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Bolton, Trump Cite China Nuclear Buildup In Vowing To Abandon Treaty With Russia
RFE/RL October 23, 2018
U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton held talks with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ahead of an expected meeting with President Vladimir Putin amid tension over President Donald Trump's warning that Washington will pull out of a landmark nuclear arms treaty with Moscow.
Bolton is due to end his two-day Moscow visit after meeting with Putin on October 23.
In talks the previous day with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, and a dinner with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he said he discussed U.S. plans for withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
In an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant after his meetings, Bolton said that the United States was planning to pull out of treaty because Russia was violating it and because other countries, including China, Iran, and North Korea, were free to develop weapons that would be prohibited under the pact while Washington was not.
With Russia in violation for years, according to Washington, "there is only one country in the world that is bound by the conditions of the document: the United States," Bolton said, according to Kommersant's Russian translation of his remarks. "And this is unacceptable."
Trump made similar remarks late on October 22, saying his decision to withdraw from the INF -- prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing, or deploying ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers -- was driven by Moscow's alleged violations and a need to respond to China's nuclear buildup.
"Russia has not adhered to the agreement.... Until people come to their senses -- we have more money than anybody else, by far. We'll build it up," Trump told reporters at the White House. "Until they come to their senses. When they do, then we'll all be smart and we'll all stop."
Asked if that was a threat to Putin, Trump said: "It's a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game. You can't do that. You can't play that game on me."
While China was never a party to the INF, which was signed four years before the Soviet collapse by U.S.President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Trump said that China should be included in the accord.
'Strategic Stability'
In Moscow, Russian officials warned the United States that abandoning the treaty would be "dangerous" and any effort to develop weapons that would violate the pact would force Russia to take steps to restore the balance of power.
"Any action in this area will be met with a counteraction, because the strategic stability can only be ensured on the basis of parity," Lavrov said before his talks with Bolton. "Such parity will be secured under all circumstances. We bear a responsibility for global stability and we expect the United States not to shed its share of responsibility either."
In the interview with Kommersant, Bolton said that the United States was concerned about Russia's alleged violation of the pact -- which Moscow denies -- and about China's growing intermediate-range missile capabilities, which he called a "very real threat."
While Bolton acknowledged it might be unrealistic to expect China to comply with a treaty it never signed, he argued that China's and North Korea's development of intermediate-range missiles means that the bilateral treaty with Russia is now outmoded and no longer meets today's realities.
China criticized the United States and warned Washington to "think twice" about withdrawing from the treaty.
"It needs to be emphasized that it is completely wrong to bring up China when talking about withdrawal from the treaty," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.
Defense analysts say that while Russia and the United States eliminated nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles under the treaty, China all the while was building up its capabilities to field the same kinds of weapons.
For the United States, "the situation vis-a-vis China, uninhibited by any agreement, is very different and far more pressing" than that of Russia, said John Lee, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, in a column on CNN's website on October 22.
Lee estimated that about 95 percent of the missiles in China's arsenal would violate the INF Treaty if Beijing were a signatory.
Writing in The American Interest, Stephen Sestanovich, a former U.S. National Security Council senior director for policy development under Reagan, said that "military competition between China and the United States will obviously be the Pentagon's top priority in coming years."
"But the idea that this need decisively devalues the INF Treaty seems -- at the very least -- premature," Sestanovich added.
U.S. officials say Russia has been developing a nuclear-capable missile system known as 9M729 for years in violation of the treaty.
'Fresh Impetus'
Russia denies the U.S. accusations and claims that some elements of the U.S. missile-defense systems in Europe violate the treaty -- a charge that Washington denies.
Bolton repeated that denial, and his remarks to Kommersant suggested that neither side had made much progress in convincing the other that it is in violation.
His talks in Moscow have also covered other weapons issues, including the 2010 New START treaty, which puts limits on the two countries' long-range nuclear arsenals and expires in 2021 -- and broader bilateral ties.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants U.S.-Russian relations, which have been badly strained by discord over issues including Moscow's interference in Ukraine and its alleged meddling in the 2016 election that Trump won.
Welcoming Bolton to the Defense Ministry, Shoigu said he hoped their meeting would "give a fresh impetus to the stabilization of Russian-American relations."
Shoigu said that dialogue was gradually being restored after a summit between Trump and Putin in Helsinki in May, and voiced confidence that "even small steps will benefit our relations."
Bolton told Kommersant that he and Patrushev had discussed the possibility of another Trump-Putin meeting.
Asked whether the two might meet during upcoming international gatherings in Paris and Buenos Aires, Bolton said that "we can also imagine a full-fledged summit like the one in Helsinki," according to the Russian translation of his remarks.
With reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, Kommersant, TASS, and Interfax
Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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