China Isn’t a Good Reason to End the INF Treaty

In 2019, the United States is expected to withdraw from the only remaining Cold War treaty concluded between itself and the Soviet Union that reduced or eliminated arms. The Trump administration has decided that it will withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the latest international arrangement that this administration is looking to remove the United States from.

The administration has discussed one important reason for withdrawal: Since 2014, the United States has accused Russia of developing a missile that violates the treaty. But instead of working to address the violation, the United States will simply withdraw. A secondary reason for the withdrawal, however, is longstanding concern within the U.S. defense establishment that the United States may need the kinds of weapons prohibited by the treaty to better balance and deter China in the Asia-Pacific theater.

The details of Russia’s violation of the treaty have been made more public than ever under the Trump administration. Speaking in November 2017, Christopher Ford, then the senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation at the National Security Council and now the State Department’s assistant secretary for international security and nonproliferation, declassified, for the first time, the Russian designation of the INF-violating missile. Ford identified the system as the Novator 9M729; the NATO reporting name, somewhat aptly for the missile that screwed up the INF Treaty, is “Screwdriver.”

To be found in violation of the INF Treaty by the United States, the 9M729 must meet two criteria. The first is that it must be a ground-launched system and the second is that it must be able to deliver its payload to a range in excess of 500 km, but not greater than 5,500 km. The INF Treaty banned both the United States and the Soviet Union – and its successor states – from possessing, deploying, or testing ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles in that range anywhere on earth indefinitely. The 9M729 apparently met both these criteria for the United States to call Russia out on the violation. In December 2018, Dan Coats, the U.S. director of national intelligence, conclusively provided the final details on how exactly the United States was able to determine that the missile had violated the treaty, based on years of U.S. intelligence findings.

The China rationale for U.S. INF Treaty withdrawal remains unconvincing. Yes, it’s true that the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force – formerly the Second Artillery Corps – possess a ballistic missile arsenal comprised overwhelmingly of systems that would violate the INF Treaty were China a party. While many who favor withdrawing from the treaty have cited a preference that it be trilateralized – or multilateralized – to include China and other states that have INF-proscribed systems, like India, Pakistan, and North Korea, this is simply unrealistic. Beijing will not forgo the vast majority of its ballistic and cruise missile arsenal to meet the requirements that the United States and Russia have observed now for three decades.

There is no doubt that China's various intermediate-range systems – notably the DF-21D medium-range ballistic missile and the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile – pose serious challenges for the United States in projecting power past the first island chain and defending allies. What is less clear is that Washington should pursue a force structure mirror-imaging strategy, simply pursuing ground-launched INF-range missiles because China has them. What’s critical about the INF Treaty is that it is primarily concerned with two features of ballistic and cruise missiles. The first – and most important – is that the treaty prohibits these missiles from being based on land. The second is the range restriction, which receives the lion’s share of the attention in most discussions about the Treaty.

In East Asia, the United States is unencumbered by the INF Treaty in deploying a range of sea- and air-launched systems. Senior U.S. military officials, meanwhile, have publicly testified that there isn’t an urgent military need for INF systems in the region either. “There are no military requirements we cannot currently satisfy due to our compliance with the INF Treaty,” General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in March 2017. Selva acknowledged that leaving the Treaty would open up new options for the United States, but that is obviously true given that the restrictions would no longer apply.

Digging deeper into the issue, it’s apparent that Asia’s geography simply makes the kinds of deployments INF Treaty withdrawal proponents seek in the region impractical. The original impetus behind the treaty in the 1980s was U.S. and Soviet concern about prompt strike systems on the European landmass. The United States had deployed Pershing-II ballistic missiles and Gryphon cruise missiles in Western Europe that could have, without much warning, dealt a “decapitating” strike to the Soviet Union. Similarly, Soviet SS-20 ballistic missiles threatened NATO capitals. In Asia, as the United States seeks to hold targets in China at risk, it’s worth reckoning with the fact that there isn't a broad swathe of allied territory available for basing these missiles.

The closest U.S. territory to Chinese shores that would be practical as a deployment location for future INF-range systems in Asia is Guam. But to hold all of China at risk – including the country’s western reaches – Guam-based systems would effectively need to be in the intercontinental-range (5,500-plus km) category, which the INF Treaty does not prohibit. U.S. allies, meanwhile, do offer a greater degree of flexibility, but it’s far from clear that it would be politically viable for countries like Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea to permit the deployment of these kinds of missiles on their territory, even if they are concerned about China.

In Japan, for instance, the domestic political aspect of alliance management is strained and has been for years in Okinawa, an attractive potential deployment location. Okinawans already unhappy with the status of U.S. forces on their territory won’t be eager to turn their island into a bigger target by hosting U.S. missiles. Similarly, given the sluggish implementation of the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and the United States’ permanent military basing in the Philippines ending in 1992, it’s hard to imagine Manila agreeing to host these weapons either. (That’s leaving out current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s pro-China and anti-American posture.) South Korea is a possible option for deployments, but after the bilateral falling out with China over its acceptance of the U.S. THAAD missile defense system, Seoul will be circumspect about these kinds of deployments too.

Proponents of withdrawal from the INF Treaty should point to Russia’s violation of the treaty, but leave the China justification off the table. In particular, given the impracticalities and difficulties of INF deployments in Asia, it’s impossible to make the case that the benefits in Asia of U.S. INF-range systems would outweigh the costs to the United States’ European allies of allowing the treaty to lapse altogether. If the INF Treaty ends, Russia will continue to maintain and deploy the 9M729 system, threatening European capitals. The United States would have to take years and spend billions developing a modern-day successor to the Pershing-II and Gryphon in the meantime.

There are possible workarounds to the current crisis and there is a chance that U.S. allies in Europe may be able to delay a withdrawal in early 2019 by encouraging Washington to broach compliance seriously with Russia. One workaround might be for Russia and the United States to agree to regionalize the treaty, whereby both sides agree that the treaty would hold for deployments in Russia’s west and in continental Europe, freeing up both countries to deploy INF systems in Asia. But this too has its downsides and should not be the first course of action. The right course on the INF issue is to keep the focus on Russia’s violation, addressing it and keeping the treaty in place. Justifying withdrawal by pointing to new strategic realities in Asia, in the meantime, is largely a canard.