John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MATT KWON ON CBC NEWS (AND REMOVED PROMPTLY BY EDITOR)
“'Into the Wild West': Demise of Cold War-era nuclear arms treaty undermines global security
“Trump administration to withdraw U.S. from long-standing weapons treaty [INF] after deal violated by Russia”
It is said by a number of independent analysts that this move is mainly aimed at China.
Along China's coast, China has established a large number of new, highly-accurate, medium-range missiles which can readily destroy approaching American ships.
The United States, owing to strictures of the INF Treaty, is said to have nothing with which it can counter them.
That sounds quite plausible. China was not part of the INF Treaty.
If so, why does the United States have to lie about why it is doing what it is doing? I refer to the stuff about a new Russian missile violating the INF Treaty, Russia having clearly said that it does not.
Well, given the America’s national preoccupation with Russophobia, I guess every opportunity to take a kick is welcomed. Their view would be that they will be able now to do what they want about China while having the Russians take the blame for destroying an important treaty – the third really important treaty the United States has destroyed in recent time. Two birds with one stone, so to speak.
If you study the record, it is simply a fact that Russia has a record of pretty scrupulous adherence to military treaties. Given their unprecedented experience of WWII - 27 million killed in the German invasion – Russia does take efforts at disarmament seriously.
And the world's independent experts say the same thing about Iran, that it has scrupulously adhered to its treaty obligations, yet we have Trump saying the opposite, almost daily, after tearing up the nuclear agreement with Iran.
I don't know about you, but I tend to heavily discount the word of anyone caught lying a number of times - going back further in time, that would include America’s lying about Vietnam, lying about Iraq, lying about Libya, and quite a large number of other cases.
