US treaty pullout raises concerns over nuclear accords

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - On Aug. 2 following a months-long war of words between Moscow and Washington, the U.S. formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The fate of the last "pillar", the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START Treaty), is now in question as the U.S. links it to the INF Treaty, underscoring a point made by some observers that past nuclear accords are no longer relevant based on current realities.

In the last three decades of the Cold War following the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were one step away from a full-scale nuclear war, the two countries signed a number of arms control agreements marking the transition to a safer and more secure world.

The first was a treaty banning nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water, commonly known as the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT).

The pact was signed in 1963 in Moscow between the U.S.S.R., U.S. and U.K., with the aim of easing tensions and addressing public concerns about environmental damage from nuclear tests and their unpredictable consequences.

Since then, 123 more countries joined the agreement, with 10 other states signing but not ratifying it.

In 1968, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was signed in New York by the USSR, U.S. and 41 other countries.

The text of the document was drafted by the UN’s Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament in Geneva.

Apart from obvious goals such as preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technologies, the pact sought to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament.

Both the PTBT and NPT have remained in effect until the present day, but many states have raised claims about violations and say they need to be updated.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), signed between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in 1972, secured the obligation of the parties to abandon the creation, testing and deployment of sea-based, air-based or space-based ABM systems and their components along with mobile land-based ABM systems as well as not to create any new anti-ballistic missile systems on their territory.

Under the treaty, each party could have no more than two anti-ballistic missile systems of 100 anti-ballistic missiles -- one to protect the capital and the other to protect an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launch area.

In October 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush announced Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty as it no longer met U.S. interests.

On Dec. 8, 1987 after about 10 years of negotiations, then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in Washington, bringing to an end the threat of a nuclear war in Europe.

Under the treaty, both sides agreed to destroy intermediate- and short-range missiles in a span of four years, which was carried out successfully.

The START I Treaty signed in 1991 and New START treaty signed in 2010 obliged Moscow and Washington to decrease their nuclear arsenals, resulting in tremendous reductions of strategic nuclear weapons on both sides.

Commenting the U.S. withdrawal from the arms control treaties, Alexey Leonkov, editor-in-chief of Home Arsenal, a military magazine, told Anadolu Agency that the agreements no longer reflected the current reality and that the U.S. claims could not therefore be called "groundless".

All the same, the treaties had a significant role in arms control and could be updated, Leonkov said.

"There was another way to deal with the problems that surfaced. New agreements could have been reached without breaking current treaties that would reflect the interests of all countries. But this is a very complicated process, of course," he said.

Leonkov underlined that the danger of withdrawal was related to the new U.S. military doctrine under which the country could carry out a preventive strike and use low-yield nuclear warheads.

"The U.S. reserves the right to define who threatens its interests and who does not and to hit the 'menacing' states. Following this logic, many states -- not Russia or China, smaller ones -- can run into danger," he said.

Leonkov called on all nuclear states to voice concern over the recent developments. If these states signed a new agreement, taking into account all of their interests, the world would become safer, he said.

Pavel Felgengauer, an independent military analyst, praised the pacts for their positive role in easing tensions and leading to the end of the Cold War.

At the same time, he agreed that the documents did not reflect post-Soviet realities.

"It was difficult to expect that these treaties would survive new circumstances. The pacts did not have real defenders. Therefore, they were doomed," he said, adding that other treaties could be terminated in the near future.

"The INF Treaty’s termination marks a new era," he added.