Trump says US is ending decades-old nuclear arms treaty with Russia

[Julian Englis]

Source: CNN

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the US is pulling out of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, a decades-old agreement that has drawn the ire of the President.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years," Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One to leave Nevada following a campaign rally.

Trump casts Democrats as 'angry, ruthless, unhinged mob' in Nevada ahead of midterm elections.

"And I don't know why President Obama didn't negotiate or pull out. And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we're not allowed to," he said. "We're the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we've honored the agreement.
"But Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So we're going to terminate the agreement. We're gonna pull out," he said of the agreement, which was signed in December 1987 by former President Ronald Reagan and former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachecv.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/20/politics/donald-trump-us-arms-agreement-russia/index.html

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This is not good.

[hlthe2b]

1. Damn him (to hell, if there is one).

I'm so sick of being sickened by every GD thing he does.

[vlyons]

2. is that true?

Has Russia cheated on the agreement? Trump is such a liar, but Russia can't be trusted either. What are the facts about this?

[marylandblue]

4. Yes, according to the NATO Secretary General

From the article:

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Tuesday that NATO remained "concerned about Russia's lack of respect for its international commitments, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty."
"After years of denials, Russia recently acknowledged the existence of a new missile system, called 9M729. Russia has not provided any credible answers on this new missile. All Allies agree that the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the Treaty," he added.

[albacore]

5. Apparently, they have been in violation...

... but trump's action has the effect of removing all restrictions on Russian Intermediate Range weapons.
Reading the report is worth a quick spin-thru....

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R43832.pdf

[INdemo]

3. Hitler ended all treaties that Germany had following WWI

Is there no end to Trumps stupidity.

[elmac]

6. still doing putins bidding

with the help of the GOP, Government Of Putin.

[Cryptoad]

7. Does Congress have a say in this,,,,,,,,,

[ancianita]

8. Good question.

[PSPS]

11. What congress?

[LiberalFighter]

9. Under normal circumstances this would be the red line

that would require impeachment and conviction.

[djacq]

10. A Treaty signed by RONALD REAGAN!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty?wprov=sfti1

The Orange Clown undid what the Republicans saint started.

[Hekate]

12. Say what? Another new horror. He's going to get us all killed. nt

[groundloop]

14. No worries, Tiny will make out like a bandit one way or another.

[DBoon]

29. Russia won't nuke us ....

Trump will surrender first.

[SergeStorms]

33. He's already surrendered.

He's surrendered the sovereignty of the United States to Putin for his assistance in getting him elected . We're now "Russia West".

[TomCADem]

13. Doesn't Ending Treaty Benefit Russia More Than Us So They Can Target Europe?

It is not like our European allies were looking to stockpile intermediate range missiles to aim at Russia. This makes no sense unless we are trying to improve Putin's leverage over Western Europe...oh...

[JI7]

15. yes

[renegade000]

23. I don't think Europe so much as China...

China scares Putin much more. He can't internet troll them into submission. They have a ten-fold manpower advantage and are rapidly modernizing. Plus, China lost a bunch of territory in the late-1800s to Russia, so in Putin's "restore the glory days" mindset, he fears they will attempt to annex historically lost territory.

[jpak]

16. Ho Hum

[kaotikross]

17. He doesn't really care what Russia does..

But he does care about appearing "tough on Russia" right before mid terms.

[OAITW r.2.0]

26. How does that make him "tough on Russia"?

It makes him look like a servant to a guy that owns him.

[Snellius]

18. Bolton is Dr. Strangelove but stranger.

[kimbutgar]

19. Maybe he's mad Putin win't rig the election in favor of repukes this time.

[world wide wally]

20. All the nukes we develop are for Putin anyway

[jmowreader]

21. This is better for the Russians than it is for us

There were only two parties to the INF treaty, us and the Soviets. With us out of it, the Russians now have no reason to not build and deploy all the IRBMs they want. OTOH, we may not even have the engineering drawings for a Pershing II or ground-launched cruise missile; we definitely don't have the tooling.

[EX500rider]

25. But we do have the W80 nuclear warhead which mates up with the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile.

Has the "dial-a-yield" feature, 5 to 150kt. While currently only used by the Navy, the USAF is a former operator.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

31. Yep

And modifying it for ground launch wouldn't be difficult. We already put them in subs and on surface ships. Besides, doing R&D was not barred by the INF treaty. Russia has already voiced their opposition to the treaty about a decade ago. I wouldn't be surprised if we already had a plan in place in case the Treaty go trashed.

[Rocky888]

22. Military contractors wants to make more weapons.

Sell more to Russia, Saudi Arabia and Donald trump ‘s new America to stuff $billions of our tax money in their pockets to launder back to gop in donations.

[Calista241]

24. i'll worry about this when Congress starts allocating money for intermediate ranged nuclear missile

development.

[BobTheSubgenius]

27. The question is...

...why does Putin want this?

[soryang]

28. Trump: "So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military."

“We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and do weapons and we’re not allowed to. We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honoured the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.”

Asked to clarify, the president said: “Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military.”

Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said: “This is a colossal mistake. Russia gets to violate the treaty and Trump takes the blame.

“I doubt very much that the US will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/20/trump-us-nuclear-arms-treaty-russia

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

30. WTF is wrong with this guy?

Is his mission to destroy every bit of progress made by the human race over the last century? I know his backers want to roll back the clock until just before the last state ratified the Constitution so they can remake the country in their own image, but I think Trump's acting out of a whole different mindset. To him, any deal not negotiated by him is by definition a horrible deal, and the people who negotiated it were stupid, and he's the only person alive who knows how to run the world.

And the Repugs in Congress let him get away with it. No, they don't just roll over -- they fully support his actions.

Vote like your life depends on it, because it does. It's not Democrats v. Republicans this time -- it's Democracy v. Fascism.

[moondust]

32. Is this a green light for Pooty?

If Russia hasn't honored the agreement then they sure aren't going to be coaxed back into compliance if the U.S. has tossed the whole thing out.


What the world needs now...is a new nuclear arms race?