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US national security advisor John Bolton tells Vladimir Putin US will leave nuclear treaty
US national security advisor John Bolton has said after meeting Vladimir Putin that the United States cannot prevent Russia from violating a key nuclear arms control treaty and will withdraw from it.
Donald Trump said last week he would leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a landmark US-Russian agreement dating to 1987, but some have wondered if the sudden announcement was simply an attempt to force Russia to renegotiate the treaty or come to a new understanding.
Speaking to reporters in Moscow, Mr Bolton said he had talked with Mr Putin for an hour-and-a-half “about arms control issues, the new nuclear landscape, and the president's decision on the INF treaty”.
The Russian side had continued to insist it was complying with the treaty, he said, despite the accusations Washington has been making since 2014 that Moscow is developing missiles banned by the agreement.
The Trump administration will draft an official notice of withdrawal from the INF treaty, even though it is a “long way from any decisions” about what might replace it, he said.
“It is the American position that Russia is in violation, it is Russia's position that they're not in violation,” Mr Bolton said. “So one has to ask how does one get the Russians to come back into compliance with obligations they don't think they're violating.”
Mr Trump had warned on Monday that the United States would expand its nuclear arsenal if Russia and China continued to increase their own stockpiles.
Mr Bolton also agreed with Mr Putin to set up a meeting with Mr Trump in Paris on November 11 in Paris. Both presidents have been planning to travel to the French capital for the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended WWI.
The pair last met in Helsinki in July for a controversial summit. Mr Trump appeared to side with Russia against his own intelligence agencies when he told reporters afterward that Mr Putin “was extremely strong and powerful in his denial” of Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
There was "no possibility" Russian meddling tipped the election for Mr Trump, Mr Bolton said in Moscow, despite an upcoming book by a University of Pennsylvania statistician that argues the opposite. He called Russia's interference "junior varsity" compared to China's.
In an exchange with Mr Bolton in the Kremlin earlier on Monday, Mr Putin joked that withdrawing from the INF Treaty would contradict the US seal, which features an eagle holding arrows in one claw and an olive branch representing peace in the other.
“So has the eagle eaten all the olives and only left the arrows?” Mr Putin asked with a smile.
Despite Mr Putin's jibe, Mr Bolton stubbornly insisted there was nothing to be done to save the agreement, which was negotiated by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev amid a Cold War missile crisis.
“The problem is there are Russian INF-violating missiles in Europe now,” Mr Bolton said. “The threat is not that America is withdrawing from the INF treaty, the threat is that Russian missiles are in Europe.”
The treaty bans ground-based cruise missiles that have a range of 300 to 3,400 miles, a capability that is arguably more important to Russia, which borders China and North Korea, than to the United States.
Russia has claimed that US missile defence systems in Europe can be repurposed into an offensive weapon, arguing that it is in fact Washington is in violation of the INF.
Mr Bolton argued that the treaty somehow kept the United States from competing with China's growing nuclear potential.
He was dismissive of the suggestion that the agreement might be expanded to include China or other countries and brushed aside fears of a new arms race. Concerns about the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, which he orchestrated as George W. Bush's undersecretary for arms control, had not bourne out, he claimed.
“On the conceptual possibility of universalising the treaty, yes, that's something we thought of as far back as 2004, and efforts were made then to see if it would be possible to extend the treaty,” he said. “They all failed.”
Asked about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Mr Bolton would only say that he had briefed Mr Putin on the US position. Both Mr Trump and Mr Putin have been reluctant to blame their allies in the Saudi royal family, insisting that more evidence is needed before fingers can be pointed.
The national security advisor also told Mr Putin that the United States is considering further sanctions against Russia over the chemical weapons attack in Salisbury but hadn't made a decision yet.
Washington imposed sanctions in August following the poisoning of Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent deployed by two Russian military intelligence agents. A second round of sanctions is supposed to be imposed in November unless United Nations inspectors are allowed to make sure that Russia doesn't have chemical weapons.
In addition, Mr Bolton and Mr Putin discussed cooperation in Syria and on anti-terrorism and anti-narcotics efforts.
The United States wants to avoid a humanitarian disaster in the last Syrian rebel stronghold of Idlib, the American envoy said.