Trump’s Threat of Exiting INF Endangers Planet’s Survival

By: Kayhan Int’l 

The US president’s latest quixotic announcement to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) between Washington and Moscow for elimination of the two countries’ intermediate-range and shorter-range nuclear missiles, did not come as a surprise to those aware of the mindset of this psychopath, who if left unchecked might blow to bits Planet Earth.

Donald Trump wants to resume the testing and manufacture of some of the doomsday weapons with the range of 1,000-to-5,500 km, which thanks to the INF inked by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan had within four years of its signing eliminated 2,692 missiles, along with their launchers, of the two countries, followed by 10 years of on-site satisfactory verification inspections.

Now the dotard in the White House, who is notorious for his preposterous lies, claims – without the least evidence, as was the case of his withdrawal from the 7-nation nuclear accord with Iran – that Russia has failed to honour its commitments, and so the US ought to officially and unilaterally make the exit.
Russia has denounced the dangerous move that had for the past three decades since its ratification by the US Senate in 1988 ensured peace and coordination between the two rival powers after end of the Cold War.

An ailing 87-year old Gorbachev whose name is enshrined in history as the person who following the epistle he received from the Father of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini (RA), that communism is a thing of the past and people cannot be deprived of religion and spiritual values, granted independence to most of the nations occupied by Czarist Russia and held in thralldom for 70 years by the USSR, warned last Sunday that the US move on INF was a "mistake” which demonstrates "Trump’s lack of wisdom.”

In case of US exit, Russia – and the emerging superpower China – will have no other choice but upgrade their own nuclear arsenals for maintaining the balance of terror that had existed during the Cold War and prevented any major conflagration.

It now remains to be seen what the US Senate will do, since the scope of the US president’s ability to withdraw from Senate-approved treaties without Congressional approval has been called into question.
As the American Constitution does not grant authority on how to terminate treaties, it has also been contested over what authority Trump may have in doing so. 

But from a deranged person like Trump anything could be expected, and moreover, the US itself does not have a fair record of honouring treaties it has inked in history.

In other words, the US is an unreliable partner, and it has long been one, even before Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Paris agreement on climate change, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action) with Iran, and the 1955 Treaty of Amity with Iran (following the recent decision of the International Court of Justice against its illegal sanctions). Trump has also threatened to end NAFTA with Canada and Mexico.

History is witness to the treaties that the US has signed but not ratified, signed and then unsigned, and even refused to sign after pushing everyone else to sign.

According to the US national archives, 374 treaties signed between the US and Native Amerindians from 1772 to 1867 were ratified. Overall 500 treaties were made with the Natives, primarily for land cessations, but 500 treaties were also broken, changed or nullified when it served the White Administration’s interests to expand territories through indulgence in genocide against the original inhabitants of America.

Some of the international treaties that the US has not ratified, violated or withdrawn from, include International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discriminations Against Women (CEDAW), The Law of the Sea, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. 

In view of these undeniable facts, it would naïve to expect the Congress to prevent the President from going ahead with his threat of withdrawing from the INF the rapidly declining superpower called the United States of America, which was never great and which the mentally sick Trump can never make great.