Arms Control Association Aims at Bolton as Saboteur of Arms Control Agreements

June 29, 2019 (EIRNS)—Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, posted an article on the ACA’s website in the hours after the Putin-Trump summit meeting in which he reported that while Trump expressed his desire to work with the Russians on the “arms race,” it was National Security Adviser John Bolton who blocked a proposal supported by both the Pentagon and the State Department to engage in strategic stability talks with Moscow and who talked Trump into ditching the INF Treaty. Kimball also reports that the idea of attempting to bring China into an arms control arrangement to replace New START, as well as trying to include Russia’s non-strategic nuclear weapons stockpile were also Bolton’s ideas, not with the intention of expanding New START but of sabotaging its renewal, since no agreement could be reached on either proposal before the treaty expires in 2021.

EIR does not have independent confirmation of Kimball’s specific charges against Bolton, but they are consistent with Bolton’s well-known animus against arms control in general.