General: No indication Russia will go back to complying with arms treaty

The U.S. and Russia have discussed Moscow’s deployment of a nuclear-tipped cruise missile in violation of an arms treaty as part of a communications channel established under a separate arms treaty, but there’s no indication Russia plans to go back into compliance with the treaty, the U.S. military’s second-highest ranking officer said Wednesday.

“We have conferred with the Russians under the bilateral consultations committee that exists underneath the New START Treaty in order to confront them on that deployment, and we will continue to do so,” Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee during a hearing on nuclear deterrence.

“I don’t have enough information on their intent to conclude other than they do not intend to return to compliance, absent some pressure from the international community and the United States,” Selva later added. “There’s no trajectory in what they’re doing to indicate otherwise.”

Selva’s comments Wednesday appear to be the U.S. military’s first public comments on Russia’s most recent violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

{mosads}The Obama administration publicly accused Russia of violating the INF Treaty by flight-testing the banned missiles in 2014. The treaty bans ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

In February, multiple news outlets reported that Russia again violated the treaty by deploying a nuclear-tipped cruise missile within its borders.

Later February, in interview with Reuters, President Trump called the violation a “big deal,” but said he’d raise it with Russian President Vladimir Putin “if and when” they meet.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Selva said the military believes Russia is intentionally threatening U.S. and NATO facilities by violating the “spirit and intent” of the INF treaty.

“The system itself presents a risk to most of our facilities in Europe, and we believe that the Russians have deliberately deployed it in order to pose a threat to NATO and to facilities within the NATO area of responsibility,” he said.

Asked what step the U.S. would take should Russia not respond to talks, Selva said only that he’s been asked by the Trump administration to come up with options.

“We’ve been asked to incorporate a set of options into the nuclear posture review, so it would be premature for me to comment on what the potential options might be for the administration to respond,” Selva said, referring to a review ordered by Trump as part of a broader executive action on military readiness signed in January.

Selva also said the review is looking at potential strategy changes to respond to Russia’s apparent willingness to use nuclear weapons.

“We’ve begun an investigation of a series of potential strategy changes, many of which will have to be incorporated in the nuclear posture review,” he said. “In the prior administration, we looked to limit the potential use and utility of nuclear weapons in any scenario with an eye toward reducing the numbers to a much smaller inventory than we have today, a noble goal to be sure. 

“One of the things that happened in the context of that conversation is our adversaries started to articulate a doctrine of escalation to de-escalate, and we have to account for in our nuclear doctrine what that means and what the ladder of strategy ability implies as we look at an adversary that expresses in their rhetoric a willingness to use nuclear weapons.”