Ritter Writes, Having No Common Arms Control Language Is a ‘Lexicon for Disaster’

Dec. 19, 2022 (EIRNS)—Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, in a column posted on Consortium News today, argues that the loss of what was once a common perspective shared by Washington and Moscow on arms control is a “lexicon for disaster.” Ritter notes that Dec. 8 is the anniversary of the signing of the INF Treaty by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988. That treaty, Ritter indicates, was not just the result of specific hard-nosed negotiations on eliminating intermediate range missiles from Europe, but also the product of decades of talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that produced a common language and common understanding of what arms control meant. The termination of that treaty, by the Trump Administration in 2019, however, “is part and parcel of an overall trend which has seen arms control as an institution—and a concept—decline in the eyes of policy makers in both Washington and Moscow.” Whereas arms control was once seen by both sides as mutually beneficial, now the U.S. perspective is that arms control is pursued “to promote the national security interest,” Ritter writes. “And by arms control, we mean arms increase.”

Ritter points to two fundamental changes in the U.S. approach, in addition to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM and INF Treaties, which have accelerated the war danger. The first is the idea that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on the U.S. and/or its allies. This happened under the GW Bush Administration, replacing it with a policy of nuclear pre-emption.

The second was the loss of reciprocity, that is, that the two parties in an arms control agreement treat each other as they would want to be treated. After that change, Russian inspectors coming to the U.S. under the New START treaty, were unable to come to the U.S. in July 2022 due to European sanctions on commercial air travel. The Russians retaliated by denying entry to a U.S. inspection team attempting to go to Russia in August, citing issues of reciprocity. Thus, a crucial element of implementing New START is now not functioning. The future of the treaty itself is now uncertain.

“With no treaties, there is no verification of reality. Both the U.S. and Russian arsenals will become untethered from treaty-based constraint, leading to a new arms race for which there can be only one finishing line—total nuclear war,” Ritter concludes. “Before either side can resume talking to one another, however, they must first re-learn the common language of disarmament. Because the current semantics of arms control is little more than a lexicon for disaster.”