EU-DIGEST: INF Treaty: Without the INF Treaty, Europe could see a new missile power. (Spoiler: It’s not Russia.)

2/27/19

INF Treaty: Without the INF Treaty, Europe could see a new missile power. (Spoiler: It’s not Russia.) - by Mariana Budjeryn

The United States recently announced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, citing ongoing Russian violations. This raised alarm among arms control experts and many European states, which see the INF as a crucial element of European security.

The INF eliminated an entire class of missiles, prompting concerns about the adverse consequences of redeployments of INF-banned missiles to Europe by NATO and Russia.

But there’s another problem — more than a bilateral arrangement, the treaty also curtailed missile programs in former Soviet states, including Ukraine. The death of the INF could unshackle Ukraine’s missile program, too. Here’s what you need to know.

The U.S.S.R. and the United States signed the INF in 1987 to prohibit ground-launched missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,400 miles (500 and 5,000 kilometers). By 1990, the two countries had verifiably destroyed some 2,700 intermediate-range missiles. After the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, Soviet obligations under the INF were multilateralized among all its recognized successors.

Ukraine emerged with ample nuclear and missile capabilities. It inherited the world’s third-largest arsenal of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and strategic bombers — as well as a formidable military-industrial complex. This included the Yuzhnoye missile design bureau and plant in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), one of three premier suppliers of ICBMs for the Soviet arsenal.

However, as a legal successor state of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine remained constrained by the INF’s limitations.

Ukraine — along with Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia — also became a legal successor to START, a treaty that aimed to slash superpower strategic nuclear arsenals by 40 percent. The Soviet collapse left START unratified, with START-accountable nuclear arms strewn across the territories of the four states. The non-Russian successors, however, undertook the obligation to denuclearize completely and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).