{"id":192583,"date":"2019-08-03T05:50:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-03T05:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=192583"},"modified":"2019-08-05T07:24:18","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T07:24:18","slug":"after-inf-treatys-demise-u-s-seeks-funds-for-missile-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=192583","title":{"rendered":"After INF treaty’s demise, U.S. seeks funds for missile tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart \u2013 Reuters Aug 2, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Soldiers of the Air Defence Missile Squadron 2 walk past Patriot missile launchers in the background in Bad Suelze, northern Germany on December 4, 2012.<\/p><\/div>\n

WASHINGTON<\/span> (Reuters) \u2013 The United States will no longer be prohibited from having ground-launched intermediate-range missiles once it pulls out of an arms control treaty with Russia on Friday, but funds to test and develop the missiles may soon run out, officials say.<\/span><\/p>\n

Washington said last year it would be withdrawing from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF<\/span>), accusing Russia of failing to comply with it. Moscow denies it has violated the treaty and says Washington is pulling out because it wants to pursue a new arms race.<\/span><\/p>\n

Within the next few weeks, the United States is expected to test a ground-launched cruise missile. In November, the Pentagon will aim to test an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Both would be conventional weapons tests \u2013 and not nuclear.<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. officials told Reuters this week that once existing funding runs out, future research and testing would be at risk because of resistance from the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike in the Senate, which is led by President Donald Trump\u2019s Republicans, the House declined to fund the Trump administration\u2019s request of about $96 million for the development of the missiles in its version of a fiscal-year 2020 budget and defence policy bill.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you cut this, you\u2019re hampering the Department of Defense\u2019s ability to respond to the Russian treaty violation,\u201d said a senior U.S. defence official, describing the Pentagon\u2019s message to Congress.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to bring the treaty back, it\u2019s going to help Russia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The 1987 pact banned ground-launched nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 310 to 3,400 miles (500-5,500 km).<\/span><\/p>\n

Washington and Moscow blame each other for the breakdown of the treaty, the latest in a growing list of East-West tensions. The United States says it needs to develop its own intermediate-range missiles to deter Russia, even if it does not field them in Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pentagon also sees a benefit in developing the new weapons as a counter to China, which boasts an increasingly sophisticated land-based missile force.<\/span><\/p>\n

PLAYING INTO PUTIN<\/span>\u2019S HANDS<\/span><\/h2>\n

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Adam Smith, has opposed the U.S. pullout of the treaty.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWithdrawing from the treaty would allow Putin to deflect responsibility and blame the U.S. for both the treaty\u2019s collapse and any ensuing arms race,\u201d Smith wrote in an op-ed earlier this year with the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.<\/span><\/p>\n

They added: \u201cThe Trump administration has played right into (Russian President) Vladimir Putin\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pentagon hopes that the funding will be restored when the House and Senate confer to resolve discrepancies in the legislation. A Senate Armed Services Committee spokeswoman said those discussions were expected to take place in coming weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. officials have been warning for years that the United States was being put at a disadvantage by China\u2019s development of increasingly sophisticated land-based missile forces, which the Pentagon could not match thanks to the U.S. treaty with Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said last month that leaving the INF<\/span> treaty would free up the U.S. military \u201cto deal with not just Russia, but China.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cChina has a very, very capable and robust INF<\/span> Treaty-range missile inventory, if you will. So you can see, it frees us up to do other things,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

While no decisions have been made, the United States could theoretically put easier-to-hide, road-mobile conventional missiles in places like Guam.<\/span><\/p>\n

The officials said it was not clear how China would handle the United States leaving the INF<\/span> and potentially deploying ground-launched intermediate-range missiles closer to the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWho knows which way China might go? But they are going to have to react some way \u2026 whether it\u2019s hardening, moving things around, changing your (concept of operations),\u201d a second U.S. official said.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. pulled the plug on the deal after it unilaterally pulled out, just as it withdrew from the Iran nuclear accord. Why? Is the U.S. preparing for war on multiple fronts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192586,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192583\/revisions\/192586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}