In uncertain post-INF world, Russia may opt for talks over arms

During the long decades of the old cold war, the USSR tried assiduously to create an appearance of equality with its main global rival, the United States.

Soviet leaders succeeded in only one single – but very durable – respect before their country’s superpower status folded: creating parity in world-destroying nuclear weapons. That forced US leaders to negotiate arms control deals aimed at managing the danger on an equal footing with their Soviet counterparts – a system that helped to keep the atomic peace in the three decades since the USSR ceased to exist.

With President Trump’s notice of withdrawal from the 1987 treaty abolishing intermediate-range ground-based nuclear missiles, known as INF, everyone agrees that paradigm is breaking down. Over the weekend,

‘No restraints in place whatsoever’A different nuclear context