Activism: We must Stay in the INF Treat-a Key Nuclear Arms Control Pact With Russia Signed by Reagan Approved by U.S. Senate in 1987

President Trump has announced plans to withdraw the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a key nuclear arms control pact with Russia signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and approved by the U.S. Senate.

We’ve teamed up with our partners at Roots Action, World Beyond War, United for Peace and Justice, The Nation, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Western States Legal Foundation, and others, to stop Trump’s disastrous proposal.

Congress must take action to keep the United States in the treaty. Click here to email your Representative and your two Senators.

The INF Treaty prohibits the United States and Russia from deploying both nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges between 310 and 3,420 miles. These are among the weapons most likely to lead to miscalculation or misadventure in a crisis.

Following ratification of the INF Treaty, the United States destroyed almost 1,000 missiles, and the Soviet Union almost 2,000. “But,” writes Jon Schwarz at The Intercept, “arms control treaties are never about weapons and numbers alone. They can help enemy nations create virtuous circles, both between them and within themselves. Verification requires constant communication and the establishment of trust; it creates constituencies for peace inside governments and in the general public; this reduces on both sides the power of the paranoid, reactionary wing that exists in every country; this creates space for further progress; and so on.”

Conversely, withdrawal from arms control treaties can feed vicious cycles of distrust, animosity, and militarization, as has been the case with U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.

Click here to stop this disaster in its tracks.

Both the United States and Russia currently accuse each other of violating the INF Treaty. Wherever the truth lies, the solution is not to pull out of the treaty, but to redouble diplomatic efforts to resolve the allegations.

The United States and Russia control more than 90 percent of the world’s 14,500 nuclear weapons. It is unlikely that any of the other nuclear-armed powers will be willing to engage in negotiations to control or eliminate these extraordinarily dangerous armaments if the United States abandons arms control.