Russia Threats Take Center Stage at NATO Defense Chiefs’ Meeting
Russia Threats Take Center Stage at NATO Defense Chiefs’ Meeting
(Bloomberg) -- The North Atlantic Treaty Organization turned its sights on threats posed by Russia, mapping out security measures for Europe to replace a dying arms-control pact and warning alliance member Turkey against the purchase of Russian missiles.
NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels on Wednesday approved options for filling a vacuum that will emerge in five weeks with the expected end of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the U.S. and Russia. The U.S. earlier this year decided to abandon the landmark pact, saying Russia was in violation of the agreement.
The INF treaty, which bans the deployment of ground-launched missiles with ranges between 500 kilometers (311 miles) and 5,500 kilometers, will expire on Aug. 2 unless Russia comes back into compliance. Moscow denies breaching the accord, which has been a cornerstone of European security.
“We must prepare for a world without the INF treaty,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during the first part of a two-day ministerial meeting in the Belgian capital. He said the alliance endorsed a “wide range of different measures” in the political and military domains to counter the Russian threat.
Nuclear Proliferation
The imminent collapse of the Soviet-era INF treaty reflects a general deterioration in relations between Russia and NATO members following the alliance’s expansion to include former communist eastern European nations, Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and Kremlin support for Ukrainian separatist rebels. NATO members also accuse Russia of being behind cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns in the West and a spy poisoning in Britain.
The disappearance of the INF treaty will accentuate concerns about nuclear proliferation after the Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 international accord to prevent Iran from developing such weapons and as North Korea continues to resist demands to abandon its atomic-arms program.
While not signatories to the INF agreement, European nations are most affected by it and most concerned about what comes next -- a reflection of their position as the battleground of the Cold War.
Stoltenberg said NATO has no intention to compensate for the INF treaty’s end by deploying new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe. The measures agreed by the NATO defense ministers cover the alliance’s “exercise program as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” he said.
“We will also look further at our air and missile defenses and conventional capabilities,” Stoltenberg said.
Russian Defense System
Also on Wednesday at NATO, the U.S. led calls on Turkey to scrap a controversial plan to buy the Russian S-400 missile-defense system. Turkey, one of the alliance’s oldest members, risks losing F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. by going ahead with the transaction.
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who took charge of the Pentagon this week after the resignation of the previous acting secretary, Patrick Shanahan, raised the issue in talks with his Turkish counterpart, Hulusi Akar, during the NATO gathering.
The two “had a frank and transparent discussion,” said Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman. “Esper reiterated that Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air and missile defense system is incompatible with the F-35 program and that Turkey will not be permitted to have both systems.”
President Donald Trump’s administration has said it won’t stand by while Turkey buys Russian weapons designed to shoot down planes such as Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to pursue the S-400 purchase and plans to make his case during a meeting with Trump at the G-20 summit in Japan later this week.
Esper sought to quash any impression that the latest personnel change atop the Defense Department signals a shift in American security policy.
“This transition is simply a change in leadership; it’s not a change in vision, it’s not a change in priorities and it’s not a change in the United States’ commitment to NATO,” he told reporters on his flight to Brussels.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.net;Glen Carey in Brussels at gcarey8@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, ;Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Andrea Dudik
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