(TIME) President Donald Trump revealed Saturday the United States intends to withdraw from a 31-year-old nuclear weapons agreement with Russia, delivering a severe blow to the arms control regime that helped preserve peace since the Cold War.
“We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” Trump told reporters after a rally in Elko, Nevada, without indicating what the next steps might be.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, first signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987, was the first and only nuclear arms control agreement that ever eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. […]
“I don’t think the U.S. will try to ask anyone to deploy any INF systems on land – that would be a non-starter,” said Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project. “Russia will say that it was U.S. intent from the very beginning to pull out of the treaty and this is why it accused Russia of non-compliance … So, nothing good is coming out of this.” […]
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