THE Trump administration that has been making concerted efforts to undermine the postwar liberal order is now set to jettison the Cold War nuclear order that introduced a modicum of nuclear sanity in the world. After the demise of Soviet Union in 1990s, the use of nuclear weapons as a political weapon reduced considerably. Although the nuclear proliferation bogey was extensively used against Iraq and Libya, but the politics of nuclear disarmament did not find much favour with the United States (US) strategic community.

In 2001, when the Bush administration decided to start work on the real wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “Star Wars” anti-ballistic missile system, Washington conveniently repudiated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. Post the financial crisis of 2008, as the containment of China became one of the chief concerns, the US strategic community decided to reintroduce the nuclear element into the global political discourse by re-igniting the nuclear arms race and ramping up Cold War era tensions.

This was recently achieved by President Donald Trump when he announced its intentions to terminate and pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty bringing the entire nuclear arms control regime under severe stress and pushing the world towards a nuclear precipice. The INF treaty bans US or Russian manufacture and deployment of nuclear missiles with ranges of 500-5,500 kilometers (310-3,420 miles). The elimination of 846 US and 1,846 Soviet nuclear missiles, bears testimony to the success of INF treaty, which was signed by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.

According to the Guardian “withdrawal from the treaty, which would mark a sharp break in US arms control policy, has yet to be agreed upon by cabinet and faces opposition from within the state department and the Pentagon.” The US president is required to inform the Senate by January 15 about the “material breach” of the treaty by Russia and whether the INF remains legally binding on the US.

Trump has tried to justify his intention to scrap the treaty by blaming Moscow and Beijing. He believes that America has ended up being a strategic sucker by adhering to the treaty stipulations while both Russia and China are developing the missile systems unhampered by treaty obligations. Russia is the target for deploying Novator 9M729 land-based cruise missile on their soil since 2016. The US national security advisor John Bolton during his recent visit to Moscow accused Russia of violating the treaty and forcing the US to dump the treaty in the larger interest of its security. The Russians have denied any dilution of the treaty. On the other hand, Moscow alleges that the SM-3 Block IIA missile, a part of the AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defence system, planted by the US on Japanese soil are not just shore-based ballistic missile interceptors but also capable of launching projectiles.

The US is blaming China largely because it is not an INF signatory and has accumulated a reasonable quantity of medium-range and intermediate-range cruise and ballistic missiles. However, one of the main reasons for the likely scraping of INF is that the US needs to keep its strategic options in the Indo Pacific unconstrained by any bilateral treaty.

Admiral Harry Harris, former commander of the US Pacific Fleet and currently the US ambassador to South Korea, a big advocate of killing the INF treaty feels that it prevents re-establishment of full US military dominance of the Pacific Ocean, where its total reliance on sea-based deterrence and lack of ground-based projectiles directed at China, puts the US “at a disadvantage with regard to China today in the sense that China has ground-based ballistic missiles that threaten our basing in the western Pacific and our ships.”

The US problem with China is that it has repeatedly refused to indulge in any official discussions about it nuclear capacities because they believe that such talks would undermine deterrence. The US strategy to revive the nuclear debate is mainly aimed at bringing the Chinese nuclear capabilities into open and introducing the nuclear disarmament element in negotiations with China.

The repudiation of INF means that after many decades the deployment of nuclear weapons by nuclear powers will be free of any international restrictions. This move by the US will enhance missile deployments across Europe and East Asia, where the US is expected to deploy the long range missiles in Japan or at Guam to counter China’s strategic threat. The Germans and the EU concerned about the Euro-Atlantic nuclear security have also expressed their unhappiness over the US threats to withdraw from INF without consulting its NATO partners. However, as expected the United Kingdom is backing the US and called on the Kremlin to "get its house in order.”

This US move poses a major threat to global security because it challenges the viability of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Many in America are increasingly advocating that the nuclear war is winnable. For example, the RAND Corporation paper entitled, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable, which invokes Herman Kahn’s idea of “winnable” nuclear war”.

The word ‘War’ is fast gaining salience in great power politics. In August this year, Russia conducted one of the biggest war games since 1981 that involved 30 per cent of Russian active duty military. The exercise named Vostok 2018 also had Chinese armed forces (3,200 soldiers, 900 tanks and 30 jets and helicopters) participating for the first time. This clearly indicated that Moscow is now more certain about its Eurasian roots and the fact that without China its Eurasian identity is hollow.

The sustained US pressure has made Russia subscribe to a strident stand against US aggression. Andrei Belousov, deputy head of the Department of Nonproliferation and Arms Control acknowledged that Russia was preparing for protecting its people and territorial integrity. Differentiating between Russian and American preparation for war, Belousov underlined “Russia is preparing for war, and the US is preparing a war.” The Russia-US relations have hit a new low. The US pronouncements on INF have made the situation worse. The current crisis is being compared to the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the nuclear-armed superpowers close to war in 1962. President Putin is contemplating re-opening the Russia military base in Havana.

Under Trump, America has displayed extremely low emotional quotient to handle its sharp decline in global affairs. The White supremacists are refusing to reconcile to the fact that in Atlantis versus Eurasian great game, the latter is emerging as a strong contender.