--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here's a disturbing fact. A former KGB thug and a former reality TV star control over 90% of the world's nuclear weapons. I've never thought about it in those terms before. A present KGB thug. Sorry. And maybe more disturbing still, the reality TV star, our president, just said he plans to rip up a big agreement that limits all those weapons.
--:-- [Sound of a glass being poured]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: John Bolton arrived in Moscow as the U.S. announced plans to withdraw from a historic nuclear treaty. This meeting has provoked a very strong reaction in Russia. The deputy foreign minister said that Russia is intended to mobilize the international community in order to preserve the INF Treaty.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: I feel like I need a scotch. I'm Alex Bell, the senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Before that, I worked on arms control at the State Department. I spend most of my waking hours thinking about arms agreements, and I was still surprised by this news. And worried for this state of strategic stability in Europe and around the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is really the foundation for the modern arms control regime that's pulled back just these excessive arsenals that the U.S. and the former Soviet Union built up and to abandon it on the sidelines of a political rally really was among the more alarming things I've seen him do.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: We're the ones that have stayed in the agreement, and we've honored the agreement, but Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So we're going to terminate the agreement. We're going to pull out. It's unclear to me that we even told our allies that this announcement by the president would be happening, and there's certainly no way that every capital in Europe, every member of NATO knew that that was going to happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: After President Trump made this announcement on Saturday, we had Germans foreign ministry responding and saying that this treaty affects some of the core interests of European allies. And Germany would have liked to have been consulted if the U.S. is going to withdraw.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: I'm hard pressed to even think of a time that the president has brought up the INF Treaty before he so sort of casually tossed it away. President Trump's also called for greatly strengthening U.S. nuclear weapons. They should have been done years ago until people come to their senses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So why? Why is President Trump doing this? The president at this point really seems to be under the influence of Ambassador Bolton, who has made no effort to hide his disdain for arms control throughout the course of his career.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: He's wanted to get out of this treaty forever. He wrote an op-ed in 2011 in the Wall Street Journal, complete with a nice little sexist quip at the beginning of it, advocating for the withdrawal of this treaty that had nothing to do with a Russian violation of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If this is just Ambassador Bolton whispering in Trump's ear, what's motivating him? Just this idea that no one should restrict American military might?
--:-- Alexandra Bell: It's exactly that. Ambassador Bolton feels like the U.S. should be able to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, build whatever it wants, threaten whoever they want to threaten. He doesn't see the purpose in alliances. He thinks that countries around the world will bend to our will.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that's a very serious gamble to make as we sort of enter a world in which we aren't, in fact, the only country with money and influence to throw around.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: What exactly is this treaty, the INF? What exactly does it do?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ah. So the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is a treaty between the U.S. and Russia, also tends to be forgotten. Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are also parties to the treaty. Now, this treaty dates back to 1987, and it prohibits Russia and the U.S. from having, producing, or testing ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: It's not necessarily just nuclear missiles. It's any missile that falls in this range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Unfortunately, in 2014, the U.S. publicly declared that Russia was in violation of the treaty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president sent a letter Monday to Russian President Vladimir Putin calling on Russia to observe the terms of the treaty. The administration believes that Russia has tested ground-launched missiles, a clear violation of a treaty nearly 30 years old.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: The details at the time were slim for various reasons related to the intelligence surrounding the violation. But as we know now, the Russians have produced, flight-tested, and deployed a missile called the 9M729. Sounds scary. They all have names like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Actually, I believe NATO uses the designator the screwdriver because Russia is screwing NATO with this missile. Wait, wait. NATO comes up with, like, pet names for Russian bombs? Someone has a missile called Satan. And French have really fantastic names for their missiles like Le Terrible and stuff like that.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: It's a sort of strange masculine culture that sort of imbues this whole space. Figures. So the Russians decided to produce this missile. We caught them. So yes it is reasonable to be angry at Russia over this violation It is reasonable to take appropriate counter It is reasonable to tell them our patience is not unlimited and that we need to go to the table.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But we've had one formal dialogue about this in 640-some days. That's not pressing diplomatically. That's not exhausting every possible option we have to fix this treaty.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: and I don't think you'll see a very receptive Congress when it comes to appropriating and authorizing the production of this class of missile that we worked so hard to get rid of.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's a big, big mistake to flippantly get out of this historic agreement that Reagan and Gorbachev signed. This was a big part of Reagan's legacy and we should not get rid of it.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: I think it's worth considering there is sort of bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill for this particular move. As much as there's not a lot of love for Russia, there is an understanding that Russia is the only country on this planet that poses an existential threat to the United States through its very wide and capable nuclear arsenal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the last thing that we need to do is encourage them in any way to build up, forcing us to then build up and respond. And I think leaders on Capitol Hill see that this could be incredibly destabilizing and set off sort of a chain of events.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: The other treaty that seems to be on the chopping block in Ambassador Bolton's mind is the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which actually allows us to conduct 18 inspections a year inside Russian strategic forces facilities. We get to go and look at their stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And without that kind of access to Russian facilities, I think estimates from the intelligence community said it would be an additional $8 to $9 billion a year just to figure out what we get for free through the new START treaty.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: So the United States is potentially going to lose a bunch of money and access, but this isn't the 1960s, right? Other countries benefit by that a lot more now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is China just sitting back with its feet up enjoying all this?
--:-- Alexandra Bell: Yeah, I mean, China is a concern in this whole discussion because they are not party to the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty. That's a particular concern to the Russians who have to share that very large border with them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there's a general idea because 95% or so of China's missiles are at this intermediate range, there's nothing to be done about it that we couldn't possibly pull them into any structure to control those possible missiles.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: I find that sort of needlessly defeatist. There's been slow, if any, attempts to talk to China about these military and strategic issues. And we really need to be putting more effort into that, not just assuming everything is a nail.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we just need more hammers. This is a military deal. And Trump seems to fancy himself a very gung-ho military man, though, of course, you know, he didn't serve or anything. Nor did Ambassador Bolton.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: So how does the actual United States military feel about this? I don't think it's a necessarily uniform idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The parts of the military that have to think more about the European continent see this as destabilizing. On the other hand, in the Pacific theater, there have been pushes by various people, including Admiral Harris, who's now the ambassador to South Korea, that we need these ground launch cruise missile options in the Asia theater that the treaty constrains us too much when it comes to China.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: I think the response to that is actually from the mouths of our own military leaders. General Selva last year was testifying to the Senate saying, we don't need ground-launched cruise missile options. We have plenty of air and sea capabilities.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I don't know the last time they've checked a map, but the Pacific Theater is a lot of ocean and not a lot of land. There are not that many options for basing such a missile, nor are there countries that are going out of their way to raise their hand in Asia or Europe to host this kind of capability and become a target.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: So what comes next? Do Trump and Bolton notify all of our allies? What's going on? What the latest is? Does Russia strike back? What happens?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm sure our allies would like to know what's going on. The formal process to withdraw from the INF Treaty requires a notification with a justification of why you want to leave the treaty. And then it starts a six-month process. And after that six-month process, you can formally withdraw from the treaty.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: So that means that at any point, and I've talked to treaty lawyers about this, we could unnotify and decide to stay in the treaty after all. So there is time to fix this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But yes, people, NATO members, our allies in Asia will want to know what happened. And to the extent that there are countries and leaders and peoples around the world that want to see this treaty saved, they're going to have to lean on Putin and Trump to fix it.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: The last thing that Europe wants in particular is to see this treaty go away. Next up on today explained how to fix the treaty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: First, we're all going to have to remember how huge it was to even get the thing signed. You know what I like from my podcast? Some good podcast art Unladylike has some good podcast art It a beautifully painted middle finger flipping the bird The show is about what happens when women break the rules The written ones, the unwritten ones, the expectations of how women should be in society.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: It's about disrupting all that stuff. Kristen Conger and Caroline Irvin host, and they tackle questions through a lot of research and stories from rule-breaking ladies and a healthy dose of feminist rage.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Check out last week's episode called How to Change a Tire. Caroline and Kristen investigate with one handywoman who fixed a flat tire but broke her date.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: Unladylike, find it wherever you find your podcasts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alex, all this feels so vintage, so throwback. Like, when I get a push notification about the United States pulling out of an arms deal with Russia, I just can't help but ask myself what year it is.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: So let's go back to 1987. What did it mean when this treaty was signed? It really was a groundbreaking agreement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States kind of went full bore into the deployment of these shorter-range missiles, these intermediate-range missiles.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: They had a shorter flight time. They had unpredictable flight paths. and that presented an increased instability. There was huge public backlash in Europe. Shame on you! Shame on you!
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the United States, through the nuclear freeze movement, against these deployments. Familiar faces like Daniel Ellsberg and new faces. The American people will be hurt on this issue. We say no! We say no! We say no!
--:-- Alexandra Bell: It was making a tense situation worse. This accidental nuclear war was, you know, a readily possible scenario. And to their credit, Gorbachev and Reagan decided that, you know, we can take the step and eliminate this class of nuclear weapons and missiles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And really, honestly, turn the tide against the nuclear arms race that had been, you know, such a large part of the Cold War. Welcome to the White House. This ceremony and the treaty we're signing today are both excellent examples of the rewards of patience.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim, and I'm sure you're familiar with it. Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty, the maxim is dovey no provey, trust but verify.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You repeat that at every meeting. And we were finally getting past this almost insane situation that we had been in for a generation before it.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: A never-ending arms race. Yeah, where you were just hoping and relying on the fact that the U.S. and Russia wouldn't somehow make a miscalculation. In fact, we had several incidents. There were a couple.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Throughout the Cold War, we almost got into a nuclear war. One of the scariest anecdotes I ever heard was National Security Advisor Brzezinski, who was President Carter's National Security Advisor, got a call in the middle of the night. It was a false alarm.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: It turned out about an impending Russian nuclear strike. And he actually thought to himself that he wouldn't wake up his wife because he would rather just that she died peacefully in her sleep and not knowing that there was an incoming nuclear attack on Washington.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We talked about it on the very first episode of this podcast. Yeah, we got so lucky. INF actually, it came out of the Reykjavik summit, which was in 1986, in this tiny little house called Hofty House.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: That inside almost looks like something that would be in like a fairy tale, little gingerbread things. Oh, it's beautiful. I just Googled it. Yeah, it's gorgeous. It's like a Nordic White House.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The house itself is so tiny. At one point, apparently, U.S. officials were sort of packed away in a bathroom, like sitting on the edge of the tub and trying to negotiate through these possible offers we were getting from the Russians.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: And at that summit, Reagan and Gorbachev actually wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons entirely. The logistics and the reality of making that happen wasn't quite there. They couldn't quite reach it. But they were able to come out of that with the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On the Soviet side, over 1,500 deployed warheads will be removed, and all ground-launched intermediate-range missiles, including the SS-20s, will be destroyed.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: On our side, our entire complement of Pershing-2 and ground-launched cruise missiles, with some 400 deployed warheads, will all be destroyed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the importance of this treaty transcends numbers. That momentum led to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, and that drew down deployed strategic missiles around the world from about 12,000 down to 6,000.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: I mean, the idea that we had 12,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons ready to go at any time, really alarming. Which could destroy the entire planet how many times over?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh many times over yeah I mean there are studies that a small nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would set off a chain of events leading to a nuclear winter famine It doesn take that money to really disrupt the system
--:-- Alexandra Bell: And you know hence why there has been this sort of taboo against use And people have been trying for so long to control these weapons and these were hard fought.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And just because treaties start to fray at the edges and there are problems with them doesn't mean that they've outlived their utility or they can't possibly be fixed or that we can't keep it in place and then build something new.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: Are nuclear weapons still, 31 years later, the scariest weapons we have and the ones we need to most be concerned about? Yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it's easy to forget that because we don't talk about them much anymore. No, I mean, that's sort of the frustrating part of what I do is sort of having to go around and remind everybody that they should be scared.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: Remind us who's got them. Nine countries, the original five. So U.S., Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, then India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are nine people in this world that could decide to ruin us all. And that decision could come, you know, by accident.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: That if people haven't seen the movie Failsafe, it's one technical error that goes wrong with one bomber and the consequences of that one tiny thing going wrong.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Russians may be jamming their reception with some new device we know nothing about. Why would they do that? Is it customary? No, sir, but it's possible.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: In other words, it's possible the fail-safe mechanism might be giving them a ghost signal at the same time they can't reach you for positive confirmation. It's possible. It's not probable, but... Is it possible? Yes, sir.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what scares me, is that just a run-of-the-mill electrical glitch could start a chain of events that destroys the world entirely and every person on it.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: And that is the condition we have been living under for 70 years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president's like 72 years old. Is it possible that he's forgotten how shitty the Cold War was?
--:-- Alexandra Bell: It was weird as he made all sorts of statements during the Cold War about how President Reagan should put him in charge of negotiating with the Russians and send him to Moscow to negotiate down nuclear arsenals.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This seems to be something that, at least previously, had been of interest to him. He's shown very little interest in it since he's become president.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: And in fact, his remarks in the past couple of days talking about, well, we'll just be in an arms race and we'll outspend them. It just sort of defies logic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There are things that we can do to reduce tensions, to reduce threats. They have historically enjoyed bipartisan support.
--:-- Alexandra Bell: There is no reason that this should become a partisan issue, that people should be on one side or the other. Everyone should be in favor of reducing nuclear threats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alex Bell is a senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. I feel like I need a scotch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of the show. Bridget McCarthy is the editor. Afim Shapiro is the engineer. Devirai. No, pravidai. Noam Hassenfeld produces.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Luke Vanderplug is working from home. Catherine Wheeler is occupying his desk. And the historic Breakmaster Cylinder is nowhere to be seen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Special thanks to John Delore, Tobin Lowe, and Matt Collette for their help this week. And regular thanks to you, dear listener, for rating and reviewing Today Explained on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ashley, Carmen, and Caitlin Tiffany are the hosts of the podcast, Why'd You Push That Button? It's about the choices technology forces us to make.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We talked yesterday about your episode on deleting all your tweets. What else can people find in the feed?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our next episode is about recording people in public. The reason that we did this episode was because of a very beautiful Vine in which it's a woman in an Apple store with pushing a baby stroller.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she's like, I was told by AppleCare that I could walk in the store and get the cart. She's hitting her stroller. Yeah, there's a baby in there. Or it's just her MacBook. I don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I'm guessing this episode isn't about AppleCare or Vine. It's about how someone may have violated this woman's privacy by recording her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, well, we interviewed the woman who recorded it. Oh, that's interesting. I think we definitely come to some conclusions about, like, intentions mattering and also, like, providing context mattering.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why'd you push that button? Find it wherever you find your podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher? You can just email us and we'll send you a link. We have a group email, buttonattheverge.com.
