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Old February 16th 07, 03:08 PM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy
Pat Flannery
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Posts: 18,465
Default Bye-bye INF treaty?



Jim Oberg wrote:
It's unclear to me if the INF treaty has, like the ABM treaty did have,
the legal option for parties to withdraw with appropriate notice -- or was
it open-ended? The US did not 'break' the ABM treaty -- the question
remains, do the Russians intend now to 'break' the INF treaty, or are
they legally exercising a codacile in it?



http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/inf/text/index.html
http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/inf/text/inf.htm
"Article XV

1. This Treaty shall be of unlimited duration.

2. Each Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the
right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary
events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its
supreme interests. It shall give notice of its decision to withdraw to
the other Party six months prior to withdrawal from this Treaty. Such
notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events the
notifying Party regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests."

They consider the ABMs in Poland to meet that criteria, and I don't
blame them one bit for seeing it like that.
What's really tragic about all this is that it was a very good treaty
that was mutually beneficial to both our countries.
Because of the short distances between launch sites in Russia and
European capitals there was a real potential for a decapitating nuclear
strike that wouldn't be detected till it was too late, which threw the
MAD concept in the trashcan.
If they have any brains, the EU will tell Poland to ditch this idea
pronto, under threat of economic sanctions against Polish products, as
if this goes through all of Europe is going to be a lot less safe five
years down the road.

Pat