 I'm Sharon Squassoni and I direct the proliferation prevention program and today this is a joint event. We're practicing jointness with the Russia Eurasian program. It is my distinct pleasure to have you here today with a fantastic panel of experts to talk about an old favorite. We're feeling very retro today. There are no slides. You won't see, you know, graphics of missile ranges or stuff. We're just going to talk but I urge you to listen because you could not have three people who know more about this topic than Amy, Steve and Paul. So before we get started, I'd like to remind you this is on the record. We are webcasting and we're going to have a Q&A session after our three speakers all speak. I have to apologize. I have to duck out a little bit before 11 and so we'll start the Q&A session and then Paul will take over for me but I ask you right now if you have a cell phone either turn it off or turn that ringer off, I'm going to do it right now because it tends to also interfere with our sound system. So the topic today is this is part of the Russia Eurasia program's Russian military forum but we're going to talk about nukes and treaties, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and if you've read the newspapers over the last two years you know that we haven't really resolved our differences, the U.S. and the Russians over what we each alleged to be treaty violations. We are going to hear today from first Amy Wolfe who is a specialist in nuclear weapons policy at the Congressional Research Service, the Foreign Affairs Defense and Trade Division. I can't think of anyone in Washington D.C. who has followed these issues more expertly than Amy and truth and publishing, we used to be colleagues at CRS and there was often a time when I would wander into her office and say, Amy explain this to me about you know a particular treaty. So Amy will start first and then will be followed by Paul Schwartz who is a non-resident senior associate with the CSIS Russia and Eurasian program and he's an expert in the Russian military and defense and security policy, written a lot and had an actual other career at Hogan and Hartson. So you know if you're looking for the details of treaties, Paul is your guy. And finally Ambassador Steve Piper will speak, he is the director of the Brookings Arms Control and Nonproliferation Initiative and he's a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and the Center on the U.S. and Europe. That's a really long title. Yeah, there must be an acronym in there. With the foreign policy program at Brookings, Steve had a very illustrious career in the U.S. government. He was the deputy assistant secretary for the EUR, for the European Bureau Ambassador to Ukraine and also served on the National Security Council. So without further ado, I'm going to pass the microphone over to Amy. Thank you. Good morning. I want to thank CSIS and Sharon and Paul for inviting me to be here this morning. Normally when I speak in public I start by explaining what CRS is and what we are not and I think most of you probably know we're non-biased, non-partisan, unbiased, provide background information and analysis to Congress. We don't offer opinions. We don't advocate positions. So if you hear anything that sounds like an opinion and I'm going to try not to do that because we're on the record, attribute it to me, not to CRS. I am not speaking for CRS. Also I need to add a second disclaimer. I don't work for the administration so I am not speaking for the administration either but I will speak about what the administration officials have said on this. I'm going to actually read quotes because I can't provide you any independent analysis of what they've said. I can tell you what they've said. Hopefully by the time I finish and I'll tell you precisely what I'm going to do, you'll have a framework for thinking about the INF issue that might provide you with some insights into how we are proceeding and then we'll hear about how we are proceeding. I'm not going to tell you anything new and I'm not going to say anything newsworthy, I hope. But if I seem to be reading a lot it's because I want to be precise in saying what people who have the authority to speak on this have said. So I'm going to do three things essentially. I'm going to start out by just outlining basically what the treaty terms are. And for those of you who weren't alive in 1983, you should commit this to memory. It's really fun stuff. 1987 was when the treaty was signed, 1983 was when this crisis first erupted. It's a great segment of history. I love it. You don't have to like it as much as I do but it's worth digging into a little. So I'll start there. Then I'll start, I'll talk about the US complaint about Russian compliance and the Russian response and then the Russian complaints about US compliance and the US response. Then and all of that I'm going to stick with things that other people have said. I will talk towards the end of my 10 or 15 minutes about the timelines that are involved here where people are disputing and discussing and trying to figure out what happened when it happened. There are a lot of public estimates of what's going on and I will provide you from an analytic perspective. I'm not sure this is what happened but from an analytic perspective something that might explain these timelines that doesn't involve conspiracy theories and political interpretations. So that's what I'm going to do. Let me start with treaty terms. The INF treaty bans both the United States and Soviet Union now the United States and Russia from deploying testing or developing testing and deploying intermediate range missiles either ballistic missiles or cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5500 kilometers. Now the treaty says you can't have these missiles and you can't have launchers for these missiles and it has something called a type rule. Most arms control treaties have type rules. It says if you design, develop or test something as a type of system everything else like it is forever that type of system which means if you do something you can't repurpose it to be something else. Once it meets the definition of a type it is that type forever. Just keep that in mind as we proceed. Now the ban on intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles only applies to land based missiles. Obviously the treaty did not ban the possession testing or deployment of sea based or air delivered cruise missiles or ballistic missiles in this range. It also permitted the parties to test missiles that weren't going to be land based missiles at land based test sites as long as they were tested on fixed test launchers. That makes sense. If you are just developing a new sea launch cruise missile you don't want your first test where it might blow up to be on a submarine or on a ship. You lose the whole ship. So you test on land. The treaty also didn't ban the testing of all kinds of missiles in this range if they weren't intended to be weapons delivery vehicles. You can test and deploy intermediate range missiles if they are designed to be aimed at things not on land, missile defense interceptors. You can design and test intermediate range missiles if they are not designed as weapons delivery systems and therefore scientific purposes, missile defense targets. There are lots of things you can do but you can't design, test, develop, deploy intermediate range weapons delivery systems that are either ballistic or cruise. Now that's where we are with what the treaty says. Starting about two summers ago, two years ago, we started seeing press reports about Russian violations with the INF treaty. And at the time, Steve, me, everybody else thinking and writing about this thought the reports were referring to a new ballistic missile that the Russians had designed. We know it is the RS-26. It had been tested to a range of greater than 5,500 kilometers and then it had been tested to shorter ranges. As treaty terms define, a ballistic missile, its range is defined at the maximum range to which it's been tested and there's no prohibition on testing to shorter ranges. So in that consequence, we all looked at this and said that missile, it may be concerning because it really looks like it's going to be of intermediate range but it's not a violation because it was tested to longer than 5,500 kilometers. Well, we all spent a good deal of time that summer parsing this issue and it turns out to not be the issue. In the 2014 compliance report, the administration reported that Russia was in violation of the INF treaty and it cited a number of treaty provisions related to the testing and deployment of cruise missiles. The press at that time was reporting this was a cruise missile. In the 2015 compliance report, the administration said, the United States has determined that in 2014, the Russian Federation continued to be in violation of its obligations under the INF treaty not to possess, produce or flight test a ground launch cruise missile with a range capability of 500 to 5,500 kilometers or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles. So that's what this is. This is a cruise missile in that range with a launcher for that cruise missile. Now, everyone's saying, so what missile is it? And if you read all the press reports, you'd think it was this missile or that missile. The leading contender in the press reports is something known as the iSCANDR and the iSCANDR is a missile launcher for both cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with ranges of less than 500 kilometers. So the guessing was, oh, maybe the Russians miscalculated and one of those iSCANDR cruise missiles flew greater than 500 kilometers. And technically that's a violation, so we called them out on it. Well, no. Administration officials have specifically said it is not the iSCANDR. And I can quote, because I will do that, last December at a presentation that Steve hosted with Rose Gottmiller, she said, we have been open and public since July when we published our compliance report that Russia and our view is not in compliance with the INF Treaty. And the reason is a ground launch cruise missile that has been tested that is in development. In response to a question, she said, it is not the iSCANDR. So if you read press reports or op-eds about this issue and the report starts with, it's the iSCANDR, no, it's not. It is a new cruise missile. The administration has been very clear on that. They haven't said anything more about the details. They claim they've told Russia enough information to understand what missile it is, but the Russian response has been never happened, not there, no missile. So the Russians are kind of hoping for more information. On what day did we test it? And where did we test it? And what did we do that you think? Because if we tell them that, the next time they test it, they could prevent us from catching that information. So we have not told them specifically the whens and wheres of it. We haven't, the administration has not told the public that. We're taking, we here in the public are taking it on faith that the administration is certain that this happened. Now, one of the other explanations for what this might be, and you've possibly heard this one, is maybe it was a sea launch cruise missile. Because as I said, they can test sea launch cruise missiles on land at fixed sites, test sites. So maybe it was a sea launch cruise missile and they, oops, accidentally tested it from a mobile launcher. No, not that either. It's a plausible excuse, which is why it's probably not what happened because the Russians aren't using that excuse. I have had retired Russian officials say, oh, it's a sea launch cruise missile and brush it off. But at no point in time, and that does sound like a plausible explanation. Maybe it's just a sea launch cruise missile. We, oops, tested it on the wrong launcher. The Russian government has not used that explanation. And even if it weren't true, because it's such a plausible explanation, that could get them out of the doghouse, but they're not using it. So as I've been quoted as saying, I think that's an incomplete explanation for what this is. So we'll take it at face value because the administration says so. It's not a sea launch cruise missile. It's not the ice gander. It is a ground launch cruise missile. I can't tell you how they know that or why they know that, but they're certain. The Russians in response have said, well, you, the United States, you're in violation of the INF treaty. They actually go back further than that. They say, this whole arms control falling apart thing is the United States fault because we pulled out of the ABM treaty in 2002. So you have no right to complain. Well, we're complaining. The Russians have accused us of violations on three different counts. The first one is that the targets we use in ballistic missile defense tests fly to a range of between 550-500 kilometers and sometimes use boosters for missiles that used to be intermediate range missiles and therefore are a violation. No, I already told you why not. The administrations made it clear that those missiles are permitted under the treaty as research and development systems not intended for weapons delivery. And if you read the treaty, there is a clause in it that says you can do that. The second Russian complaint is that we deploy armed drones and those meet the treaty definition of cruise missiles. No, they don't. The treaty definition of cruise missiles says a cruise missile is a weapon itself, not a weapon platform that can deliver weapons, but the weapon itself. A cruise missile takes off, flies to its target and blows up. A drone takes off, flies, drops its weapon, comes back and lands. That sounds a lot more like an airplane than a cruise missile. Administration officials also like to point out that Russia is developing armed drones and if they think that's a violation of the INF treaty, they shouldn't be doing that. I know I'm not allowed to have opinions, but personally I don't think the Russians believe consistency in their complaints is necessary. The third complaint is that the United States plans to deploy launchers known as the MK41 vertical launch system at the Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland. Aegis Ashore is where we're putting intermediate range or missile defense interceptors for intermediate range missiles, presumably coming from Iran. These are the same launch systems that are on many of our submarines and surface ships. They are a multiple launch system. They can launch lots of kinds of missiles. And yes, they can launch cruise missiles. They launch sea launch cruise missiles. But when they are put on land, the administration has said these will not be tested to launch cruise missiles on land. They will only be equipped to launch the SM3 interceptors when they are placed on land. And there will be something different about them that will make it impossible for them to launch cruise missiles. The administration hasn't said publicly that I can find what that difference is, but they claim there will be a difference. There is also a problem of treaty definition. And I will admit the treaty definition is a bit tautological. The definition of the treaty of a ground launch cruise missile launcher is a launcher that's launched a ground launch cruise missile. So if we never launch a ground launch cruise missile out of the Aegis Ashore launchers when they're on land, they're not ground launch cruise missile launchers. The Russian complaint is because they can launch sea launch cruise missiles, it would be easy someday for us to wake up and launch a cruise missile out of it. That may or may not be true. The administration has said it isn't. But from treaty definitional perspectives, it's not true because we haven't actually tested it that way. And I wanted to end with that on the Russian complaints because I just made a point about the treaty says specifically. And that is fundamental to understanding the timelines here about why it took the United States years to formally complain that Russia had violated the INF treaty and why it may take a few more years for us to reach some kind of conclusion to this debate. If you follow this debate, you hear members of Congress say, we've known about this since 2008. And then they look at administration officials, Obama administration officials, and say, why didn't you tell us about this in 2008? To which I think the Obama administration wasn't in office in 2008. But let's set that point aside. When we monitor, and this is analytic, I can't tell you that this is exactly what happened in this case or isn't. But when we monitor arms control obligations, particularly weapons development programs, we monitor tests and we collect data. No test, particularly in the early phases of a program, provides you all the data you need to know to understand what you're looking at. So you do that over time. You collect data over time. And sometimes when you have later data, you go back and look at earlier data, say, oh, now that makes sense, where something didn't raise your concern earlier or maybe raised your concern, but you didn't know what it meant, you needed later pieces of the puzzle so you could put them together. So when people say we've known about this since 2008, the administration didn't tell Congress about this until 2011, didn't raise it with the Russians until 2013, and didn't declare it a violation until 2014, they tend to complain there was some kind of political conspiracy here, well, conspiracy. The one you hear most often is the administration didn't want to interfere with the ratification of the new START treaty by telling Congress or bringing it up with the Russians, and then why did they say it in 2014 while we're no longer friends with the Russians, so now we can say it. I would argue analytically, it's more likely or possible or good CRS term conceivable that it just took us that long to collect the data over a series of tests where we had the confidence to say this is a violation. Even if something looked funny years earlier, you need confidence to say it's a violation before you can declare it a formal legal violation because the treaty has very specific terms. So I would argue that instead of immediately adopting one of the conspiracy theories about why this took so long to think about it more analytically about what we're doing here, we're collecting information, painting a picture, and drawing conclusions over time based on that picture. The same is true about resolving the issue. And I'm gonna stop with this because I think Stephen Paul will talk a little more about where we go from here, but the other complaint you hear, particularly from members of Congress, is why are we waiting so long to do something about this? I don't know what they wanna do. Some people have suggested withdrawing from the treaty, but if we do that, then the Russians go from having a missile in development that raises concerns to being able to deploy hundreds of them without any limits. And also that puts the onus of ending the treaty on us rather than the Russians. So as long as there is nothing that we need to do for national security purposes that requires withdrawing from the treaty, there's no point in doing that now. There may be at some point. But what the administration has said they're doing is they're looking at all the options. They're talking to the Russians in diplomatic fora and insisting to the Russians that we would all be better off if they came back into compliance with the treaty and they're looking at other responses that we might adopt in the future. This whole process takes time. You don't say, oh, now I've decided you're really in violation and I'm going to just walk away from the treaty and go ahead. In the history of arms control over time, we have often raised compliance concerns with other parties. And on many occasions, those concerns have been resolved without having to walk away from the treaty. If the United States believes it's in its national security interests to remain in the INF treaty, then this process makes sense. When that calculation no longer holds, we may want to take a different path. Thank you, Amy. Paul, are you going to be as persuasive for the Russian case? I'll do my best, but there's going to be a hard act to follow there. So now let's take a look at the whole INF dispute from Russia's perspective. And I want to start or begin at the beginning of why we have an INF treaty to give you a sense of why this matters. Of course, the INF treaty evolved out of the European Missiles Crisis of the 1980s, and this was the last major Cold War crisis. The deployment of powerful medium range missiles in Europe, such as Russia's triple warhead SS-20 and the Pershing II, severely undermined European security. These missiles had the capability in just a matter of minutes of destroying much of the infrastructure located in Europe and Western Russia. Moreover, just simply coming up with a way to resolve this issue, a coherent strategy for the alliance, severely strained alliance cohesion. The adoption of the INF treaty put an end to all of this, but now Russia's actions are putting the treaty at risk. Since nobody wants to see us go back to another European Missiles Crisis or anything remotely looking like it, it's important that we understand Russia's motives. So in my allotted time, I'll talk about three questions. What does Russia think about the INF treaty? Why are they unhappy about it? And what are they likely to do about it? First, what do the Russians think about INF? But we know for a long time that the Russian leadership has been quite unhappy with INF, although they haven't always been that consistent in their comments. In 2007, Sergey Ivanov, the Defense Minister, approached Donald Rumsfeld to ask a question. How would the US feel if Russia and the US were to withdraw from the treaty? A short while later, President Putin approached then current President George W. Bush to propose that rather than withdraw from the treaty, it should be expanded to include other ballistic missile powers. And this led the two to issue a joint communicated this effect and later that year, President Putin actually made a proposal to this effect at the UN conference on disarmament where it promptly went nowhere due to lack of interest from some of the other ballistic missile powers. That same year, though, General Baluevsky, the chief of the Russian general staff, threatened that Russia would withdraw from the treaty unilaterally in response to the deployment of missile defense systems in Europe. So by 2007, it was quite clear that Russia was becoming increasingly dissatisfied. Why? Well, the simple answer is that primarily due to changed circumstances since the treaty first went into effect, by that time, Russia's leaders had come increasingly to believe that the treaty had lost much of its value for Russia. In fact, it often worked to its profound disadvantage and therefore that Russia would be better off without it. So what makes them unhappy? Well, the first reason is military. At first Russia indeed gained much and increased security from the elimination of a whole class of US medium-range missiles deployed in Europe. The Pershing-2 was deemed especially threatening to the Russians because of its short flight time it could be used to launch a decapitating first strike against the Soviet leadership. But eliminating Pershing-2 didn't help the Russians for very long because at that time the US was already starting to deploy a whole new class of precision strike weapons, many of them medium-range systems like the Tomahawk land attack missile. Because these systems are air launched and sea launched, they do not violate the treaty. So once again, it wasn't long before the US could hold large parts of Western Russia at risk and the same was true in the Asian-Pacific theater as well. Moreover, Russia couldn't match those systems although it started to finally catch up a little bit. It's continued to lag well behind the US in the development and deployment of sophisticated precision strike weapons. Second, Russia cannot really hope to match the US in terms of the sheer number of weapons deployed. While Russia can deploy them in the hundreds, perhaps in the low thousands, the US can deploy them in the high thousands and maybe even the tens of thousands. Third, in a real shooting war, Russia has graved doubts whether the launch platforms, the ships and the aircraft that it would use to host these weapons could survive very long against superior US military forces. Finally, complicating all of this, the UK and France continue to deploy hundreds of what they call strategic, but which in fact are medium-range missiles capable of striking targets well inside of Russia. So in short, these four reasons, the US lead in precision weapons, its edge in sheer numbers, the vulnerability of Russia's platforms, and the British and French deterrent, explain to a good degree why Russian believe that the INF Treaty has led to a grave imbalance in theater strike capability in Europe. So what about Asia? Well, in the view of the Russians, they're not really much better off there. The rise of states on Russia's periphery armed with large inventories of medium-range missiles is often cited as a key factor for Russia's increasing dissatisfaction with INF. And in fact, today Russia is virtually surrounded by such states, many of them nuclear powers as well. Talking about North Korea, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and Israel, because these states are not bound by the INF Treaty, they're free to deploy these weapons while Russia cannot. Meanwhile, anyone who looks at a map can see that the US, because of its relative geographic isolation, faces no comparable threat. The Russians argue that deploying INF missiles would be an effective way to counter these new emerging threats. And this is true in part. Against China, yes. The ability to deploy medium-range missiles further away from the border would make them less vulnerable to increasingly accurate Chinese counter force systems, ballistic missiles that could destroy them on the ground. Also, the ability to deploy these missiles would enable Russia to penetrate increasingly capable Chinese air defense systems to hold at risk key high-value targets located deeper into the Chinese interior. And they would prevent China from gaining escalation dominance over Russia in a potential future military conflict. Well, what about states like Iran and Pakistan? Well, they're the case for medium-range missiles that is considerably less compelling, primarily because it's hard to imagine a scenario under which those states actually threaten Russia. Still, the deployment of medium-range missiles would help Russia to compensate for its otherwise lack of effective long-range strike capability. Finally, North Korea. They are the case for medium-range missiles is exceedingly thin. You sometimes hear the Russians say they need them to counter the North Koreans. After all, the Russians can simply deploy short-range missiles on the common border to hold the entire territory of North Korea at risk. At any rate, this twin imbalance between in theater precision strike and long-range strike capability between Russia and Europe on the one hand and Russia on the other hand, and Asia on the other hand, goes a long way towards explaining Russia's increasing dissatisfaction. And while the military factors are certainly important, probably even more important in Russia's calculus are the political factors. Ever since the Kosovo crisis in 1999, the Russians have been on a desperate search to find the means to effectively protect their interest against what they see as increasing encroachment by the West. Kosovo demonstrated to Russia as no other single event had that if the West is determined to act, even in ways deeply contrary to Russia's interest, there was very little they could do about it. And so, many of the actions they've been taking, since then, the things that we find troubling, such as the invasion in Georgia, frozen conflicts, intervention in Ukraine, endless flights around Europe's perimeter, we can attribute to, in part, to Russia's desire to gain increasing deterrent and coercive capability. Adding medium-range missiles to Russia's arsenal would give them another powerful new course of tool for their toolkit. These missiles would allow Russia to once again hold large parts of Europe and Asia at risk. And in a potential future crisis, they would strengthen Russia's deterrent, undermine alliance cohesion, and give Russia increased political influence in that event. Important to remember, though, that the Russians aren't unanimous about their concerns on INF. Not everybody wants to withdraw from the treaty. There are many advocates to the contrary in Russia. Some remember the 1980s. They do not want to see a new Pershing III missile deployed in Europe. Others argue that these missiles aren't really necessary. Can't the Russians, after all, counter these new emerging threats by simply redirecting some of their strategic forces? Finally, some fear that the collapse of the INF treaty could drastically increase tensions between Russia and the West, and might even lead to a collapse of the arms control regime in general. That would drive the US and Russian to a costly new arms race. So how is the dispute likely to play out over the short term and long term in from Russia's perspective? Well, I think for the moment, I do not see the Russians engaging seriously on INF. So long as the Ukraine standoff continues and sanctions remain, they will have little incentive to do so. In fact, I think they fear that it could be seen as a sign of weakness. Publicly, they will continue to point to the failure of the US to provide sufficient facts, sufficient details about the alleged treaty violation. They will also point to the time it took for the US to bring charges. In short, they will argue that there isn't much of a case here, and it's not at all clear cut. Meanwhile, they will continue to press their counterclaims against the US in response to further complaints. While the US has been quick to dismiss those claims, and I think rightly so for the most part, they're liable to score some PR points on some of them, especially the Mark 41 case where they at least have some decent arguments. There is still a good chance that over time the Russians will engage on this to try to resolve it, especially if Ukraine stabilizes, sanctions are lifted. That will generate a good deal of momentum, which they may be eager to capitalize by addressing and resolving the INS dispute at that time as well. But the contrary is also likely, and perhaps given some of the broader structural issues I spoke about earlier, may be even more likely than not. They may very well just elect to unilaterally withdraw from the treaty at some point in the near term. Or they may elect to move forward with deployment and then take a wait-and-see approach. They will ask, will the US and NATO make good on their threats to deploy military countermeasures, such as new offensive missile systems? Will they be able to persuade their allies in Europe and Asia to allow for those deployments? Will it take time for the US to develop those kinds of countermeasures? Finally, wouldn't some of these require the US to withdraw from the treaty itself, which case the US would have to take at least some of the heat for the treaty's collapse? They will ask those questions and so will the US. Thank you, Paul. Now we hear from Steve. Well, thanks, Sharon, and thank you for the opportunity to come and talk about the INF Treaty, something that I go back about 30 years with. I was at the negotiating table in November 1983 when the Soviets walked out in protest at the arrival of the first Pershing II and ground launch cruise missiles in Europe. And then I was at the American Embassy in Moscow and spent most of my last six months of my tour there getting ready for implementation of the INF Treaty, which had, at the time, the most extensive set and the most intrusive set of verification measures of any arms control agreement. I've been asked to talk about the American perspective and I'm going to break it down into two pieces. What the US government has said, it will do about the violation, and then I'll add some suggestions of my own as to things that the US government might want to do. What the US government has said its principal goal here, and this comes from both the State Department and the Defense Department, is to bring Russia back into full compliance with the treaty. And that reflects an American calculation that preserving that treaty is in the US national interest. And there are a couple reasons for this. First of all, when the treaty was implemented and that implementation was concluded in 1991, the Soviets eliminated 1,800 ballistic and cruise missiles capable of targeting American allies both in Europe and in Asia. And that treaty prevents Russia from rebuilding that kind of threat. Our allies very much favor preservation of the treaty. So it stops the Russians from doing something that we would not like to see the Russians do. And on the other hand, on the American side, at least from what I've seen, there is no serious identified military requirement by the Pentagon for American missiles of intermediate range. So the treaty does not impede the United States from doing something that the US military really would like to do. Now, there has been some talk outside the government about perhaps developing a conventional intermediate range ballistic missile to counter China. But before that discussion goes very far, the proponents of that idea really ought to figure out where they would put it. I don't think there would be much excitement in Japan, South Korea, or Philippines for hosting such a missile. And quite frankly, intermediate range ballistic missiles based in the United States only hold risk targets at risk in Canada and Central America. Now, what the US government has done thus far is pursue a diplomatic conversation with the Russians. As Amy said, it has not met with success to date. The Russians refuse to acknowledge either a violation of the treaty or the fact of a non-compliant ground launch cruise missile. So the United States has begun to talk about developing response options in addition to the diplomatic track. And the goal again here remains first of all to bring Russia back into full compliance in the treaty. But failing that, if the Russians continue with the violation, the goal is to ensure that Russia achieves no significant military advantage as a result of the violation. So just a bit on the response options in addition to the diplomatic push to bring Russia back into compliance. Administration officials have talked about economic and military measures. Economic measures, they say, might be undertaken in coordination with allies, which would make sense because it's our allies who would be most at direct risk in the event that Russia were to move on to deploy a new intermediate range missile. But US officials have not yet specified exactly what they have in mind. My own surmise is what they're thinking of are economic sanctions along the lines of what the United States and the European Union have imposed on Russia over the past 15 months due to Russia's aggression against Ukraine. On the military side, Pentagon officials say they're looking at a broad range of options and they break that down into three categories. First of all, active defense against a ground launch cruise missile, which would be first of all likely treaty compliant and also would have the added advantage that if you could defend or develop air defenses against a ground launch cruise missile, that would probably also give you capabilities against sea launch cruise missiles and air launch cruise missiles. The second category is counter force, which suggests developing a capability to attack the ground launch cruise missiles before they are launched. And then the third category is countervailing strike, which suggests developing some kind of other military capability, perhaps not directed at attacking the ground launch cruise missile launchers, but some other military capability that would give the United States and NATO an offset to the Russian violation. So that's what we know from what American officials have said to date. Let me transition and talk a little bit about what I believe the United States might wanna do above and beyond that. And also just several steps. Again, I don't think they're likely to succeed if Russia really is determined to have an intermediate range missile capability. But first of all, I would continue to press Russia in the diplomatic channels at the political level, but I would also do something that the administration has not yet done, which is to convene a meeting of the Special Verification Commission, which was established by Article 13 of the INF Treaty as a primary vehicle for resolving compliance concerns. Now, administration officials now make the argument that it doesn't make sense to convene the Special Verification Commission, which they regard as largely a technical body if there has not been some kind of breakthrough at the political level, some suggestion that the Russians are prepared to work the problem. And I can understand that argument, but I would still argue that it is a bit odd that the body that was set up by the treaty for addressing compliance questions has not yet met. And beginning that discussion there, well, it might not be productive initially if you begin to move to a point where the sides begin to look at how can you resolve this? This would be the body where you would bring in technical people who might come up with some ways to resolve the concerns. The second step I would take, and I should preface it by saying, I do believe that the Russians have violated the INF treaty by testing a ground launch cruise missile. I'm taking that on faith. I don't have access to the classified information, but part of it is a political judgment that I don't think this administration needed this problem. If there were still ambiguities about the information that they had, I think that they would not have declared a violation. The fact that they did declare a violation leads me to believe that the information that they have is in fact fairly compelling. But the second step I would argue the administration needs to do is it needs to develop more information to share with allies and perhaps with publics. And this is not just about helping Steve Pfeiffer understand because he's an arms control wonk and wants to know names and ranges and test dates and things like that, but it's also building a case that could be used diplomatically. And I go back to a conversation I had several months with a NATO ally official, and that person said, yes, we believe the Russians have violated the INF Treaty, but the information that we have been given to date by the United States government is not sufficient for us to go out and say publicly that the Russians have violated the INF Treaty. We need to change that. We need to have information that we can share, not just with allies, not just with European allies and Asian allies, but other countries such as China. Right now, the INF Treaty issue is a diplomatic issue between the United States and Russia. But if the Russians are going to proceed to develop a new intermediate-range missile, that's not going to be a direct threat to the United States. It may threaten four based American troops. It'll be a threat to American allies, but a Russian INF missile can't reach the continental United States, and unless it's deployed in the far northeastern part of Russia, it can't even reach Alaska. It can, however, reach most of NATO Europe, China and Japan. And the objective here should be to take this bilateral issue between Washington and Moscow and make it a multilateral problem for the Russians. If Foreign Minister Lavrov goes into the Kremlin and says to President Putin, I just got another complaint from Secretary Kerry about our violation of the INF Treaty, and he said it's going to contribute to a bad relationship, Putin's likely to say, so what? It's a pretty difficult relationship already. What we want to do is we want to have Lavrov go to Putin and say, I'm hearing from the Germans, the Italians, the Greeks, the Chinese, we want to multilize this problem, and that's going to require that the administration develop more information that can be used with allies and other countries such as China. The third part would be to continue to develop military response options. I personally like the option about developing defenses against cruise missiles, not just because it's treaty compliant, but because it has applications against air launch cruise missiles and sea launch cruise missiles, and could be useful for NATO. There's one other thing that the administration might want to think about doing, although I would put a caution to it, and that is a contingency plan to look at something like a Pershing III. In early June, there was a press report, an associate press that said, one of the military response options entailed putting a new land-based missile in Europe. That got huge attention in Russia. Lavrov, the foreign minister, commented on it. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, commented on it. You had people in the Russian parliament talking about it. It was a big issue, and I think it's useful to remind the Kremlin and remind the Russian Ministry of Defense why in 1987 they signed the INF Treaty, and that was because fear primarily of the Persian II. The Soviet view of the Persian II was this is a ballistic missile that can reach Moscow in eight minutes time. Now, first of all, they actually got the range wrong. The Persian II could only reach Moscow if it was forward deployed into Eastern Germany or Poland, which would have been rather difficult. But still, I don't mind the Soviets worrying about that, and I'd like to the Russians now to think a little bit about how they would feel about a Pershing III. Now, having said that, I think we also ought to recognize the limitations. I might do a contingency study for a few million dollars, but A, actually building one of these things would be very, very expensive, and the defense budget is already stretched, and B, my guess is we would not find anybody in Europe who would be very eager to host such a missile. So, contingency plan, but I wouldn't go too much beyond that. A third point is if we get to a time where the Russians begin to want to have a serious conversation on these various charges on both sides about violations, there would be a way forward. As Amy said, the Russian charge about American missile defense tests against enemy range missiles does not have a good basis. Article 7, paragraph 12 of the INF treaty, in fact allows you to do things like this. And moreover, the Russians are building now the S-400 and developing the S-500 missile, and they say these missiles have capabilities against intermediate range ballistic missiles. So presumably the Russians are testing against something similar to an INF missile. If you had an SVC, a special verification commission meeting, that would be a point where perhaps technical experts would sit down and come up with some language that say, just for clarity's sake, this is a prohibited INF ballistic missile. This is a permitted missile that you can use for tests in missile defense questions. I think Amy made a very good case on drones, but again, and particularly because the Russians are also developing their own drones, at some point the Russian perspective on this may change, but there might be a role for the special verification commission to play in coming up with some clarifying language that just makes clear. This is a prohibited ground launch cruise missile. These are drones which are not covered by the treaty. On the third charge that the Russians make about the missile launchers for missile interceptors in both Romanian and Poland, I think that is perhaps a more serious question because as Amy said, if you take that vertical launch, the MK-41 box, and put it on a ship, it can contain not only an SM-3 missile interceptor, but it can contain a sea launch cruise missile, which actually is fairly close to what a ground launch cruise missile used to look like before they were eliminated back in 1991. And a way to address the Russian concern is the US government has said that the launchers in Romanian Poland will have some difference. There will be something about them that will be different that would not allow it to contain a ground launch cruise missile. Why would suggest that in a special verification context, if the Russians were prepared to find a solution, one way you might proceed would be to sit down and tell the Russians we're prepared to do transparency measures with the agreement of Romanian Poland that would allow you to look at those launchers and we could demonstrate they cannot hold and launch a ground launch cruise missile. But I would link that to Russia then providing some transparency measures that might be useful in addressing American concerns about the Russian ground launch cruise missile tests that are of concern to the United States. So if the Russians wanted to find a way forward, there's actually a path here I think using the special verification commission to move beyond that. Unfortunately, at this point, I don't see serious evidence that the Russians want to find a way forward. So that brings the question up. If the Russians continue the violation, but they don't deploy, and I think if they were to begin deployment, that would change things in a major way. But if they don't deploy, what should the United States do? And I would argue that the United States should continue while raising the issue, while pursuing response options should continue to observe the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. And I'll go back and say there's an antecedent there back in the 1980s. In 1983, 1984, the Reagan administration discovered that the Soviets were building a large phased-raised radar in a place called Krasnoyarsk in Siberia that was not on the periphery, not oriented outwards. It was a significant violation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Reagan administration, while they raised it politically, and the George H.W. administration continued to observe the ABM Treaty for seven years. And not only did they continue to observe the ABM Treaty for seven years, they completed and signed the INF Treaty, and they made major progress towards signature of the START-1 Treaty. And I would agree, I think, with what Amy and Paul have suggested, at the end of the day, if the INF Treaty fails, the U.S. interest is ensuring that the responsibility, the onus, the blame is squarely on the shoulders of the Kremlin. We do not want the United States to withdraw from the treaty where we get the political heat, the political blame, the criticism from allies and others. And then, in fact, let Russia reap the military benefits, which they can go ahead and deploy then without limit, INF missiles that would threaten U.S. allies, missiles through which the United States at this point does not foresee a counterpart. Thank you. Thank you. I wish I were gonna be here for this entire 45 minutes because all three of you have laid a lot of issues on the table. I'm gonna content myself with maybe one big question and then slink off the stage and let Paul take it from here. Amy, you quite rightly said we have time, or you suggested we have time, right? I mean, that we don't need to rush into anything here. But I guess I would put that back on you. I mean, we, all four of us participated in a Track 2 dialogue with some Russians to last month. And there were some pretty harsh words said around the table or some very strong concerns raised by the Russians. And admittedly, I would say this was a group that was, you know, that agreed to come to the United States to talk to us to begin with. So it was a self-selecting group. But, you know, do we really have years or is our relationship with Russia at this point declining at such a precipitous rate that we can't even really talk to them in this arms control venue, which for many decades has been kind of a safe place for us to continue our dialogue in a topic where, you know, even though we disagreed on other political things. So I know that's a big question, but Steve put out some ideas for how we continue to proceed. But what do you think some of the dangers are? From the perspective of the military implications of the violation, we have time. Military systems do not develop overnight. Even if, according to the administration, Russia has not yet deployed this cruise missile but may be close to doing so, we do not have a weapons system to deploy in response. So of course it would seem precipitous to pull out of the treaty and then start developing the system that shows up 15 years from now. That, from a military perspective, we have time to try and do everything else besides. And in the background, start doing studies as Steve said on with the responses. From a political perspective, there are a lot of pressures to wrap this up soon. When Secretary of Defense Ash Carter testified in his nomination hearings when other administration officials have testified and they lay out the three options that Steve mentioned, the defense, the counter force, and the countervailing, they all conclude with a statement saying, we're not gonna wait forever. We don't have unlimited patience. From a political perspective, both due to pressure from the Congress to do something and pressure in the international community to respond with some sense of spine to Russian provocation, whatever the provocation is. If Russia keeps taking steps that we go, oh, let's sit and talk about it, whatever the issue, those things add up. So from a political perspective, we need a more, we may need a more timely, robust response. But from a military perspective, there's no rush. If I can tell you, I think Amy's right in terms of the political pressures domestically, although my guess is in terms of external political pressure, I think we have more time. I mean, I've not seen any NATO allies or Japan or South Korea pushing for the U.S. to withdraw. I think they wanna see a resolution on this, but my guess is the clock for an American response is going to be much longer internationally than it will be domestically. Paul, did you wanna comment on that? Yeah, I tend to agree generally with what's said. And it's important to remember this new Russian missile is yet to be deployed. So in a sense, we have time to let this unfold and give diplomacy a chance to operate, at least for some time to come until they actually start to move forward. It looked like they're gonna move forward with deployment. But then again, you have to look at what they're doing now right now. They seem to be stonewalling us for the most part. They haven't really acknowledged that there's anything here. They said, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We've taken a look at it and the case has closed. So at some point, even if they haven't deployed, if they continue to show this kind of a bad faith approach to solving the issue, then we may have to think about moving forward with some kind of other countermeasures. So we're gonna open the floor to questions. We have people roving with microphones. And when you ask a question, I just ask that you identify yourself and if you have an affiliation, do that. Keep it relatively short and make it a question. And I'm gonna pass the baton over to Paul and I just want to thank you all. This is a great panel. All right, let's go ahead and take the gentleman here in the blue suit first, please. Mike Massetic, PBS Online NewsHour. I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but there is a thing about timing. And a lot of this is developing within the context of Ukraine. And so where do you see politically the growing disputes over Ukraine vis-a-vis this missile issue? For the State Department to have a compliance report come out in July of 2014, declaring that this was a violation, they would have had to start reviewing this issue years prior to that, both because they were collecting information and because just bureaucratically to get a report out of the State Department, it has to run around the whole interagency several times. So it would be a feat of an unimaginable bureaucratic speed to have Ukraine begin in March of 2014 and the administration prepare an accusation for July. So it may be clear that there is a relationship between U.S. dissatisfaction with a range of Russian activities and the U.S. unwillingness to keep researching this subject, but I don't think it is possible to say that the United States discovered this subject because it was dissatisfied with the Ukraine issue. They're clearly, even given the timeframes that members of Congress have pointed out and the administration have pointed out between 2008, 2011, we first raised this with the Russians in 2013, there was something going on before then and if they only decided to shake it loose because Russia invaded Crimea and Ukraine, the report wouldn't have been ready three months later. I agree with that, just let me add one thought is I think the Ukraine crisis may complicate the resolution of this INF dispute, unfortunately, because in the past we have been able to delink those kinds of issues, not entirely, but very productively for the most part, but I do think that the timing of when the Russians might engage and the kinds of concessions that might need to be made to resolve this could be impacted by Ukraine. So another question from this side, young lady on front here. Hey everybody, thank you so much for a concise and clear review of the issues. My name is Patricia Huffman and I'm a graduate student at GW's Elliott School, former resident of Ukraine also. Where's Turkey in all this? I think they're playing a peripheral role here. They've been briefed by the US in terms of what's going on with INF and they have been a contributor to the unanimously held position of what the US proposes to do to try to resolve the treaty. They would be in the line of fire theoretically very closely to any future potential deployment of medium range missiles. Some have speculated that deployment of medium range missiles could threaten to undermine our extended deterrent commitment, the theory being that we the US guarantee the security of our allies, including up to and including the use of nuclear weapons if they're threatened up for the last 50 some years, the Turks have been a beneficiary of that commitment as well. If for some reason, some very difficult to foresee reason, they became less confident in our extended deterrent commitment as a result of this deployment, then theoretically they might decide that they wanna start exploring, developing their own independent deterrent. But I see that is highly unlikely at this point. I would just add that when I talked about the US government developing more usable information, more detailed information for allies, Turkey would wanna be one of the key targets. Because if you look over the last four or five years, the Russians have invested significant effort in developing a relationship with Turkey. So for example, when they canceled the South Stream gas pipeline, they replaced it with a Turkey stream, additional pipelines to Turkey. And so one of the countries that I would like to have Mr. Lavrov going to Mr. Putin and saying, the Turks are really unhappy, Turkey would be one. And so again, the more information we get to countries like that, I think that then begins to increase the prospects that we can make the Kremlin care about the political damage that this kind of issue is creating for them. From this side, gentlemen up front, please. Thank you, Richard Fieldhouse, recent alumni of the Senate Armed Service Committee. Good to see you all again. One of the questions that I think is important to, at least imagine ahead of time, is what resolution of this dispute would look like. If this is indeed a case of Russia having tested but not deployed a ground launch cruise missile, how do we envision resolving? I assume we can't untest a missile. But in terms of thinking through, how do you actually get to a point where we say Russia is back in compliance, full compliance with the treaty, which is our objective as we understand it? Thank you. The administration has on several occasions made comments about this, suggesting that they're looking for verification and transparency of the elimination of the capability. I could look through my notes and find the exact words, but generally what you would be looking for, if you got to the point where Steve says it's hard to have an SVC meeting on this if Russia doesn't even admit there's a missile, but if you got to the point where Russia said, all right, so we made a mistake, we goofed, there's a missile, what do you want us to do about it? Then the technical people could get together and say, okay, let's go look what stages of which missiles made this a violation and you'll eliminate that and when you are testing a missile that you claim is not this missile, we'll have inspections or data exchanges. So you try and put the missile that's been tested back in a box and make sure that everything else that continues to be tested is outside the box, so therefore you have to define the box and that would be a technical definition of what is permitted and prohibited to make sure it doesn't happen again. Clearly any knowledge they gained, you can't take away, but if that knowledge was gained for a specific weapons system and we can identify that weapons system, you'd want to go wash them, crush the motors or something like that, but it literally comes down to defining a box that they can't be in and making sure everything else is outside the box. Another question, gentlemen, over here in the front. I'm Casey Murphy with Navy Nuclear Weapons Policy. So I understand we're committed to deterring on behalf of our allies, but it doesn't sound like Europe's too concerned with this and they can't target us, so why are we making a huge deal about it since France and Britain already have their own deterrence and things along that lines? No, I think it's a concern because Russia is violating the treaty and even if, I think militarily, the direct risk to the United States here is rather low, but it is a risk to American allies. It is a threat to American forces that are deployed in Europe and Asia, so I think we have that concern there, but above and beyond that, you want to take a fairly strong position that when you sign a treaty, you have a legal, moral obligation to observe that treaty. And you don't want the Russians to get off the hook here because if they do, then do they start shipping away to other treaties like, for example, the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty? So I think in administrations going back 35, 40 years, when there has been a violation, there's been a fairly serious effort to pursue that and it's not just related to that specific violation but it's preserving the idea that treaties once signed will be observed. We've had arms control treaties with the Soviet Union and Russia for decades and each of these treaties contains a compliance review process where whether it's the Standing Consultative Commission under the ABM Treaty, the Bilateral Commission under the Old Star Treaty, the New Star Treaty has a commission. The point of these commissions is when something comes up because you can't think of every contingency when you're writing a treaty. So when something comes up, oh, you drove that truck outside the border of the base, fixed that, and this happened in the Old Star Treaty, we moved the borders. So when things come up, you sit down, you work together so that you either clarify the language in the treaty, clarify the activity, or stop doing the activity. There's a process for resolving compliance concerns. You don't get to the point of declaring a violation. That's really rare until the compliance concerns can't be resolved. So the fact that the administration declared this a violation means we've already moved beyond the oh, it doesn't matter phase two. It has to really matter or we wouldn't have done it. So when you can't take the usual steps of working together to resolve it and you're at that point, it's a big deal. Whether or not it's a military threat, and I've had allies in the Eastern part of Europe look at me and say, we're not worried, they already can target us with missiles. But that's not the point. The point is the process is seriously undermined when you get to the point that you have to declare a violation and you just can't let it go. John, I'm on the front. Hi, I'm David Riley from the British Embassy here in Washington. We mentioned Ukraine, but Ukraine in many ways is a symptom of a Russia which is becoming increasing the divergence from the West in terms of its values, its actions and its rhetoric, which makes me think, I mean, at what point does this become easier to resolve or more accurately, what are the circumstances that allow us to resolve this question? I think that's a good, it's difficult for me to see an early resolution of the specific dispute regarding the INF Treaty in part because the political atmosphere is just so negative at this point. And I agree, this I think is a symptom of a broader deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations, which I believe is driven by a combination of Russian domestic political concerns, which I think is probably the main driver for what they're doing in Ukraine. But also a view in the Kremlin, which I think is wrong, but I think is shared by Vladimir Putin and others that the post Cold War security order in Europe has worked out in a way that disadvantages Russia and they're about to change that, or they're trying to change that. I think until you get past that and get Russia looking at these issues in a different way in a more cooperative way, it's going to be difficult to see a resolution of this specific issue related to the INF Treaty. You let me add also that the Russians have been better at complying with agreements where they have more parity with the U.S. And one of the complaints that they've had over the last 10 years, and we've seen this with the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, that as European geopolitical situation has evolved, as NATO's expanded to the East, and as the U.S. has deployed some of the much more capable military equipment that they perceive that these agreements now are working in a way that disadvantages them and that these kinds of specific agreements that they see as most disadvantages to CFE and the INF have come under stress. They've usually voiced their concerns about them in quite a vigorous way for many years prior to taking some kind of action. What we saw that they suspended CFE, now we see that they're committing what some have termed a soft violation of INF. And so I do think it's part of a symptomatic divergence from the West. Thank you, Paul, Joyle, NSI. Sharon made a comment before she left that there was some track two discussions which Amy, you participated in, were all there. Yeah, could you give us, the indication was that it foretold the tension within the relationship and I'm wondering if you could give us a more specific flavor as to those who were in attendance who self-selected themselves to participate. And what did they say and did the issues that we're discussing today emerge in those discussions? I think that this could be helpful to understand the broader context that we're up against. All right, well, I have to be a little careful here because those discussions were off the record. But what I can say is some of the public statements that were made by some of the participants indicate that there is considerable concern from this particular group about the divergence of the balance in the INF treaty over time as a result of some of the geopolitical changes. Not everybody in that room was of a like mind. But I think there is some concern that as it's evolved it's not working to rush as interest and you could sense that but there's also a sense of regret about all this because some of the people in that room were of the mind, they have a lot invested in the development of the arms control regime that we have been operating under successfully since the early 60s and there is some grave concerns on the part of our Russian counterparts that we've already had some problems with CFE, we've got problems in Ukraine. Could the collapse of INF lead to the collapse of the larger arms control regime in general? And so maybe I'll stop there before I stray into unforbidden territory, I should say. Thank you all for this great talk, Joshua Noonan, US government. So do you see the US diplomatic signals given to allies in East Asia on counter A2AD strategy being muddled by our talk on INF and our qualms with the Russians on their INF violations? Yeah, could you clarify that a little bit? A2AD, right? So the area anti-access area denial strategy. There were articles, various articles in journals about the use of medium and short range ballistic missiles against Chinese threats towards South Asian structure or south. Yeah, now again, I've seen the same articles. As far as I can tell the interest in intermediate range ballistic missiles to counter the Chinese anti-access capabilities are outside the US government at this point. And again, the articles that I've read don't yet answer to my mind in a serious way the question of where you would put these things. An intermediate range missile based at Vandenberg Air Force in California is gonna fall into the Pacific Ocean. It's not gonna be able to reach China. So you have to have basing countries close to China within a couple of thousand kilometers that would be willing to host those missiles. And when I look at those countries, despite their concerns about China, I don't see anybody giving them say, here, here, I'm prepared to take that kind of missile. And so it doesn't really make sense as a counter to the Chinese unless you have a place to put it. Let me just also say that the Chinese threat is growing as it is, anti-access capabilities come under the, was the subject of a study by the RAND Corporation in 2012 where they were specifically tasked to look at the question, if the US were freed from its obligations under the INF Treaty, what kind of systems would we want to build? Why would we need them? And they looked at a number of threats in both mostly in Asia, Iran, they looked at China, they looked at South Asia, the Pacific Indian dispute. They didn't really focus on Russia interestingly enough, probably because of the, at that point that was that predated the Ukraine crisis. And what they concluded in every case was, the US really didn't need these missiles. The only close call was China. And even there, the sense was, because of what Steve said about the difficulty of basing and plus the availability of very, very capable alternatives, sea launched, air launched cruise missiles, penetrating stealth bombers, B2 bombers that can fly intercontinental range to drop payloads. They did not really think that there was a real need for these missiles at this point. They did hedge and say, maybe down the road, we should keep our eye on it and review this issue from time to time. But no, another question for the gentleman here. Yes, I'm Paul Joyle again. I'd like to ask the panel to respond to our naval officers question about what this, why this is an important issue, not based on treaties alone and the need to enforce that, but the strategic value of making sure that pressure points are not continued to be put on the NATO alliance. And as we know that during the Cold War period, one of the strategic goals of the Soviet Union was decoupling the Atlantic alliance. And in some ways, there are efforts being undertaken, especially because of the Ukrainian crisis to put pressure on some of the pressure points within the alliance. Could you talk about the importance of the treaty and making sure that it is enforced from that perspective? Let me start with a couple of comments. First, looking at sort of the general situation in Europe right now in Russia, I would argue and I have argued that NATO should be taking steps, but they should be primarily actually solely focused on bolstering conventional forces and bolstering the alliance's conventional force presence in central Europe and the Baltic region. The military value of the INF treaty, in a world in which the United States and Russia will each have, or be allowed to have, up to 1,550 deployed strategic weapons, most of which are intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine launch ballistic missiles that can get through to the targets with pretty much near certainty. I'm not sure that a couple of hundred Russian INF missiles, if the Russians chose to deploy, would change the equation all that much. Now, one could have made a similar argument back in 1979, but NATO still chose to deploy a Persian II and ground launch cruise missiles to balance. And it got to this question, which Paul referenced, this issue of extended deterrence and not just deterring the Russians, but also assuring allies that we would be there. And I sometimes worry that when we've looked at these problems historically, this is really a software problem. It's, does the leader of Estonia, does the leader of Poland, do they have confidence that if it came down to it, an American president would be prepared to use a nuclear weapon to defend them? And the solutions we come up with are hardware. So back in the early 1960s, it was the multilateral nuclear force. We were gonna build a NATO Navy with NATO nuclear missiles. It was the INF decision back in 1979. And so we built nuclear weapons that probably didn't do much in terms of the military balance, but these were ways to assure folks. So my own view is, I think, as we think through how to deal with this, we ought to be smart and look at ways, are there ways to assure allies without perhaps spending lots of money on a militarism that we may not need and may not give us that much additional capability. And it also goes down, this is one of these issues that when I was making the argument back in the early 1980s for the wisdom of deploying Pershing-2 and ground launch cruise missiles, the European audiences with whom I spoke never really pressed me on the point because the whole logic for putting American missiles in Europe was that you would think an American president would be more likely to launch a Pershing-2 from Germany at the Soviet Union than he or she would be to launch a Minuteman-3 from North Dakota at the Soviet Union. And that's sort of suggesting that in Moscow they might have a different reaction. Oh, it's a Pershing-2 from Germany. We're not gonna respond or we're gonna respond. My own guess is that the Soviet and the Russian reaction would be an American nuclear weapon just landed on our territory and they wouldn't pay too much attention from where it came. Back in 1987 and 88 when the Senate was holding hearings on the INF Treaty, were you there yet? There were interesting discussions and it's hard to tell which way this kind of point would cut today but in the arguments against the INF Treaty there was this discussion that the Soviet Union if they got rid of all their intermediate range missiles could just retarget their long range ballistic missiles so they could hit Europe and therefore the treaty was useless. It meant the United States had to take its forces out of Europe and the Soviet Union could just retarget its systems on Europe. And that was true particularly since they had a shorter range, long range ballistic missile, the SS-11 that many of them were already targeted on Europe. The argument being that if the United States wasn't there with physical missiles to support its allies, as Steve just mentioned, then we couldn't deter Russia from attacking or the Soviet Union from attacking Europe. It was a deterrence, action, interaction, reaction argument that when you stepped back and looked at it didn't make a lot of sense because as Steve said, the Soviets wouldn't care where the missile came from. But the debate about the Soviet ability to target European allies with nuclear weapons didn't depend on them having intermediate range missiles in Europe. So right now today the debate about the Russians being able to target US allies in Europe with nuclear weapons has nothing to do with whether or not they have intermediate range missiles. Bringing it back to it's a political issue. It's not a military issue. If some of the allies, or if the allies feel differently threatened by Russian systems, they may react differently. Just as there was this question about whether the United States would react with a US missile, if Russia only has shorter range systems, the ice ganders that can reach Poland and the Baltes, but they can't reach Germany or France or the UK, maybe Germany or France or the UK will let the Eastern allies be on their own. That's a political question and it needs a political answer. It's not a missile question and a nuclear question. And the same is true now with that as it was true in 87. But the political symbolism remains a driving factor here. Let me just differ just slightly. And that is, I agree with Steve that if we deploy a hundred, if the Russians deploy a hundred or 200 cruise missiles that probably won't make much of a difference. But really depends on what they deploy to and how many we're talking about and a slightly extended short range missile that can go from 500 to 1,000 kilometers, that won't probably change the balance anymore. But if they start to deploy 2,000, 3,000 kilometer range missiles, dual capable, potentially nuclear armed, now all of a sudden you've got a different order of magnitude problem. And so over time also you have to look at the long term what this could lead to once the floodgates are open as the saying often goes. Yeah. Within our first talking point should be having a nice good PowerPoint graph to show the Chinese what a intermediate range missile with a two to 3,000 kilometer range could do in terms of covering the Chinese targets. Any other questions? Let me get somebody new in the back please. My name is Dick Tonkins. I'm with the Wilson Center. Mr. Schwartz, you outlined why Russia perceives adherence to the INF as a strategic disadvantage in many ways given that it's surrounded by nations that do not have such obligations. Just to flip the conversation on its head for a moment, would it be strategically wise for Russia to begin deploying this class of missile again? Could you repeat the last part? Would it be strategically wise for Russia to begin deploying this class of missile once again? Well, I think the Russians are concerned about an imbalance, an imbalance, growing imbalance with states in Asia. I would have to submit that I don't think this is really the principal issue that they have. What's driving them is not these newly emerging Asian countries. I think their principal concern is NATO and the US where they feel more stressed, where they have a greater imbalance in conventional, more usable military force. But I think ultimately there is something to this. There isn't a great imbalance, especially in respect of China. Now they claim that they're strategic partners with China and there's nothing, no imminent threat on the horizon and that's certainly true. But like all good strategists, they have to look at capability, not necessarily intent or what's coming down the pipe. So they do want to address this imbalance. There's two ways they can address that imbalance. One is to deploy their own missiles in response. And the other way is through arms control. Arms control here would mean potentially expanding or multilateralizing the INF treaty to bring in some of these new powers. And that's an approach that the US and Russia are both on board with, at least in principle. The Chinese and the Iranians are not ready to sign up for that at this point primarily because these systems are central to their military and strategic capability and they're not inclined to give them up to put themselves at a disadvantage in the strategic balance. But one of the things that, I'll just segue a little bit, one of the things that's often discussed about when you talk about INF is, well, Russia has this imbalance. Sure, we've got to resolve the dispute first before we could talk with them realistically about potential amendments. But some have asked, how could the INF treaty be amended to alleviate the Russian concerns, assuming that they are legitimate and that would require obviously some real close scrutiny. But potentially amending the agreement to include the Chinese and the Iranians would help to at least offset one of the twin imbalances I spoke about to bring those countries in. That would bring them down to part of the global zero regime. They'd still have to have a conventional imbalance in Europe, but at least it would be better than where they are now. Anybody else? If I get maybe a different perspective, I would actually argue that the Russians don't need to worry about this at this point. If you look at the sum total of the Russian nuclear arsenal, it's not just 1,515 deployed strategic warheads that they'll be allowed under new start. But the Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia today has about 4,500 total nuclear weapons in its arsenal. So it's not just strategic, it's also excluding the class of intermediate range nuclear missiles, its gravity bombs, its sea launch cruise missiles. And so yes, if you look at just INF missiles, the Chinese have some, the Russians have none, that's a huge Chinese advantage perhaps. But if you look at the sum total of the Russian nuclear arsenal, it just dwarfs anything that the Chinese can bring to bear. So as long as you're talking about a Russian nuclear arsenal of its current size, 4,000 nuclear weapons, 4,500 nuclear weapons, which is about the size of the total US nuclear arsenal, and everybody else, the next highest country number three is France at 300 weapons. It's very hard to see the Russians making a serious claim that because some neighboring country has 30 or 40 intermediate range missiles that they're at a disadvantage. Come back to the gentleman up front here. You've alluded a couple of times to the concerns about the anti-ballistic missile system. How much the Romania, et cetera, and Poland, how much of this is a factor? I mean, obviously there are concerns about the imbalance with NATO or the major factor, but where does the anti-ballistic missile factor come in? It's a wonderful whipping boy. The Russians have complained obviously about US missile defense systems since the first time the US tested in missile interceptor decades ago. In the context of deploying missile defenses in Europe, either under the Bush administration's plan for a single site of interceptors in a single radar or the Obama administration's plan for the European-phased adaptive approach, it is used, our missile defense systems in Europe are used as the excuse for whatever Russia wants to complain about that day or whatever they wanna support. They have over the years insisted they need to get out from under the INF Treaty so that they can target missile defense sites. They have argued that ships in Danish ships carrying missile defense radars are now subject to attack. They may or may not actually believe that our missile defense systems in Europe are targeted at them. They've seen every bit of evidence to prove it's not and they don't accept the evidence, but every time they bring up any kind of military response that they wanna deploy in Europe or around Europe, they use the missile defense deployments as an excuse for it. I am not privy to their internal conversations. I don't know if it's an excuse or real, but they say it all the time. The INF violation on the face of it is unrelated to the missile defense issues because it's a program that's been going on on its own. They develop their own offensive missile systems for their own internal reasons, but if they wanna make an excuse about why they're doing it, missile defense is a wonderful whipping boy for them. This is a long-standing tradition in Moscow. I recall at one point in 1981 or 82 with the negotiations on intermediate range nuclear missiles with a Soviet delegation with a straight face made the argument that the SS-20 deployment was in fact a response to the Pershing-2 even though development of the SS-20 began seven years before the Pershing-2. Mr. Gaffney, this will have to be the last question as well. I'm Hank Gaffney. I was deeply involved in this whole process back in ISA, OSD-ISA, and I prepared the first SS-20 briefing to the NATO nuclear planning group back in, it was November 1956, 1976. And then I set up the process and laid out the options which led to the Euro missiles. We have to remember that the allies relied on the most absurd proposition of all, which was that when war broke out in Europe, Syop would take out the SS-4s and 5s. And therefore when the SS-20 came along, which was mobile, that was no longer the case, although they didn't express that too much. But whatever, and the SS-20 only gained in Portugal and water as in target coverage. But it was interesting that I finally got, having watched all the overheads as the SS-20 developed, I finally got to visit a former SS-20 site at Taikovl outside Moscow in 1998. Got to kick the tires of the SS-25 that replaced it and said, oh, thank God, they're no longer aimed at Europe, they're only aimed at the U.S. Guess we'll let that stand as a comment. Well, look, I wanna thank all of you for attending here and I wanna give a special thanks to our panelists, Steve and Piper, Amy Wolfe. They did an outstanding job, I think of giving a lot of insight into what's going on with this dispute and looking at it from various angles. And I wanna just thank all of you again for coming on a late July date for this kind of event. So, thanks.