US and allies stand to gain from end of INF Treaty regime

Hey, everybody, Peter zine here coming to you from the Lake of the Ozarks. It is Thursday, July 12. And today we’re going to be talking about security in Europe, specifically the United States at the NATO conference has announced with the Germans that American mid range weaponry is returning to Germany at a position that hasn’t been since the Cold War, a combination of hypersonics mid range missiles, including the Tomahawk cruise missile system.

The reason that this is happening is because we had a series of Cold War and post cold war arms treaties between the United States and NATO and the Soviet Union. Things like the conventional forces in Europe treaty, or more specifically for this conversation, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty or inf, the Russians started bit by bit, either violating or withdrawing from those treaties as far as 15 years ago, and even started developing weapons systems that are expressly barred by the Treaty and then deploying them. So under the Trump administration, five years ago, the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, and has been moving bit by bit to redeploy these weapons systems ever since the INF specifically bars weapon systems with a range of 500 to 5500 kilometers, roughly 300 miles or 3000 miles. And that basically, is the entirety of the hot zone now between NATO and Russia, including all of Ukraine.

The idea of these treaties, which dates back to Reagan and Gorbachev was that if you take the weapons that are actually useful off the field, then you won’t have a tactical engagement or a tactical escalation. That just leaves the big strategic missiles, like the internet, continental ballistic missiles that are just a base to the United States. And obviously, the desire to not use those is quite strong. So you take away the usable day to day missiles.

And it forces both sides to basically come to the peace table. Well, the Russians have repeatedly moved away from that system. And now they’re going to find themselves facing weapons systems that you know, maybe designed 50 years ago, but are perfectly serviceable. And the United States is destined for things like hypersonics that have developed back in the 70s in the 80s, but never deployed and now they are being deployed. So the balance of forces for the Russians across the entire theater is about to go from problematic to catastrophic. Keep in mind that one of the many reasons why the Cold War ended when it did is because NATO, and to a greater extent the United States defeated the Russians in an arms race, the Soviet Union simply couldn’t keep up with the economic power of the United States. Well, Russia today is significantly economically weaker than the Soviet Union ever was. And the United States is significantly economically stronger than it was back in the 70s in the 1980s. So there, there’s really no contest here. The Russians have proven over and over again, that while they can innovate, they can’t develop new weapons systems that are particularly capable, and they certainly can’t produce them at scale. Whereas the United States in many cases, just literally dusting off things that have been in storage for 2030 years and bringing them back online, while also developing new systems. So the strategic picture for here for the Russians as a direct consequence of some very bad decisions they’ve made a lot of the Russian position for the last 15 years has really been bluff. And it worked until 2022, with the Korean War, which mobilized pretty much everyone in Europe. So the Germans were the country that pay was most in support of the INF when it was negotiated because they were the ones in the crosshairs, and B, they were the country that was the most willing to overlook all of the Russian violations of the treaty because they lived in this kind of strategic Nirvana that they didn’t want to end.

And now it’s the Germans who are actually arguing that the United States needs ploy more and more and more weapons systems, not just to Europe, but to Germany specifically. Okay, not all of that is kind of the big first piece. The second piece is the INF provided handcuffs on what the US could do not just in Europe, but globally. And the country that has arguably benefited the most from the Americans refusing to deploy intermediate range weapons systems is in Germany’s isn’t Russia, it’s China. Because if you look at a map of East Asia and look at all of the US allies, especially Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, the distance from those countries to the Asian mainland is in that 500 kilometer to 5500 kilometer range. So for the entirety of the post Cold War period, the United States has been barred from deploying appropriately range weapons systems to counter the Chinese rise will not any more. And so over the course of the next two or three years, we’re going to see a mass deployment of American weapons systems off the Chinese coast that are perfect

Fichte for boxing the Chinese and the Chinese have always argued strategically that this was the goal of the United States all along, which is, of course, horse crap.

But keep in mind that unlike the United States, China is a trading power. And so not having these weapons systems has allowed the Chinese to, from a strategic and economic point of view become a global economic player. But if these weapons systems are in place, everything that the Chinese do could literally be shut down within an hour and end the capacity of the Chinese to import and export, which would be the end of the system almost overnight. So while it may have been the Russians, who were the ones who were fucking around, it’s absolutely going to be the Chinese who are the ones who are going to find out.