Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just made an announcement regarding Russia’s violations of the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty. According to the statement from a nuclear weapons expert, this was the right thing to do and it’s what President Reagan would have done.

President Trump and Secretary Pompeo aren’t messing around with Russia’s continuous violations and have decided to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty:

“Russia has jeopardized the United States’ security interests, and we can no longer be restricted by the treaty while Russia shamelessly violates it.”

Secretary Pompeo’s full remarks:

President Trump and Secretary Pompeo are getting tough on Russia’s violations and will formally notice Russia of the withdrawal from the treaty in 6 months.

Nuclear weapons expert Mark Schneider said in an interview with Conservative Review that this is exactly what President Reagan would do when faced with such evidence:

I am very pleased with President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty in response to very serious Russian violations. Indeed, it is exactly what President Reagan would have done, indeed, actually did do in 1986 in response to multiple Soviet violations of the SALT I and II agreements. Russian INF Treaty violations are actually much more serious than the ones that President Reagan responded to in 1986. In addition to the INF Treaty violations determined by the Obama administration and reaffirmed by the Trump administration, there are a number of other Russian INF Treaty violations involving ground-launched cruise missiles of INF Treaty prohibited range being reported in the Russian media, including the state media. There is no credible case to continue the more than four years of non-response to very serious Russian INF Treaty violations. As President Reagan stated in 1982, arms control without compliance is an exercise in building “a paper castle that will be blown away by the winds of war.”

 

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