The United States made a mistake rejecting Moscow's offer to inspect the new Russian missile it suspects of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, as the inspection could become a step toward salvaging the agreement, experts told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st January, 2019) The United States made a mistake rejecting Moscow's offer to inspect the new Russian missile it suspects of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, as the inspection could become a step toward salvaging the agreement, experts told Sputnik.Last week, Russian and US officials met in Geneva to discuss their differences on the treaty, but did not make much progress. Russia proposed to the United States to examine the 9M729 missile, which Washington is suspicious of, at an expert level. However, Washington was disinclined to look at the proposal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the meeting.
In December, Washington said that it would leave the treaty unless Russia returned to compliance with it within 60 days. Russia has rejected accusations of breaching the agreement. Lavrov said last week that Russia had tested the 9M729 missile within the range allowed under the treaty and had not received any proof of alleged violations from the United States.
The inspection could have served as the first step toward finding a solution and was, therefore, a "missed opportunity" for the United States, Miles Pomper, a senior fellow in the Washington DC office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told Sputnik.
"While the inspections Moscow proposed would have been insufficient to address the issue, the United States missed the opportunity to press for further measures that might have," Pomper said.
Doctor M. V. Ramana, the Simons chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, believes that the US decision to reject the Russian offer is a mistake, even though a simple external inspection might be insufficient for determining whether the 9M729 missile was compliant with the treaty.
"Information about its flight tests and so on might be required to ensure what its range is. However, an external inspection could be the first step. That option has, unfortunately, been rejected," Ramana told Sputnik.
Matthew Bunn, Professor of Practice at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy school of Government, believes, similarly, that the United States "is making a mistake in rejecting the Russian offer � but that offer can only be a first step."
"My view is that an inspection detailed enough to assess the system's range would confirm that the missile is prohibited. Similarly, if Russian inspectors examined the Aegis Ashore missile defense launchers that Russia has charged violate the INF treaty, that would confirm that those launchers are very similar to the sea-based version of Aegis, which is a launcher that fires cruise missiles routinely whose range would be prohibited if they were land-based," Bunn told Sputnik.
Russia has, in fact, repeatedly complained that the US Aegis Ashore systems in Europe violate the treaty because they are equipped with launchers capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at intermediate ranges. According to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, Moscow is willing to allow the United States to inspect 9M729, but it wants its concerns over Aegis Аshore assuaged in return.
At the moment, the United States appears willing to agree to inspections only if Russia admits to violating the treaty and agrees to eliminate all offending missiles, while Moscow "does not admit to the violation, does not agree to eliminate the system, and has also said that US-proposed procedures are unnecessarily intrusive in any event," according to Dr. Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute.
The solution to the standoff should include "reciprocal inspections" and expert negotiations on how to address the existing concerns, Sokov added.
"The latter will not be easy or simple, will take time, but as long as there is political will, nothing is impossible. What I do not see is political will," the expert said.
Should the United States leave the treaty, there likely to be a loud political argument in the short term, while technical changes may take time to manifest, the expert added. The United States might start work "on a new intermediate-range system that will be either conventional or, at most, dual-capable and explore deployment vis-a-vis China," according to Sokov.
"Europe is a pretty secondary deployment region, especially given the unavoidably intense debate there about new US missiles. We will see the debate, but probably not deployment any time soon. That is, practical consequences will be slow to emerge; political consequences will be instant and loud," the expert said.
Bunn believes that Russia should not wait for the United States to come up with a solution but, instead, propose a broader deal on nuclear arms that would involve an extension to New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) and modification to the existing documents to address the concerns of both sides.
Such an offer from Russia could give US President Donald Trump an opportunity to do something similar to what he did with trade deals, renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
"This would be similar to his [Trump's] approach in attacking the NAFTA trade agreement as a terrible deal, then making some very modest changes and calling it a new agreement that was wonderful. In short, it's time for a bold Russian proposal that might be attractive enough to be hard for President Trump to say 'no' to," Bunn said.
Dr. Gotz Neuneck, a professor of physics and deputy director of the Institute of Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, noted that the issue could have been "solved by reciprocal good will" despite the gravity of the accusations voiced.
"The Trump Administration took a premature and wrong decision without investing in diplomacy seriously to solve the INF dispute," Neuneck told Sputnik.
As the US-set deadline looms, politicians from across the world are urging Russia and the United States to resolve their argument. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has pointed to the importance of the treaty and expressed hope that it would be preserved. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas stressed last week, after a meeting with Lavrov, that the treaty was "the backbone of European security." The Russian foreign minister said at the same press conference that Russia remained ready for dialogue with the United States.
