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The crumbling architecture of arms control

Given US and Russian presidential capacity for springing surprises, we risk losing the degree of safety we gained with the end of the Cold War and have enjoyed since then.

By Dan Smith
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Donald Trump meets Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Finland, July, 2018. Lehtikuva/Heikki Saukkomaa/Press Association. All rights reserved.

At a political rally on Saturday 20 October President Trump announced that the US will withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987. This confirms what has steadily unfolded over the last couple of years: the architecture of US-Russian nuclear arms control is crumbling.

Building blocks of arms control

As the Cold War ended, four new building blocks of east-west arms control were laid on top of foundations set by the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972:

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0