Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty ended, formally, on the 4th of August 2025, when Russia announced it would no longer abide by its terms. For a treaty that had already been dead as a functioning agreement since 2019, the announcement barely registered as news. But it closed a loop that started decades earlier. Two nuclear superpowers had agreed to destroy an entire class of weapons rather than merely limit them. What made a Republican president and a Communist general secretary sign away thousands of missiles neither side wanted to lose? Why did the deal survive the collapse of the Soviet Union only to unravel three decades later over a single disputed missile? And what does it mean that the country most associated with breaking the treaty is the same one that just declared it finished for good?

• 2. A Missile Called SS-20

  ›

  In March 1976, the Soviet Union deployed the RSD-10 Pioneer, known in the West as the SS-20 Saber, across its European territories. It was mobile, easy to conceal, and carried three independently targetable nuclear warheads, each rated at 150 kilotons. Its range put Western Europe within reach while launching from deep inside Soviet territory. That range sat just under the 5500 kilometer minimum that the SALT II treaty used to define an intercontinental missile.

  The SS-20 replaced two older systems, the SS-4 Sandal and SS-5 Skean, both seen as posing only a limited threat. Those aging missiles were slow to prepare, hard to hide, and carried just one warhead each. They also sat exposed to a pre-emptive NATO strike, unable to move or hide effectively. Because of those weaknesses, planners in the West read the SS-4 and SS-5 as defensive weapons. The SS-20, more accurate, more mobile, and armed with multiple warheads, read instead as an offensive one.

  President Jimmy Carter's administration initially judged US strategic weapons and nuclear-capable aircraft sufficient to deter Soviet aggression. That changed after 1977, when West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt argued in a speech that the West needed to explore a response to the SS-20. NATO echoed his call, worried about a growing imbalance in European nuclear forces. Leslie H. Gelb, the US Assistant Secretary of State, later said Schmidt's speech was what pushed Washington toward action.

  On the 12th of December 1979, Western foreign and defense ministers meeting in Brussels adopted what became known as the NATO Double-Track Decision. They described the Warsaw Pact as having "developed a large and growing capability in nuclear systems that directly threaten Western Europe." They pointed specifically to the SS-20's improved accuracy, mobility, range, and multiple warheads. They also cited the Soviet Tupolev Tu-22M bomber, judged far more capable than its predecessors. And they pointed to a widening Soviet edge in what they called Long-Range Theater Nuclear Forces.

  The Double-Track Decision's first track called for withdrawing 1,000 of the 7,400 theater nuclear warheads then in Europe. At the same time, the US would pursue bilateral talks with Moscow. Its second track held that, should those talks fail, NATO would modernize its own intermediate-range forces. That meant replacing US Pershing 1a missiles with 108 Pershing II launchers in West Germany. It also meant deploying 464 BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missiles across Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, beginning in December 1983.

  The talks would not resume until a new Soviet leader was in place, and Washington's approach to that leader would look very different.

• 3. Nitze And The Zero Option

  ›

  Formal talks opened in Geneva on the 30th of November 1981. Preliminary sessions the year before had already stalled under the weight of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the US sanctions that followed. Ronald Reagan, sworn in on the 20th of January 1981 after defeating Jimmy Carter in the previous year's election, sent negotiators with a firm demand. Any limit placed on US systems had to be matched by an equivalent Soviet limit, backed by strict verification.

  Paul Nitze led the American delegation, recruited by Secretary of State Alexander Haig. He had backed the first SALT treaty but resigned from the SALT II talks in protest. He also belonged to the Committee on the Present Danger, a hawkish group of conservative Republicans. Yuli Kvitsinsky, the second-ranking official at the Soviet embassy in West Germany, led the delegation across the table.

  On the 18th of November 1981, just before formal talks began, Reagan unveiled what came to be called the Zero Option. Under the plan, the US would freeze its planned Pershing II and cruise missile deployments. In exchange, the Soviet Union would eliminate its SS-4, SS-5, and SS-20 missiles entirely. Soviet officials showed little appetite for the trade, but the European public welcomed the gesture. Richard Perle, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs, had designed the plan. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger doubted it would work. He backed it anyway, for its power to put Moscow, in his words, "on the defensive in the European propaganda war." Reagan later put it more simply: the "zero option sprang out of the realities of nuclear politics in Western Europe."

  Moscow rejected the Zero Option soon after Washington tabled it in February 1982. It countered with its own ceiling: 600 INF missiles and aircraft on each side by 1985, falling to 300 by 1990. American negotiators worried this would force US aircraft out of Europe while blocking new missile deployments. In response, they demanded equal rights, letting the US match whatever number of SS-20s Moscow kept.

  Between 1981 and 1983 the two sides met for six rounds of talks, each two months long, mirroring the earlier SALT negotiations. Major General William F. Burns represented the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thomas Graham represented the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Colonel Norman Clyne, a SALT veteran, served as Nitze's chief of staff. Little separated the two sides across those two years, beyond an early US success in separating the question of aircraft from that of missiles.

  In the summer of 1982, Nitze and Kvitsinsky left the formal Geneva sessions behind for a walk through the Jura Mountains. They hoped to break the deadlock away from bureaucratic oversight. Nitze later said the goal was to find concessions that could clear the way for a Reagan-Brezhnev summit later that year. His offer: the US would drop the Pershing II entirely and cap its cruise missile launchers at 75. In exchange, the Soviet Union would cap its own launchers at 75 in Europe and 90 in Asia.

  Each GLCM launcher carried four missiles; each SS-20 launcher carried three warheads. That imbalance meant the arrangement would still leave the US with 75 more warheads in Europe than the Soviets. Soviet SS-20s, though fewer, were considered more advanced and more maneuverable than the American missiles. Kvitsinsky doubted Moscow would embrace the deal. Nitze was more hopeful about Washington. Both were wrong to be hopeful anywhere. The Office of the Secretary of Defense rejected any plan letting Soviet missiles into Europe while blocking American ones. Moscow rejected the same proposal once Kvitsinsky relayed it there.

  Thomas Graham later said the walk had been mostly Nitze's own idea. Only Burns and ACDA director Eugene V. Rostow had known about it beforehand. A National Security Council meeting after the walk drew a warmer reception from the Joint Chiefs and from Reagan himself. That support collapsed once Richard Perle objected and Haig's State Department voiced its own opposition. Nitze argued one thing had still been gained. The walk, he said, had convinced a skeptical Western European public that the US was negotiating in good faith.

  By early 1983, US negotiators floated a fallback: equal worldwide limits that excluded British and French systems. They paired it with a temporary global cap of 450 deployed INF warheads. Soviet counter-terms demanded a full block on US deployments in Europe, coverage of aircraft as well as missiles, and inclusion of third-party arsenals. That fall, with Pershing II and cruise missile deployments looming, the US lowered its proposed global cap to 420 missiles. Moscow offered to cut 572 warheads instead, if Washington cancelled the deployment outright. Neither side moved. In November 1983, once the first Pershing IIs reached West Germany, the Soviet Union walked away from the table entirely.

• 4. Reykjavik To Washington

  ›

  Negotiations resumed in March 1986. They widened beyond the INF issue to include the separate Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and a set of space-related disputes. By late 1985, both superpowers were already leaning toward limiting intermediate-range systems in both Europe and Asia.

  On the 15th of January 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Soviet General Secretary, proposed banning all nuclear weapons worldwide by the year 2000. The proposal included INF missiles in Europe. Washington dismissed the idea as a public relations move. It countered with a phased reduction of European and Asian INF launchers, aiming for zero by 1989. No restrictions would apply to British or French forces.

  British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher helped broker the talks that followed between Reagan and Gorbachev through 1986 and 1987. A run of meetings in August and September 1986 built toward the Reykjavik Summit, held on the 11th and the 12th of October 1986. There, both leaders agreed in principle to pull INF systems out of Europe and cap global warheads at 100 apiece. Gorbachev pushed further still, proposing deeper changes to the entire strategic relationship.

  Detailed negotiations stretched through 1987. They were helped along in August, when West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed to scrap the joint US-West German Pershing 1a systems. Kohl had initially resisted eliminating the Pershing missiles outright, arguing it would leave his country more exposed to a Warsaw Pact attack. The treaty text was finalized that September.

  On the 8th of December 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the treaty at a summit in Washington. The US Senate approved it on the 27th of May 1988, by a vote of 93-5. Reagan and Gorbachev formally ratified the treaty on the 1st of June 1988.

  Ratification made the treaty law on paper. What actually vanished from arsenals, and how completely, was a separate story involving thousands of individual missiles.

• 5. What The Treaty Banned

  ›

  Either side could withdraw from the treaty with six months' notice. The only condition, in the treaty's words, was deciding that "extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests." Short of invoking that clause, the agreement barred both nations from possessing, producing, or flight-testing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles at the banned ranges, along with their launchers. The prohibition covered nuclear and conventional warheads alike. Air-delivered and sea-based missiles fell outside it entirely. Existing weapons had to be destroyed under a mutual inspection protocol.

  By the treaty's deadline of the 1st of June 1991, the two countries had destroyed 2,692 of the banned weapons between them. The United States accounted for 846 of those; the Soviet Union accounted for 1,846. American losses included the BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missile, the Pershing 1a, and the Pershing II. Soviet losses, listed under their NATO reporting names, included the SS-4 Sandal, SS-5 Skean, SS-12 Scaleboard, SS-20 Saber, SS-23 Spider, and the SSC-X-4 Slingshot.

  Five months before the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, the two sides finished dismantling their intermediate-range missiles. That happened on the 28th of May, ahead of the treaty's own deadline. Afterward, Washington negotiated with Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine to preserve the related START I treaty. Twelve post-Soviet states were treated as inheritors of the INF Treaty's obligations. The three Baltic states were excluded, since the US never recognized their 1940 annexation by the Soviet Union as legitimate.

  Because disarmament was already complete, Washington's attention shifted to six newly independent states holding INF inspection sites: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Russia inherited the Soviet nuclear arsenal as its official successor state. Four of those states, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, formally committed to keep fulfilling the treaty. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan took a passive role instead, since each held just a single inspection site.

  On-site inspections ran until the 31st of May 2001, completing the treaty's 13-year inspection agreement. After that, the US and Russia relied on shared technical monitoring and notifications instead. The treaty's Special Verification Committees kept meeting even after inspections ended. They held 30 meetings in total, the last one in November 2016 in Geneva. That final meeting brought together the US, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine to discuss compliance.

  None of the 30 meetings addressed what American officials had already begun alleging behind closed doors, that Russia was breaking the treaty's terms.

• 6. Accusations Of Violation

  ›

  In February 2007, Vladimir Putin used a speech at the Munich Security Conference to argue the INF Treaty needed revisiting. His reasoning: it bound only Russia and the United States, while other countries built up their own arsenals freely. Around the same time, Army General Yuri Baluyevsky, the Chief of the General Staff of Russia's Armed Forces, said Russia was considering a unilateral withdrawal. He cited NATO's missile defense deployments in Europe as the reason.

  American officials say Russia crossed the line in 2008, by testing the SSC-8 cruise missile. They measured its range at 3000 kilometers, well past what the treaty allowed. Russia disputed the number, insisting the SSC-8's maximum range was only 480 kilometers. By 2013, reports surfaced that Russia was testing two other systems in ways that could also breach the treaty: the road-mobile SS-25 and the newer RS-26 intercontinental missile.

  US officials briefed NATO on further Russian breaches in 2014, and again in 2017. In 2018, NATO formally backed the American accusations. Putin dismissed the NATO statement as a pretext for a withdrawal Washington had already decided on. A BBC analysis of the meeting behind that statement noted that "NATO allies here share Washington's concerns and have backed the US position, thankful perhaps that it includes this short grace period during which Russia might change its mind."

  Dan Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute offered a different read in 2011. He argued Russia's real objection to the treaty was that it left China's growing intermediate-range arsenal entirely unconstrained. Russian officials and American academic Theodore Postol raised a rival accusation of their own. They argued that the US missile defense system installed in Europe violated the treaty, since it could be quickly retrofitted for offensive use. US and NATO officials rejected that claim, as did academic Jeffrey Lewis. Russian experts also argued that American use of target missiles and drones, such as the MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-4 Triton, broke the treaty's terms. US officials rejected that accusation too.

  None of these arguments settled the underlying dispute over the missile Washington called the SSC-8 and Russia called the 9M729.

• 7. Withdrawal Over China

  ›

  Donald Trump announced on the 20th of October 2018 that the United States would withdraw from the treaty, citing years of Russian violations. Putin responded by insisting Russia would never strike first in a nuclear conflict. It would, in his words, "annihilate" any adversary. Russians killed in such a war, he added, "will go to heaven as martyrs."

  Trump administration officials pointed to a second reason beyond Russia: China's arms buildup in the Pacific, including the South China Sea. Beijing was not bound by the treaty at all. Kelly Magsamen helped shape the Pentagon's Asia policy under President Barack Obama. She said China's freedom to build outside the treaty had frustrated Washington policymakers long before Trump took office. Since 2016, China had deployed the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile, with a 4000 kilometer range, putting American forces as far away as Guam within reach. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis put it bluntly: "the Chinese are stockpiling missiles because they're not bound by the treaty at all."

  China's Foreign Ministry warned that a unilateral US withdrawal would have a negative impact. It urged Washington to "think thrice before acting." National Security Advisor John Bolton countered on the 23rd of October 2018. Speaking to Russian radio station Echo of Moscow, he said recent Chinese statements suggested something surprising. Beijing actually wanted the US to stay in the treaty, despite not being bound by it itself. The same day, Politico reported that China was "the real target" of the withdrawal. It estimated that 90 percent of China's ground missile arsenal would be outlawed if Beijing were ever a party to the treaty. Bolton spoke to Russian newspaper Kommersant on the 22nd of October 2018. He said: "we see China, Iran, North Korea all developing capabilities which would violate the treaty if they were parties to it."

  Russia asked the United Nations General Assembly to intervene on the 26th of October 2018. It missed the 18th of October submission deadline for a full resolution. Instead, it could only call a vote on whether its draft should even be considered by the 193-member disarmament committee. Bolton told Reuters the same day that the treaty was a Cold War relic. He said he wanted talks with Russia focused instead on Chinese missile capability.

  Four days later, in Norway, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia to comply. "The problem is the deployment of new Russian missiles," he said. On the 20th of November 2018, Putin said the Kremlin was ready to discuss the treaty with Washington. He warned, though, that Russia would "retaliate" if the US withdrew.

  Starting the 4th of December 2018, the US gave Russia 60 days to return to compliance. Russia's answer came a day later: it revealed its Peresvet combat laser, claiming the system had already been in service with Russian forces since 2017. On the 23rd of January 2019, Russia displayed the 9M729 missile and its specifications to foreign military attaches. It called the event a transparency exercise meant to keep Washington in the treaty. American, British, French, and German diplomats were invited but declined to attend. They had already rejected an earlier Russian offer to do the same, on the grounds that a static display could not verify the missile's true range.

  A summit between the two countries on the 30th of January 2019 failed to save the treaty. The US suspended compliance on the 2nd of February 2019, a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the move. Trump set a six-month deadline for full withdrawal if Russia did not return to compliance. Putin announced the same day that Russia had suspended the treaty too, calling it a mirror response. Russia began developing new hypersonic intermediate-range missiles and land-based 3M-54 Kalibr systems the next day.

  The United States formally withdrew on the 2nd of August 2019, at the end of its six-month suspension window. Pompeo said that day that "Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise." The Department of Defense simultaneously announced plans to test a new missile from an eastern NATO base, a weapon banned under the treaty's old terms. Officials cited the need to keep pace with both Russia and China.

  Most NATO allies backed the withdrawal, citing years of Russian non-compliance. Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, responded by proposing a moratorium instead. Both countries, he suggested, could agree not to deploy intermediate and shorter-range systems, matching a pledge Putin had already made. NATO's Stoltenberg rejected the offer as not credible, noting Moscow had already deployed the warheads in question. On the 5th of August 2019, Putin declared: "As of the 2nd of August 2019, the INF Treaty no longer exists. Our US colleagues sent it to the archives, making it a thing of the past."

  On the 18th of August 2019, the US test-fired a ground-based version of the Tomahawk missile. It was similar to the BGM-109G banned decades earlier, and the test itself would have been illegal under the treaty. The Pentagon said the test would inform future development of intermediate-range weapons. Russia's foreign ministry called it regrettable and accused Washington of escalating military tensions.

  Reaction to the withdrawal split immediately between Washington's allies and its critics, at home and abroad.

• 8. The Fallout

  ›

  George Shultz, Richard Lugar, and Sam Nunn, all prominent figures in arms control, urged Trump to preserve the treaty before its collapse became final. Gorbachev called the withdrawal "not the work of a great mind." He warned that "a new arms race has been announced." Eliot Engel and Adam Smith chaired the House Committees on Foreign Affairs and Armed Services. Both argued the administration had handed Putin an easy exit instead of pressuring Russia into compliance.

  European members of NATO had made a similar argument earlier, on the 25th of October 2018. They urged Washington to bring Russia back into compliance rather than abandon the treaty, risking a split in the alliance. Stoltenberg later floated expanding the treaty to include China and India. Both Washington and Moscow said they were open to the idea, though Russia doubted such an expansion could ever be achieved.

  House Resolution 1249, the INF Treaty Compliance Act, sought to block government funds from developing missiles the treaty had prohibited. Republican senators Jim Inhofe and Jim Risch, meanwhile, publicly backed the withdrawal.

  Ukraine's Foreign Ministry announced on the 8th of March 2019 that it now had the right to develop its own intermediate-range missiles. Both the US and Russia, after all, were now outside the treaty. It pointed to Russian Iskander-M systems stationed in annexed Crimea as a serious threat. Ukraine had once been home to about forty percent of the Soviet space industry. Even so, it had never been allowed to build a missile capable of striking Moscow, limited instead to shorter and longer range systems.

  Some American commentators argued the withdrawal would let the US counter Russian and Chinese missile forces more effectively. That case appeared to bear out in 2023, with the deployment of the Typhon Medium Range Capability system.

  Brazilian journalist Augusto Dall'Agnol placed the treaty's end within a longer pattern. He traced it back to the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in 2002, made over Russian objections. That earlier exit had already shown how easily a Cold War arms control agreement could be abandoned once one side decided its strategic interests had changed.