translated from Spanish: U.S. and Russia: why China does not want a new nuclear Treaty

In the INF Treaty, U.S. and Russia pledged to destroy all its missiles that can be launched from land with a range of 500 to 5 thousand kilometers and not to carry out further research in this field. China, on the other hand, has come a long way in the development of their own weapons of this kind in 30 years; its regional security structure is largely based on those missiles. The U.S. Department of Defense estimates that the Chinese army has between 1,000 and 1,200 short-range (up to 1,000 km) missiles. These make up the bulk of the Chinese missiles and would fall within the INF Treaty.
The disadvantage of China, the U.S. advantage.
It is easy to understand why China has no interest in joining the INF Treaty. “It would mean that China would have to say goodbye to its missiles and U.S. should not give up anything, because they rely on their sea and air weapons,” explains Wolfgang Richter of the Foundation Science and politics (SWP). The special feature of the INF Treaty is that it completely prohibits a category of weapons. If the U.S. and Russia are trying to negotiate a new Treaty with China, this could require a threshold other than 0. “That would mean that Russia would also have a limit superior, by which you could deploy missiles,” he explains. “And that would be bad news for Europe,” adds.
When the INF Treaty was signed in 1987, the medium-range missiles played a major role in the conflict of the cold war. Today, both countries, also because of the prohibitions, have developed other missiles launched from submarines or aircraft, not to mention the drones.
However, it should not commit the mistake of thinking that the INF Treaty “has so much value”, says Richter. “It has a great political importance. After all, it has eliminated a whole class of nuclear weapons. Allow these return is obviously the wrong way”.
Qualitative and not quantitative arms race however, USA and Russia do not think so: the Americans decided to abandon the Pact and then the Russians. In August, the agreement will expire. From the point of view of Ulrich Kühn, of the Institute for peace research and security policy, both parties have no real interest in the Treaty: “Russia feels threatened by NATO and also the growing military power of China “, though not officially recognize it”.
Kuhn now fear a new arms race: “we will see a qualitative arms race, which has been developing for several years (…). I.e., better weapons, faster weapons, missile systems and, of course, will decrease the stability to the crisis”, clarifies.
What outputs are there?
Once the Treaty INF, just an important Treaty between the two former powers, the strategic arms reduction Treaty: both countries limited the number of their strategic weapons of mass destruction. However, the Pact expires in 2021, and since in the USA – since the Russian intervention in the election of the 2016 – confidence in Russia has decreased considerably, Kuhn fears that opportunities to continue the Treaty are “very rare”.
“We see in recent years that treaties, which were so important to overcome the confrontation in the cold war, are at risk of disappearing one after the other,” laments the expert. “In 2021 we would be where we were in the Decade of 1960, without legally binding limitations to nuclear weapons,” he predicts.

Original source in Spanish

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