The nuclear arsenal is a tool that allows Russia to talk with the US as an equal, despite America’s desire for world dominance, the head of the Russian National Security Council said.

Seeking a dominant position in everything, including the military domain, is part of Washington’s strategic planning, Nikolay Patrushev told journalists on Tuesday. As a nation that does not want to bend to American interests, Russia needs to be able to deter the US.

“Let’s recall what happened on August 6, 1945. The US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima,” Patrushev said. “Why did it happen? Because they had dominance. They knew no nation could retaliate against them for that.

They cannot be allowed to dominate today, to think that nobody could stand up to them. Our newly developed weapons allow us to have a dialogue with the US, to argue for the interests that we have.

The interview focused on the discontinuation of the INF Treaty, a key Cold War era nuclear disarmament treaty, which the Trump administration abandoned this year after accusing Russia of non-compliance. Moscow said it has never seen any evidence that would allow Washington to the claim, and that the US apparently used it as a pretext to shift the blame.

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As it was withdrawing from the treaty, the US indicated that it would consider a replacement if China agrees to join and dismantle its arsenal of ground-based missiles with ranges between 500km and 5,500km – the type of weapons that the INF Treaty banned. Patrushev said the proposition was “unrealistic,” considering Beijing’s discouraging statements on the issue.

“I can only add this: why only China if we consider a multilateral treaty? Why don’t we look at England? Why don’t we look at France?” he said, mentioning the two NATO allies that have national nuclear capability, like the US.

Neither the UK nor France is known to possess land-based medium or intermediate-range missiles at the moment, but both fielded such weapons in the past. France retired its domestically-developed S3 missile in 1996.

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China is not the only nation that has these types of missiles in service. Pakistan and India have projectiles of this weapon class in their arsenals, which are part of the regional nuclear deterrence architecture. Israel’s Jericho missiles are understood to be the land component of Israel’s nuclear triad, even though Israel has neither confirmed nor denied being a nuclear nation.

North Korea’s development of a nuclear deterrence includes testing and deploying several intermediate-range missiles with suspected nuclear capability, including the mobile-launched Hwasong-10 and Hwasong-12.

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