This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Trump cancels nuclear proliferation treaty with Russia


China’s mobile DF-41 missile would be illegal under the INF treaty

Donald Trump has announced that the U.S. will leave the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which the U.S. signed with Russia in 1987 and has been called a historic arms control treaty.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty. It was a response to a growing missile standoff in Europe, where Soviet and American nuclear short range and cruise missiles were pointed at each other. The treaty ended a dangerous standoff.

Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump have accused the Russians of violating the treaty in the last decade with new developments of cruise missiles. According to Trump on Saturday:

Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years and I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out.

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 honored the agreement but Russia has not unfortunately honored the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.

…

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.

Russia has accused the U.S. of also violating the agreement – pointing, for example, to unmanned drones that can serve the same functions as cruise missiles. This may well be a valid argument, but what it shows is that, after 30 years, the treaty is out of date.

Russian senior lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev said on Sunday said that Trump’s announcement means that “Mankind is facing full chaos in the nuclear weapons sphere.”

Leonid Slutsky, who leads the Foreign Affairs Committee, said that Trump is placing “a huge mine under the whole disarmament process on the planet.”

European allies will bear the real risk, according to Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, a think tank: “This removes all constraints on the production and fielding of Russia’s illegal missile, thereby increasing the threat to our allies in range of the missiles, leaves the United States holding the bag for the treaty’s demise, and creates another source of division between us.”

Mikhail Gorbachev said that the announcement “is not the work of a great mind.” He added:

Do they really not understand in Washington what this can lead to? [The decision] will undermine all the efforts that were made by the leaders of the USSR and the United States themselves to achieve nuclear disarmament.

[A]ll agreements aimed at nuclear disarmament and the limitation of nuclear weapons must be preserved for the sake of life on Earth.

Russia Today and Time and CNBC and AP

China warns that the decision will ’cause many negative effects’

Since the announcement, it has become increasingly clear that the real target of Trump’s announcement is China. According to a CIA analysis in 1983:

China’s position on arms control is dictated by its interests in: 1) maintaining a free hand to expand its nuclear deterrent capabilities; 2) exercising some influence over US-USSR strategic arms talks that could adversely affect Chinese security; and 3) enhancing China’s status and influence in the Third World. The Chinese also have sought to promote their commercial interests through the sale of conventional arms.

China has indeed taken advantage of its refusal to join any arms control agreement. China has developed one nuclear ballistic weapons system after another with no purpose except to attack American cities, American bases, and American aircraft carriers. It really does not make sense that an aggressive, imperial, militaristic China should have no restrictions developing nuclear missiles when other countries are bound by arms control treaties.

In particular, China has had a free hand developing and deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles of its own, including missiles designed to take out U.S. aircraft carriers patrolling the waters of the Western Pacific. China is estimated to have 2,000 ballistic and cruise missiles in its inventory, almost all of which would be in violation of this treaty.

According to Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo:

China has not signed the agreement and has been producing mid-range missiles and so-called carrier killers to asymmetrically increase the costs of an American-led naval containment strategy. The US is likely withdrawing to send a message to Beijing that the US can and will produce mid-range nuclear weapons that can erode away China’s existing asymmetric advantage.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the following:

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is an important treaty on arms control and disarmament signed by the United States and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. It has played an important role in easing the international relations, moving forward the nuclear disarmament process and safeguarding global strategic balance and stability. It is still highly relevant today. Unilaterally withdrawing from the treaty will cause many negative effects.

What needs to be stressed is that making an issue out of China on withdrawing from the treaty is totally wrong. We hope that the relevant country can cherish the hard-won outcomes achieved over the years, prudently and properly handle the issues related to the treaty through dialogue and consultation and think twice before withdrawing from the treaty.

So China wants the U.S. and Russia to be bound by the treaty, while China is not. No surprise there. However, when Hua talks about causing “many negative effects,” we might ask, What is she referring to?

Whenever I talk about various policies – everything from tariffs and trade to canceling a North Korea meeting, which completely baffles the mainstream media – I always come back to the same point. Trump is aware of the Generational Dynamics analysis and predictions that China is preparing for full-scale war with the United States.

So as I always point out, Trump’s policies, whether trade or arms control, have the objective of trying to end China’s plans for a preemptive attack on the United States. And as I always point out, a war with China is 100 percent certain, but I am not going to criticize Trump for trying to prevent a world war.

But all of these policies are dual-edged. Yes, these policies might cause the Chinese to postpone their plans, but it might also cause them to bring these plans forward. Those might be the “negative side effects” that China’s Foreign Ministry is talking about.

Generational crisis wars are not based on rationality and reason. They are based on desperation and panic. China has numerous domestic problems – increasing numbers of “mass incidents,” a highly-imbalanced economy being centrally but poorly managed, numerous bubbles and financial distortions – and a restive population that, along with Winnie the Pooh, strikes terror in the hearts of the Communist central committee. These are more than enough to cause desperation and anxiety, and could trigger a military panic at any time. CIA (1-Sep-1983) and Bloomberg and Russia Today and China’s Foreign Ministry

Related Articles:

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Russia, Soviet Union, USSR, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, INF, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Konstantin Kosachev, Leonid Slutsky, Kingston Reif, Stephen Nagy
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