ANALYSIS - Trump Issues New START Ultimatums Before Election To Look Tough On Russia, Shift Blame

ANALYSIS - Trump Issues New START Ultimatums Before Election to Look Tough on Russia, Shift Blame

The Trump administration intends to use its New START ultimatums to Russia as an election card to highlight its toughness on a key strategic rival and blame the other side if the last arms control treaty finally collapses, experts told Sputnik

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd September, 2020) The Trump administration intends to use its New START ultimatums to Russia as an election card to highlight its toughness on a key strategic rival and blame the other side if the last arms control treaty finally collapses, experts told Sputnik.

In a weekend interview with Russia's Kommersant newspaper, US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea said that unless Washington and Moscow struck a presidential memorandum on arms by February, the treaty would not be extended. The proposed document should also contain a clause on China joining a future long-term treaty. The official urged Russia to accept the offer before the November election, otherwise the "admission fee" will rise if President Donald Trump is reelected.

In response, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that an agreement is possible only if the US abandons ultimatums.

Experts are unanimous that the US proposals, which came just months before the treaty's expiry, were timed specifically to the November election.

"Obviously, Trump is after an agreement with Russia that he could promote in his presidential campaign to compensate for his meager foreign policy achievements. Also appearing tough with Russia would alleviate any criticism for complacency with Moscow," Marc Finaud, the head of arms proliferation at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, told Sputnik.

Billingslea's approach, however, "looks very much like an ultimatum or a form of blackmailing," which is "certainly not the best way to convince Russia," Finaud added.

On the other hand, Trump may have knowingly put forward the unworkable offer to Russia to later blame the latter for the treaty's collapse.

"The offer is one that Billingslea knows is highly unlikely to be accepted to Moscow. It allows Trump to claim in election/debates that he had made an offer while being sure that Russia won't accept it. And it seeks to raise the issue of China which is a favorite campaign theme--to try and make Trump look tough on China. Most voters are unlikely to delve into the rest of the details," Miles Pomper, a senior fellow at the Washington DC office of the Middlebury Institute's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told Sputnik.

Dr. Gotz Neuneck, senior research fellow at the University of Hamburg's Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, agrees that the Trump administration would use the situation as an excuse to "argue that the ball is in the Russian court."

IS TREATY POSSIBLE AFTER ELECTION?

The US decision to go public with its ultimatums makes it ever more difficult for the sides to compromise, Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California's Monterey, told Sputnik.

"Russia otherwise has little to lose by waiting. If Joe Biden takes office in January, I imagine that the US will assume a completely different position. There will still be time to extend the treaty if both sides are willing to act quickly. But the risk that Trump will stay in office could complicate that calculation. All of this is based on an assessment that Russia is in much more need of New START than the United States is. I think that's a mistake," Pollack said.

Pomper of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies similarly doubted that the US-proposed memorandum would be approved.

"At a minimum, Moscow will not accept these terms before the US presidential election, and I am highly doubtful they will do so even if Trump wins reelection," he said.

As for the consequences of the New START collapse, it will "fuel an arms race that has already been given a spark by the decline of the INF treaty and "mean the effective end of nuclear arms control," Pomper concluded.