China’s Growing Missile Ambitions Helped Kill the INF Treaty

US President Ronald Reagan (L) with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during welcoming ceremonies at the White House on the first day of their disarmament summit. After a three-day summit in Washington, both superpowers leaders put their names to the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in a first attempt to reverse the nuclear arms race. Ronald Reagan, an icon to Republicans and a hero to those Americans who remember him as the man who brought down the "Evil Empire". JEROME DELAY/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump is correct to end America’s adherence to the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty signed with the former Soviet Union, as this treaty now prevents both the United States and Russia from defending themselves from China’s growing theater-range nuclear missile threat.

Though long viewed as a classic achievement for modern nuclear arms control, the INF treaty was much more a demonstration that peace comes through strength. It was the Soviet Union that began the race in nuclear-armed intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) with the 1976 deployment of its multiple warhead SS-20 IRBM.