December 8 - INF Treaty

This Day in History: 8 December 2019

 

8 December 1987

 

32 years ago, today, the United States President, Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, signed a treaty eliminating medium range nuclear missiles. This was called the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, more commonly known as the INF Treaty. This was decided at the Washington Summit of 1987 between the two presidents, when Gorbachev decided that his country's best interests lay in the agreements on disarmament, reducing spending on weapons and better relations with the West. This marked the first US and Soviet summit to outcome in the signing of a formal treaty, instead of only a slight improvement in relations, like the two previous summits, the Geneva Summit (1985) and the Reykjavik Summit (1986), achieved. The treaty said that both countries would abolish all land-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.

 

The treaty resulted in the dismantling of 2,619 missiles, and about two-thirds of the missiles affected were of the Soviets, and the rest belonged to the Americans. In order to ensure this permanent elimination of the missiles, each country, for 13 years, was given the right to inspect each other's operating bases and support facilities, at which weapons fitting into the INF category might be produced.

 

However, on 1 February 2019, the US President, Donald Trump, announced he was suspending participation in the treaty, in reaction to the development of a prohibited missile by Russia. This was countered by Russian President, Vladimir Putin, by stating that US antiballistic missile defence systems in Europe also caused a breach in the treaty. The US then formally withdrew from the treaty on 2 August 2019, over 4 months ago. With no clear successor to the treaty, the world may be currently facing a new nuclear arms race, just like that of the Cold War…

 

Want to find out more on this seemingly outdated treaty that was partially responsible for the end of the Cold War? Visithttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty for more details.