How to Respond to Russia's INF Treaty Violation

When The New York Times reported that Russia had likely deployed a nuclear-armed cruise missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, declared the treaty “in tatters” and the deployment a lesson “about the price of not confronting aggression.” Unable to generate a policy response from the Obama administration, Chairman Thornberry and his committee have now inserted provisions in their annual defense policy bill directing a more controversial response: not only must the administration establish a program to develop a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) and review options for modifying existing missiles for this purpose, but it also must conduct a 15 month review of Russian actions to determine if the Federation has, in each of three consecutive 120-day periods, been in violation of the treaty. Should the answer be yes, the bill states “the United States, as a matter of law, would no longer be bound by the prohibitions set forth in Article VI of the INF Treaty,” meaning the U.S. would be free to test and deploy banned missiles.

In the latter concern, the administration has a point. Despite Russia’s violations of the INF Treaty, as well as its nuclear modernization efforts and integration of nuclear weapons into its strategic and European theater exercises, the House Armed Services Committee is considerably out front of the political leadership and publics of most U.S. allies. To put it bluntly, there is no consensus within the alliance of how to respond to the Russian violation and its nuclear threats. And the failure to create one before taking such dramatic steps as the House is putting forward could, in fact, make it more difficult, not easier, to address the underlying strategic problem the alliance is facing.

If admitting the existence of a problem is the first step towards recovery, then discussing Russian nuclear behavior only behind the closed doors of the alliance will not be sufficient. To generate the political and public support necessary to address the imbalance will require more public airing and discussion of Russian exercises, threats, and violations of the INF Treaty. Given the widespread sentiment against nuclear arms in most Europe countries, it will undoubtedly be a challenge, but it’s essential if any progress is to be made on building political support for an alliance-wide reconsideration of the theater deterrent.

That discussion should also be coupled with understanding how the Kremlin sees the possible use of its theater nuclear capabilities and its ties to conventional conflict. Having dropped its pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict, Moscow appears to believe that the threat to use such weapons can be employed to resolve a continental conventional conflict on its own terms. While in the first days of conflict, Russia’s military forces might well overwhelm NATO’s easternmost states with a conventional assault, they would struggle to sustain that campaign and, in time, would be susceptible to a successful counter-assault by NATO forces. At this point, the Kremlin would brandish its nuclear arsenal to deter such an attack and secure its initial gains. Seen from this perspective, the strategic problem faced by NATO is both conventional and nuclear, with the weakness of the former compounded by a two-decade long neglect of its nuclear posture.

The alliance has of course taken steps to ameliorate the conventional shortfalls through increased defense spending among allies, additional air patrolling on alliance borders, deployments of battalion-sized battlegroups to the Baltic States, and the rotation of a US Army armor brigade to Poland. But few analysts think these measures, while important for deterrence, are sufficient or that NATO will want to meet Russian conventional forces soldier-for-soldier, tank-for-tank, or plane-for-plane.

So, what should be done?

First, the alliance should not lose sight of the potential of conventional, long-range strike weapons. Expanding significantly members’ strike capabilities would allow the alliance to substantially complicate the massing of Russian forces. This could well include the US transfer of cruise missile technology to allies in the East, a measure not in violation of the INF accord.

But these steps represent only a partial solution; a longer-term response involves modernization of theater-based nuclear weapons and delivery platforms.

Russia’s high-end air defenses minimize the deterrence effect of the American nuclear gravity bombs currently in Europe, particularly given the alliance’s reliance on 4^th generation aircraft to deliver them. To reclaim a meaningful, flexible deterrent, the US should deploy, when ready, the stealthy, air-launched Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) missile cruise missiles, which has scalable yields, and dual-capable F-35s. Possessing munitions and a platform for delivering them such as these would give the alliance prompt, non-escalatory capabilities, which would have a far greater chance of penetrating the enemy’s air and missile defense layer.

Further, reintroducing the TLAM-N, a Tomahawk missile fitted with a nuclear warhead, would not violate the INF Treaty—it being a sea-launched asset—but would signal to Russia that violating the Treaty has consequences and give the US, and thus its allies, another prompt nuclear asset in theater. Although all old TLAM-N warheads have been dismantled, the missile could be modified to work with existing warheads that are, essentially, updated versions of the old TLAM-N warhead.

Keeping such missiles at sea simplifies the political challenge of modifying the alliance’s nuclear posture; there are no host-nations to work with or mollify. But US ground-launched missiles do have the advantage of being more readily “on station” than sea-launched and, in Poland and Romania, are more likely to be welcomed. Yet pursuing that avenue would violate the INF Treaty—at minimum a politically complicated move, which brings us back to the challenge of politics and public opinion.

In both the House and the Senate, measures have been proposed to fund research and development of a new ground-launched intermediate-range missile, with the idea presumably that this is the stick that may ultimately be necessary to goad Moscow back into being INF Treaty compliant. The argument goes that it was precisely the decision to deploy GLCMs and Pershing II missiles by the Reagan Administration in the 1980s that “incentivized” the Kremlin to agree to eliminate this category of weapons altogether.  But it would be good to remember that this effort was only successful after a massive campaign by the US and NATO states to convince their publics that the deployments were necessary—and even then, it was a close run effort.

The steps outlined above do not require the US to abandon the INF Treaty just yet but do respond to the threat posed by the Russian violation and its theater-related nuclear posturing. This is not to argue that the US should not pull out of the treaty if Russia remains noncompliant. But before it does so, the US and its more willing allies must engage in a great deal of public diplomacy if we are to avoid causing unnecessary and counterproductive fractures within the alliance.

Gary Schmitt is the co-director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where James Cunningham is a senior research associate.