Oh... hell. This is not good.

I've seen this movie before.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/02/politics/nuclear-treaty-inf-us-withdraws-russia/index.html

Washington (CNN)The United States announced Friday it has formally withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Moscow, putting an end to a landmark arms control pact that has limited the development of ground-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.
"Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Friday announcing the US' formal withdrawal from the Cold-War era nuclear treaty. Pompeo said "Russia failed to return to full and verified compliance through the destruction of its noncompliant missile system." The Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday the termination of the treaty was at the initiative of Washington, Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti reported. The US initially announced in February that this would take place on August 2. CNN reported Thursday that the US military is set to test a new non-nuclear mobile-launched cruise missile developed specifically to challenge Russia in Europe, according to a senior US defense official.

TL;DR The problem isn't that we're leaving the treaty, it's that we're leaving the treaty without any strategy for putting a new arms control agreement in its place.

There's a good article about the INF treaty on the War on the Rocks blog:

https://warontherocks.com/2019/04/the-dual-track-approach-a-long-term-strategy-for-a-post-inf-treaty-world/

Although a new Dual Track policy would advance American security through arms control, to date the Trump administration has expressed little interest in such an approach. Administration officials have outlined the reasons for leaving the treaty, and discussed the possibility of deploying new missiles once the United States withdraws, but to date the administration has not linked the deployment of new missiles to a long-term strategy to bring Russia and China into a new INF Treaty, as the 1979 Dual Track Decision did explicitly with the Soviet Union.

Similarly, while many U.S. allies support the decision to abrogate the treaty, they have remained circumspect about the deployment of new military capabilities. The United States needs to decide exactly what capabilities it will deploy, where it will deploy them (and whether allies will agree), and how those deployments will lead to a better arms control regime in the future. Rather than hiding in vague generalities, the Trump administration ought to annunciate a clear Dual-Track strategy, one that can provide a guiding framework for America and its allies in the years to come.

I grew up near a few Nike Bases in California. I was always fascinated at how much time, money and resources were blown during the Cold War. Recently, Russia has been testing ballistic missiles, to not much success as the most recent ended in an accident producing a radiation spike and a few nuclear scientists killed.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49319160 [nofollow]

http://www.themilitarystandard.com/missile/nike/index.php [nofollow]

Yeah, I lived pretty much under the runways of a few SAC bases a few times in my life. I remember having to hold my ears, at the laundromat, when one of the B-52s would go over, and could look up and pretty much read all the writing on 'em. Don't miss that at all... and sorry to see it trickling back. Amazing how quickly people forget "stuff" that used to hang over their heads like a sword on a thread.