LONDON. — Four decades ago, the United States deployed cruise and Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe to counter Soviet SS-20s – a move that stoked Cold War tensions but led within years to a historic disarmament deal.
“We can be proud of planting this sapling, which may one day grow into a mighty tree of peace,” Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev told US President Ronald Reagan in December 1987 as they agreed to dismantle the rival systems under a treaty that scrapped all ground-based shorter-range and intermediate-range (INF) nuclear and conventional weapons – those with ranges between 500 km and 5,500 km.
The sapling survived until 2019 when Donald Trump, then US president, quit the treaty, citing alleged violations that Russia denied. But the risky implications of the pact’s full unraveling are becoming fully apparent only now, as both sides set out their plans for new deployments.
On June 28, President Vladimir Putin said publicly that Russia would resume producing short and intermediate-range land-based missiles – something the West suspects it was already doing anyway – and take decisions on where to place them if needed. Security experts assume these missiles, like most Russian systems, will be capable of carrying either conventional or nuclear warheads.
On July 10, the United States said it would start deployment in Germany in 2026 of weapons that will include SM-6s and Tomahawks, previously placed mainly on ships and new hypersonic missiles. These are conventional systems but some could also, in theory, be fitted with nuclear tips, and security experts said Russian planning would have to allow for that possibility.
The decisions, taken against the background of acute tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and what the West sees as threatening nuclear rhetoric from Putin, add to an already complex array of threats for both sides. They also form part of a wider INF arms race with China.
“The reality is that both Russia and the United States are taking steps that they believe enhance their security, regardless of whether it comes at the expense of the other,” said Jon Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists.
“And as a result, every move that the United States or Russia makes puts pressure on the adversary to respond in some way, politically or military. That’s the definition of an arms race,” Wolfsthal, a former US arms control official, said in a telephone interview.
