Policy Analyst James McKeon spoke with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about Sen. Tom Cotton’s remarks supporting withdrawal from the INF Treaty.
If the treaty is officially terminated in August, as expected, the Pentagon plans to test two types of medium-range missiles later this year, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
The move could backfire, according to James McKeon, an analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
“We’re risking an arms race, a rehashing of the worst moments of the Cold War, by getting rid of this treaty,” he said in an interview.
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McKeon, the Center for Arms Control analyst, accused Cotton of “inviting an arms race.”
It’s a risky strategy, given existing geopolitical realities, he said.
“Instead of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, we have Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. We got very lucky with how things worked out in the ’70s and ’80s. I don’t have the confidence in our leaders to recreate what happened during the Cold War,” he said.
“I think the prospects of actually destabilizing the situation, increasing the chances that we would get into a place where none of us want to find ourselves, makes the INF withdrawal so dangerous.” Read more