By
Colonel Awadhesh Kumar, Special Forces
The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, was signed between the then Soviet Union and the United States on December 8, 1987. It had come into force with effect 01 June 1988. It applies to deployed and even non-deployed ground-based missiles of intermediate range up to 5,000 km and shorter range up to 1,000 km. Washington has on many occasions accused Russia of violating the Treaty but Moscow strongly dismissed all accusations and expressed grievances concerning Washington’s non-compliance.
On 01 February, Trump and US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo trumpted the suspension of Washington’s obligations under the INF Treaty starting 02February. USA is determined to withdraw from the Treaty in six months unless Russia returns to “real and verifiable” compliance.
Naturally as expected on 02February, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow was also suspending the Treaty. He handed down instructions to refrain from initiating talks with Washington on the issue and stressed that the US needed to show readiness for an equal and substantive dialogue.
Now both USA and Russia should know that sparring on such outdated treaty is useless unless they are able to rope in India and China also in this treaty. Presently almost all Indian missiles except Agni 5 ( actual range of 8000 km) falls under the limits of this bilateral INF treaty on intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles. USA probably likes to impose this treaty on other countries with an expanded list. However certainly India which has reached the present position after defying Missile Club would not listen to such treaties.
The bulk of India’s missile arsenal is made up of the Agni class missiles, including the Agni-1 missile with a range of 1000 Km, the Agni-2 with a range of 3,000 Km, the Agni-3 with a range of over 3,000 Km and the Agni-4 that has a range of up to 4,000 Km. All of them would fall under the limits of such a treaty. India is working Agni6 missiles that will have a range of over 8000 km, should soon be testing Surya series with full ICBM range reaching 14000 km+.
In the present era INF kind of treaty becomes meaningful only If all countries that have this kind of weapons decide to give them up. However India will not even consider the possibility of joining such a treaty unless China, USA and Russia all agree to do the same. However, judging by recent media reports, Beijing opposes increasing the number of the treaty’s participants, calling on Moscow and Washington to negotiate a solution …… this makes no sense. All three are in no position to force India to give up its IRBMs or the soon coming ICBMs.
