 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss the INF Treaty and Trump's declaration of withdrawal from it. We have with us the Raghunandan. Ragu, you have been observing this issue for quite some time. Could you tell us what is the INF Treaty and what did it imply before we go on to the issue of its withdrawal by the United States? The INF Treaty came as a part of a sequence of gradual slowdown of the nuclear competition between the US and then Soviet Union, especially in the context of potential confrontation in Europe, which was threatening to get out of hand at one point. And the INF Treaty specifically was designed to reduce tensions between the US and the Soviets by eliminating intermediate-range land-based missiles, which was of course the major threat in the European continent. So it did not include aircraft or sea-based missiles, because the whole context was Europe. And also the range was 500 to 5,000 kilometers. So the essential threat was perceived to be what can happen if a conflict breaks out and you have theater-based nuclear armed weaponry flying across the land mass of Europe. There was also a separate treaty for tactical nuclear weapons, which is what are called battlefield nuclear weapons. But even this really targets both short-range and medium-range, ranging from 500 to about 5,500 kilometers. So the treaty was finally drawn up between the US and the Soviet Union under Gorbachev at that time, Reagan and Gorbachev, and then solidified. And more than 2,700 such missiles were decommissioned on both sides. There was a 10-year verification program, which also went through. Then gradually this began to unravel with potential new generations of missiles, anti-missile systems, both sides feeling a threat. But it was actually George W. Bush who first said he wanted to withdraw from this treaty because he wanted to go ahead with what was then called the National Missile Defense Program. So he withdrew from the Anti-Pelastic Missile Treaty, the ABM Treaty. Interestingly, John Bolton was the architect of that as well. And John Bolton has been talking about also withdrawal from the INF Treaty from that time. But really that withdrawal was the Anti-Pelastic Missile Treaty. And now we have the second step, the INF Treaty. But it as you were talking about the risk of all of this unraveling was also because so-called ABM shields were put up on the borders of Soviet Russia, not Soviet Union Russia. And that meant the threat to Russia was increasing as perceived by the Russian Federation. Precisely. And the US was keen on expanding its anti-missile defenses. And the more one side promoted anti-missile defenses, the other felt this was a negation of the mutual deterrence. And therefore, that it was negating their missile defense, then they started countermeasures. That's a very interesting point because actually the mutually assured destruction, being the basis of dismantling some of these nuclear programs, was that we should ensure that defense could also become offense. You wipe out first 90% of the opposition designs, and then you stop 10% means you have a possibility of a victory. Therefore, the ABM was anti-ballistic missile shields were seen to be an increase of tensions because the only way that you do it is by putting more missiles. Exactly the point. So then that was one part of it with George W wanting to entrench the anti-ballistic missile systems, the nuclear missile defense shields that they wanted. And then of course came the collapse of the Soviet Union and the eastward march of NATO right up to the border of Russia. And at that point, Russia felt the need then to start ratcheting up its own missile defenses. And a crunch point seemed to come, what is often been called the European Missile Crisis in the early 90s when Russia was going to deploy its SS-20 missiles. That is the start of the INF treaty actually. That's right. This is the 80s discussions in which SS-20s and Pershing IIs were stopped and so on. But coming back to the specific withdrawal, the Trump administration claims that the United States has detected Russian violation of the INF treaty, and they have specifically targeted a particular name of the missile, which is commonly being called the Novotor missile, that that is in violation of the range that has been prescribed. How do you look at this? See, there these many such missiles have been under development and the INF treaty in fact did not stand in the way of research and development. It only standard in the way of actual weaponization and deployment. So as we were just discussing, Russia when it felt that NATO forces were threatening right up to the borders of Russia, felt the need to counter it and had started moving from research and development to potential deployment of the Novotor missiles. Now the US claims it has currently highly classified documents to show deployment taking place. But if you to speak to the Russians, the Russians have been documenting over the past several years deployment by the United States in Poland and in Romania of missile launchers, which are nominally anti-missile systems, but if you can launch a missile against missiles, the same land-based missile launchers can also be targeted against land systems and Russia sees tactical theater weapons at its border and then feels the need to come to that. Now coming back to this issue, what you talk about the European theater, it's interesting if Russia is threatening Europe, none of the European states are protested. Not one is on record supporting the United States on its Novotor claims. So how do you take this? If the threat to Europe is felt only by the United States and the United States should then not be concerned about the INF missiles, you know the intermediate range missiles, so how do you take this? See, this is a strange phenomenon because countries which are going to be threatened by this are not the old Europe which was at the forefront. They were the front line of NATO and in fact it was Germany in the 80s who actually pushed the United States to take a more aggressive position because Germany felt it was right on the front line and felt threatened. But they are also the ones to actually push the INF Treaty. Exactly my point. So they were the ones to push today, it's the Eastern European countries who are playing that role. So you get the pressure coming today from Poland and Romania and Hungary and countries like that who have become the new frontline states against this. Interestingly by the way a lot of this push is coming from John Bolton as you said and just like you said the major Western European powers have not commented much on this except to say that they consider this an unfortunate move because they see this as then leading to a spiral of redevelopment and redeployment of theater weapons which will again threaten them because if there are missiles flying across Europe they are most probably going to explode over Germany or over Poland or over Romania. It's interesting some of the arms control critics have said I mean arms control experts have said this is the argument nothing is better than something. This seems to be the American position today. So the interesting thing is that while John Bolton is being seen as an architect from the national security agency we've had no comments coming so far either from the US State Department or the US Defense Department. So this seems to be very much a White House John Bolton push on this issue. Well you know one of the problems that is United States we don't understand it from afar. What makes them do things they do because you see all international treaties the US has been violating each and every one of them and it's pulled out of them but it's climate change to disease to space name an international treaty. It has withdrawn from Iran being the latest one. The only question that arises is does the president have the right to withdraw from a treaty which has been signed by the Senate but we'll leave it to the US Congressional Analyst to talk about. Thank you Raghu for being with us today. I think we need to watch how this issue is developed because as yet it's an announcement whether it will translate to a final withdrawal with the sanction of the US Congress we have to see. That's all the time we have for New Slick today. Do keep watching New Slick visiting our website.