US should ‘think twice’ about leaving missile pact: Beijing

Bloomberg

China called on the US to reconsider pulling out of a three-decade-old arms control treaty with Russia, saying the move would generate “multiple negative effects.”
President Donald Trump said on Saturday he planned to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as INT, claiming that Moscow had breached the agreement on intermediate-range conventional and nuclear weapons. The New York Times reported the move was in part to enable the US to counter a Chinese arms buildup in the Pacific.
“I want to stress that it is completely wrong to use China as an excuse for pulling out of the treaty,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters on Monday in Beijing. “We hope relevant countries can cherish the hard-won achievements over the years, prudently and properly handle issues related to the treaty through dialogue and consultation, and think twice about withdrawing from the treaty.”
Without the restrictions of the 1987 treaty, China has had a free hand developing and deploying intermediate-range nuclear missiles of its own, including missiles designed to take out US aircraft carriers patrolling the waters of the Western Pacific. Exiting the accord would free the US to deploy new weapons in the Indo-Pacific to respond to China’s attempt to erode its post-World War II dominance.
‘Carrier Killers’
“China hasn’t signed the agreement and has been producing mid-range missiles and so-called carrier killers to asymmetrically increase the costs of an American-led naval containment strategy,” said Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo. “The US is likely withdrawing to send a message to Beijing that the US can and will produce mid-range nuclear weapons that can erode away China’s existing asymmetric advantage.”
The prospect of a US weapons buildup would underscore concern in Beijing that the US is intent on thwarting China’s rise, be it via a trade war or a systematic program of military containment. Since Trump’s election US-China relations have deteriorated on virtually every front, from trade to cyber-security to geopolitical flash points like Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Under the 1987 agreement, the US and the former Soviet Union committed to eliminate all ground-based nuclear and conventional missiles with a range between 500 to 5,550 kilometers.
China’s collection of intermediate missiles—including the recently developed DF-26s—form the backbone of its offensive capabilities in the Asia Pacific and are designed to hit targets along the strategic “first and second island chains,” according to Zhang Baohui, director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. The “first island chain” is a string of archipelagos stretching from Japan, past Taiwan to the Philippines—all US security partners.

Macron: Deal key to Europe security
Bloomberg

French President Emmanuel Macron told President Donald Trump he’s concerned about European security if the US pulls out of a 1987 nuclear weapons treaty with Russia.
Macron emphasized “the importance of this treaty for European security and our strategic balance” in the conversation with Trump, his office said in a statement. Trump said that
Russia is breaching the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and that the administration is “going to terminate the agreement.”
Macron’s comments echo concern in Germany, wh-
ich has no nuclear weapons of its own and was at the front line of the confrontation between NATO and
the Soviet bloc during the Cold War.