Today, Explained - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Kill the Treaty

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

The Trump administration announced it’s throwing out a decades-old arms treaty with Russia. Arms control specialist Alexandra Bell explains why this news pairs well with a stiff drink. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

here's a disturbing fact a former kgb thug and a former reality tv star control over 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons i've never thought about it in those terms before. A present KGB thug. Sorry. And maybe more disturbing still, the reality TV star, our president, just said he plans to rip up a big agreement that limits all those weapons. John Bolton arrived in Moscow as the U.S. announced plans to withdraw from a historic nuclear treaty. This meeting has provoked a very strong reaction in Russia. The deputy foreign minister said that Russia is intended to mobilize the international community in order to preserve the INF Treaty.

I feel like I need a scotch. Alex Bell is the senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Before that, she worked on arms control at the State Department. She spends most of her waking hours thinking about arms agreements, and she was still surprised by this news. And worried for the state of strategic stability in Europe and around the world. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is really the foundation for the modern arms control regime that's pulled back just these excessive arsenals that the U.S. and the former

Soviet Union built up. And to abandon it on the sidelines of a political rally really was among the more alarming things I've seen him do. 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. It's unclear to me that we even told our allies that this announcement by the president would be happening.

And there's certainly no way that every capital in Europe, every member of NATO, knew that that was going to happen. After President Trump made this announcement on Saturday, we had German's foreign ministry responding and saying that this treaty affects some of the core interests of European allies, and Germany would have liked to have been consulted if the U.S. is going to withdraw. I'm hard-pressed to even think of a time that the president has brought up

the INF Treaty before he so sort of casually tossed it away. President Trump's also called for greatly strengthening U.S. nuclear weapons. They should have been done years ago until people come to their senses. We have more money than anybody else by far. We'll build it up. So I guess, welcome to the nuclear arms race of the 21st century. So why? Why is President Trump doing this? The president at this point really seems to be under the influence of Ambassador Bolton, who has made no effort to hide his disdain for arms control throughout the course of his career.

He's wanted to get out of this treaty forever. He wrote an op-ed in 2011 in the Wall Street Journal, complete with a nice little sexist quip at the beginning of it, you know, advocating for the withdrawal of this treaty that had nothing to do with a Russian violation of it. If this is just Ambassador Bolton whispering in Trump's ear, what's motivating him? Just this idea that no one should restrict American military might? It's exactly that. Ambassador Bolton feels like the U.S. should be able to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, build whatever it wants, threaten whoever they want to threaten. He doesn't see the purpose in alliances. He thinks that countries around the world will bend to our

will. And I think that's a very serious gamble to make as we sort of enter a world in which we aren't, in fact, the only country with money and influence to throw around. What exactly is this treaty, the INF? What exactly does it do? Ah. So the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is a treaty between the U.S. and Russia, also tends to be forgotten.

Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are also parties to the treaty. Now, this treaty dates back to 1987, and it prohibits Russia and the U.S. from having, producing, or testing ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles. It's not necessarily just nuclear missiles. It's any missile that falls in this range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Unfortunately, in 2014, the U.S. publicly declared that Russia was in violation of the treaty. The president sent a letter Monday to Russian President Vladimir Putin,

calling on Russia to observe the terms of the treaty. The administration believes that Russia has tested ground-launched missiles, a clear violation of a treaty nearly 30 years old. The details at the time were slim for various reasons related to the intelligence surrounding the violation. But as we know now, the Russians have produced, flight tested, and deployed a missile called the 9M729. Sounds scary. They all have names like that. Actually, I believe NATO uses the designator, the screwdriver, because Russia is screwing NATO with this missile. Wait, wait.

NATO comes up with, like, pet names for Russian bombs? Someone has a missile called Satan. And, like, French have really fantastic names for their missiles, like Le Terrible and stuff like that. It's a sort of strange masculine culture that sort of imbues this whole space. Figures. So the Russians decided to produce this missile.

We caught them. So yes, it is reasonable to be angry at Russia over this violation. It is reasonable to take appropriate counter-measures. It is reasonable to tell them our patience is not unlimited and that we need to go to the table. But we've had one formal dialogue about this in 640-some days. That's not pressing diplomatically. That's not exhausting every possible option we have to fix this treaty.

And I don't think you'll see a very receptive Congress when it comes to appropriating and authorizing the production of this class of missile that we worked so hard to get rid of. I think it's a big, big mistake to flippantly get out of this historic agreement that Reagan and Gorbachev signed. This was a big part of Reagan's legacy, and we should not get rid of it. I think it's worth considering there is sort of bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill for this particular move. As much as there's not a lot of love for Russia,

there is an understanding that Russia is the only country on this planet that poses an existential threat to the United States through its very wide and capable nuclear arsenal. And the last thing that we need to do is encourage them in any way to build up, forcing us to then build up and respond. And I think leaders on Capitol Hill see that this could be incredibly destabilizing and set off sort of a chain of events. The other treaty that seems to be on the chopping block in Ambassador Bolton's mind is the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,

which actually allows us to conduct 18 inspections a year inside Russian strategic forces facilities. We get to go and look at their stuff. And, you know, without that kind of access to Russian facilities, I think estimates from the intelligence community said it would be an additional $8 to $9 billion a year just to figure out what we get for free through the new START treaty. So the United States is potentially going to lose a bunch of money in access, but this isn't the 1960s, right? Other countries benefit by that a lot more now. Is China just sitting back with its feet up enjoying all this? Yeah.

I mean, China is a concern in this whole discussion because they are not party to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. That's a particular concern to the Russians who have to share that very large border with them. And there's a general idea because 95% or so of China's missiles are at this intermediate range, there's nothing to be done about it, that we couldn't possibly pull them into any structure to control those possible missiles, I find that sort of needlessly defeatist. There's been slow, if any, attempts to talk to China about these military and strategic issues, and we really need to be putting more effort into that,

not just assuming everything is a nail, so we just need more hammers. This is a military deal, and Trump seems to fancy himself a very gung-ho military man, though, of course, you know, he didn't serve or anything. Nor did Ambassador Bolton. So how does the actual United States military feel about this? I don't think it's a necessarily uniform idea. The parts of the military that have to think more about the European continent see this as destabilizing. On the

other hand, in the Pacific theater, there have been pushes by various people, including Admiral Harris, who's now the ambassador to South Korea, that we need these ground launch cruise missile options in the Asia theater, that the treaty constrains us too much when it comes to China. I think the response to that is actually from the mouths of our own military leaders. General Selva last year was testifying to the Senate saying, we don't need ground launch cruise missile options. We have plenty of air and sea capabilities. And I don't know the last time they've checked a map, but the Pacific theater is a lot of ocean and not a lot of land. There are not that many options for basing such a missile, nor are there countries that are going out of their way to raise their hand in Asia or Europe to host this kind of

capability and become a target. So what comes next? Do Trump and Bolton notify all of our allies what's going on, what the latest is? Does Russia strike back? What happens? I'm sure our allies would like to know what's going on. The formal process to withdraw from the INF Treaty requires a notification with a justification of why you want to leave the treaty. And then it starts a six-month process. And after that six-month process, you can formally withdraw from the treaty. So that means that at any point, and I've talked to treaty lawyers about this, we could unnotify and decide to stay in the treaty after all. So there is time to fix this. But yes, people, NATO members, our allies in Asia,

will want to know what happened. And to the extent that there are countries and leaders and peoples around the world that want to see this treaty saved, they're going to have to lean on Putin and Trump to fix it. The last thing that Europe wants in particular is to see this treaty go away. Next up on today explained how to fix the treaty. First, we're all going to have to remember how huge it was to even get the thing signed. You know what I like from my podcast? Some good podcast art. Unladylike has some good podcast art. Unladylike has some good podcast art. It's a beautifully painted middle

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Unladylike, find it wherever you find your podcasts. Alex, all this feels so vintage, so throwback. Like, when I get a push notification about the United States pulling out of an arms deal with Russia, I just can't help but ask myself what year it is. So let's go back to 1987. What did it mean when this treaty was signed? It really was a groundbreaking agreement. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States kind of went full bore into the deployment of these shorter range missiles, these intermediate range missiles. They had a shorter flight time. They had unpredictable flight paths. And that

presented increased instability. There was huge public backlash in Europe. Shame on you! Shame on you! And the United States, through the nuclear freeze movement, against these deployments. Familiar faces like Daniel Ellsberg and new faces. The American people will be heard on this issue. It was making a tense situation worse. Accidental nuclear war was, you know, a readily possible scenario. And to their credit, Gorbachev and Reagan decided that, you know,

we can take the step and eliminate this class of nuclear weapons and missiles and really honestly turn the tide against the nuclear arms race that had been such a large part of the Cold War. Welcome to the White House. This ceremony and the treaty we're signing today are both excellent examples of the rewards of patience. We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim, and I'm sure you're familiar with it. Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty, no provi, trust but verify. You repeat that at every meeting.

And we were finally getting past this almost insane situation that we had been in for a generation before it. A never-ending arms race. Yeah, where you were just hoping and relying on the fact that the U.S. and Russia wouldn't somehow make a miscalculation. In fact, we had several incidents. There were a couple, exactly. Throughout the Cold War, we almost got into a nuclear war. One of the scariest anecdotes I ever heard was National Security Advisor Brzezinski, who was President Carter's National Security Advisor, got a call in the middle of the that she died peacefully in her sleep and not knowing that there was an incoming nuclear attack on Washington. We talked about it on the very first episode of this podcast. Yeah, we got so lucky. Actually, it came out of the Reykjavik Summit, which was in 1986, in this tiny little house called Hofty House.

That inside almost looks like something that would be in, you know, like a fairy tale, little gingerbread things. Oh, it's beautiful. I just Googled it. Yeah, it's gorgeous. It's like a Nordic White House. The house itself is so tiny. At one point, apparently, U.S. officials were sort of packed away in a bathroom, like sitting on the edge of the tub and trying to negotiate through these possible offers we were getting from the Russians. And at that summit, Reagan and Gorbachev actually wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons entirely. The logistics and the reality of making that happen, you know,

wasn't quite there. They couldn't quite reach it. But they were able to come out of that with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. On the Soviet side, over 1,500 deployed warheads will be removed and all ground-launched intermediate-range missiles, including the SS-20s, will be destroyed. On our side, our entire complement of Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles, with some 400 deployed warheads, will all be destroyed. But the importance of this treaty transcends numbers.

That momentum led to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, and that drew down deployed strategic missiles around the world from about 12,000 down to 6,000. I mean, the idea that we had 12,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons ready to go at any time, really alarming. Which could destroy the entire planet how many times over? Oh, many times over. Yeah. I mean, there are studies that a small nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would set off

a chain of events leading to a nuclear winter, famine. It doesn't take that money to really disrupt the system. Hence why there has been this sort of taboo against use. And people have been trying for so long to control these weapons. And these were hard fought.

And just because treaties start to fray at the edges and there are problems with them doesn't mean that they've outlived their utility or they can't possibly be fixed or that we can't keep it in place and then build something new. Are nuclear weapons still, 31 years later, the scariest weapons we have and the ones we need to most be concerned about? Yes. I think it's easy to forget that because we don't talk about them much anymore. No, I mean, that's sort of the frustrating part of what I do is, you know, sort of having to go around

and remind everybody that they should be scared. Remind us who's got them. Nine countries, the original five. So U.S., Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, then India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. There are nine people in this world that could decide to ruin us all. And that decision could come, you know, by accident. That if people haven't seen the movie Failsafe, it's one technical error that goes wrong with one bomber and the consequences of that one tiny

thing going wrong. The Russians may be jamming their reception with some new device we know nothing about. Why would they do that? Is it customary? No, sir, but it's possible. In other words, it's possible the fail-safe mechanism might be giving them a go signal at the same time they can't reach you for positive confirmation. It's possible. It's not probable, but... Is it possible? Yes, sir. That's what scares me, is that a... just a run-of-the-mill electrical glitch

could start a chain of events that destroys the world entirely and every person on it. And, you know, that is the condition we have been living under for 70 years. The president's like 72 years old. Is it possible that he's forgotten how shitty the Cold War was? It was weird as he made all sorts of statements during the Cold War about how President Reagan should put him in charge of negotiating with the Russians

and send him to Moscow to negotiate down nuclear arsenals. This seems to be something that, at least previously, had been of interest to him. He's shown very little interest in it since he's become president. And in fact, his remarks in the past couple of days talking about, well, we'll just be in an arms race and we'll outspend them, it just sort of defies logic. There are things that we can do to reduce tensions, to reduce threats. They have historically enjoyed bipartisan support. There is no reason that this should become a partisan

issue, that people should be on one side or the other. Everyone should be in favor of reducing nuclear threats. Alex Bell is a senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. I feel like I need a scotch. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of the show. Bridget McCarthy's the editor. Afim Shapiro's the engineer.

De vire. No pre-vire. Noam Hassenfeld produces. Luke Vanderplug is working from home. Catherine Wheeler is occupying his desk. And the historic Breakmaster Cylinder is nowhere to be seen. Special thanks to John Delore, Tobin Lowe, and Matt Collette for their help this week, and regular thanks to you,

dear listener, for rating and reviewing Today Explained on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Ashley, Carmen, and Caitlin Tiffany are the hosts of the podcast, Why'd You Push That Button? It's about the choices technology forces us to make. We talked yesterday about your episode on deleting all your tweets.

What else can people find in the feed? Our next episode is about recording people in public the reason that we did this episode was because of is because of a very beautiful vine in which like it's a woman in an apple store with like pushing a baby stroller and she's like i was told by apple care that i could walk in the store and get the cart she's hitting her stroller yeah there's a baby in there or it's just her MacBook. I don't know. But I'm guessing this episode isn't about AppleCare or Vine. It's about how someone may have violated this woman's privacy by recording her.

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