The Russia of Vladimir Putin had done little in recent years to address US concerns, first aired by the Obama administration, over its deployment of a new ground-launched cruise missile that the US said left it in noncompliance with