Is Russia violating the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty? Press reports have suggested that this is the case, and top Republican legislators are demanding that it act. "We believe it is imperative that Russian officials not be permitted to believe they stand to gain from a material breach of this or any other treaty”—so wrote House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.).

Such allegations create a highly challenging situation. They will likely further worsen the bilateral US-Russian relationship, which is already at a low point; they are bound to further weaken the prospects of additional reductions of nuclear weapons; and they could complicate President Obama’s efforts to win congressional support for his Iran policy and a key arms control nominee.

There are two allegations. The first concerns the new Yars (RS-26) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which was apparently launched more than once at a distance below the upper limit of the INF treaty (The INF Treaty banned all US and Soviet/Russian land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km). While these tests can cause concern, they do not constitute a violation: RS-26 is, without doubt, a strategic missile (i.e., with a range greater than 5,500 km), and there are no provisions in any existing treaty that prohibit tests to the range below the maximum. The flight tests in question were apparently to assess the defense penetration capabilities of the new missile and thus used the Sary Shagan test range, which specializes in missile defense issues. The second allegation, which has become public recently, concerns an unidentified ground-launched cruise missile. The US Government has reportedly raised these tests with the Russians a number of times, but they have termed it a nonissue and refused to respond further; on January 17, 2014 the United States informed its NATO allies about the concern. A State Department spokesperson clarified, however, that the case was still under review and had not yet been classified as a violation.

The issue of INF compliance encompasses three separate, but closely related strands. One is technical—the substance of allegations, the properties of the missiles in question, and verification issues. Another relates to arms control and strategic concerns—how the INF treaty provisions fit or don’t fit into the Russian national-security strategy. The third is politics—the reasons why allegations about treaty noncompliance continue to surface in public debate and the likely consequences for US foreign policy.

Technical Aspects: The Nature of Concern

The technical issues are a complex maze of engineering, military and legal details. As noted above, Russian tests of the RS-26 ICBM do not represent a violation: nothing in any existing arms-control treaty prohibits tests at reduced ranges. The absence of a lower limit on flight tests of strategic weapons is a heritage of Cold War approaches to arms control: during that time, parties were mostly concerned about maximum capability of weapons systems, be it range or the number of warheads that could be placed on delivery vehicles. There is also a technical reason—it is impossible to prevent failed launches, which could be classified as violations if a minimum distance for test flights is established.

The situation with the new allegation, that of testing a new ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with to an intermediate range (the INF Treaty bans land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km) is more difficult to assess because no tangible details have been publicly revealed. Ballistic missiles which often employ similar rockets to those used for space programs travel a curved trajectory, ascending using their fuel then returning to earth because of gravity; cruise missiles are guided missiles which use fuel throughout their flights and are akin to aerial torpedoes . One likely candidate for the role of the suspicious cruise missile is the R-500, the cruise missile associated with the Iskander system, which was first developed with a ballistic missile.

Iskander was created to replace the SS-23 Oka missile system, which was eliminated under the INF Treaty. The decision to eliminate Oka created an uproar from Soviet military officials who claimed that the range of that system was just below 500 km (450-470 km) and that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had made such a major concession to the United States without their support . Iskander has the same range as Oka, that is, just below five hundred kilometers, and thus does not violate the INF Treaty. However, there are serious suspicions that its range could be increased if necessary: according to a report by the National Defense University of Finland,^[1] at the range-optimizing trajectory the ballistic version of Iskander could have the range of six hundred and perhaps even seven hundred kilometers; the R-500 cruise missile, which has been tested to the range of 360 km, is believed to have a maximum range “several times longer.” If, as many suggest, R-500 is an extension of the Granat (SS-N-21) naval surface-to-surface cruise missile, then it could theoretically have a longer range, indeed.

If the cruise missile referred to by the leak, is, indeed, the R-500, the allegations about possible violation can point at several possibilities:

■ The United States could have detected one or more tests conducted to the range in excess of five hundred kilometers;

■ The United States could have made a measurement error—such measurements have to be conducted by national technical means and thus may be insufficiently precise;

■ Finally, American measurements might be based on the calculation of the range-optimizing trajectory while the Russian data proceeds from the actual operational trajectory, which includes two-dimensional maneuvers to avoid detection and interception by missile defense systems (the operational range could then be below five hundred kilometers while the range-optimizing trajectory could be greater).

In any of these cases, the excess range (above five hundred kilometers) would likely be small and have little or no strategic difference. In that case, the R-500 controversy will likely end up as one of more than a dozen of unresolved implementation issues, which are an unavoidable element of the arms control and reduction process. Indeed, Russia has its own share of complaints about the U.S. record.

There are also a few less likely options. The test, for example could have been of SS-N-21 Granat. Available information suggests that these sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) have been withdrawn from submarines and are stored on shore. At the same time, Russian military regularly tests old, Soviet-produced weapons systems to confirm that they can perform up to specifications. For a variety of reasons, it might be convenient to launch it from land rather from a naval platform. There is also a joint Russian-Indian cruise missile project, BrahMos II, which is intended for a variety of platforms, including on land, but this work is still in early stages.

Or Russia could have tested a new GLCM system with a range well above the five hundred kilometer limit. A full assessment of the strategic and arms control implications of such a system would be difficult to gauge without at least elementary information. Yet, the fact that the State Department has refrained from classifying this case as a violation and instead insisted it was a concern that requires additional assessment and consultations, suggests that a new long-range GLCM (i.e., well above five hundred kilometers) unlikely. Meanwhile, an assessment of Russian arms control and strategic behavior indicates that is unlikely Russia would cheat on the agreement to increase the missile’s range by a mere one hundred or so kilometers.

Arms Control Aspects: The Attitude Toward the INF Treaty in Russia

Opposition to the INF Treaty on part of many influential figures among Russia’s decision-making elite is well known. In 2005, Sergey Ivanov, a close associate of Vladimir Putin and at the time the Minister of Defense, raised the prospect of Russian withdrawal from the INF treaty with US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; an ensuing debate in Moscow concluded with a decision not to withdraw, but the idea resurfaces from time to time. The main justification is the development of intermediate-range missiles in countries to the south of Russia—China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, and others. One can say that the fate of the INF Treaty in Russia continues to hang on a very thin thread.

Some have suggested that Russian coolness to the INF Treaty can explain an attempt to quietly circumvent or even violate it. Rather, the opposite is more likely: if Moscow decides the INF Treaty is in the way of R&D programs it considers vital, it will hardly hesitate to withdraw.

At the heart of Russian security strategy is deterring the possible use of high-precision conventional weapons (such as Navy Tomahawk missiles) by the United States and NATO along the lines of wars in Kosovo, Iraq, and elsewhere others over the last decade and a half. Russia’s 2000 Military Doctrine relied on limited use of nuclear weapons against airbases and command and control centers to counter that perceived threat. Reliance on nuclear weapons, however, has been from the very beginning regarded as a stopgap measure until the country develops a modern conventional-deterrence capability. Iskanders appear to fill one of the gaps in such conventional capability (there has been no evidence that Russia has tested these missiles for nuclear warheads, although theoretically this remains a possibility) and in this sense play a vital role in covering a range of potential targets without the threat of a nuclear strike.

If deployed in Kaliningrad oblast, an exclave of Russian territory between Poland and Lithuania, Iskander missiles with the range of approximately five hundred kilometers can reach targets throughout nearly all of Poland and the Baltic states—the area that represents one of the possible staging grounds for NATO strikes. Increasing their range by one hundred or even two hundred kilometers will not radically change that situation.

Therefore, it seems logical that if Russia chose to deploy land-based intermediate-range missiles it would aim at a qualitative leap—acquiring systems with 1,000-1,500 km range. That would allow Russia to put at risk not only more of the European theater also the additional countries to Russia’ south.

Withdrawal from the INF Treaty will hardly constitute a major challenge, if that treaty stands in the way of a capability that Russian leadership regards as vital for further development of conventional deterrence capability. The withdrawal is likely to enjoy support of the majority of the elite; if Putin introduces such a bill into the parliament, it will be adopted without debate or serious opposition. The U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty in 2003 will provide the necessary pretext: like the George W. Bush administration, Moscow can declare that INF is a leftover from the Cold War, that its continued existence undermines the country’s security (with references to missile programs in countries to the south of Russia), and that it does not intend to develop intermediate-range nuclear weapons. Moreover, the state of the US-Russian relationship today is such that abrogation of an old treaty will hardly worsen that relationship any further, from the Russian leadership’s perspective.

Thus, the case that there are significant Russian violations of the INF Treaty appears weak. As noted above, the RS-26 tests do not represent a violation—at most the use of a legal loophole for reasons of convenience. The story about cruise missile tests is still vague, but the fact that US government was reluctant to classify it as a violation suggests plenty of uncertainty. In the history of US-Soviet and US-Russian arms control there have been dozens of similar cases—both parties have raised concern about the actions of the other. The majority of these concerns remained unresolved for years until they lost relevance. As a rule, these are technical issues that are discussed by technical experts outside public eye. Why, then have allegations about possible violation of the INF Treaty surfaced? The reasons for that are likely to be found in alliance and domestic politics rather than in substance of the arms control process.

Political Aspects: US-Russian Relations and US Domestic Politics

One group which has consistently raised questions about the Iskander’s deployment are the Baltic states, particularly Lithuania, which has tended to cite the deployments as a reason to keep U.S. nuclear gravity bombs in Europe, despite support for their withdrawal from many of the more established members of the alliance. News of the suspicious tests leaked after an alliance meeting in January.

Domestically, a letter by a group of Republican members of the House Armed Service Committee, suggests that Republicans sensed an opportunity in the revelations to push back on administration initiatives in several areas such as the further reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons and the Iranian nuclear program.

The story broke soon after the an interim nuclear deal with Iran took effect and President Obama threatened to veto any congressional efforts to impose new nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. The Armed Services Committee Republicans have argued that the new agreement will permit Iran to cheat without sufficient penalty and argue that the administration’s behavior with Russia proves their case.

Similarly, Republicans have been highly skeptical of Obama’s 2013 proposal to reduce US and Russian deployed strategic nuclear warheads by another third within the framework of the 2010 New START Treaty—from 1,550 to about 1,000. They have been particularly concerned that Obama might seek to make the reductions in a way that bypasses requirements for Senate approval of treaties.

Ironically , in this concern, they have found a de facto common cause with Russian hardliners. Moscow, has demonstrated very considerable reluctance to engage in reductions beyond those mandated by New START. Any action that undermines the prospect of reductions is bound to be welcomed by the Russian government (publicly it will claim otherwise, of course). Moreover, if the initiative appears to come from the United States, Moscow will gain by being able to shift the blame for absence of progress on nuclear disarmament to the other party.

The news also came as the Senate is considering confirmation of Rose Gottemoeller as the lead U.S. arms control diplomat. Gottemoeller, the lead negotiator for the New START treaty, has been acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international policy for several years. She had been expected to be named permanently to the position. But the price of her confirmation may be a resolution of the INF controversy on terms preferred by the opponents of new reductions—namely, forcing Russia into acknowledging treaty violations in a way likely to further disrupt the administration’s arms-control agenda.

Nikolai Sokov is a Senior Fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation. Miles A. Pomper is a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies and the former editor of Arms Control Today.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Suvorow. CC BY-SA 3.0.

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^[1] Stephan Forss, The Russian Operational-Tactical Missile Iskander Missile System (Helsinki: National Defense University, Department of Strategic and Defense Studies, Series 4, Working Paper No. 42, 2012).