This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Amid rising alarm over Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal from a key nuclear weapons treaty with Russia, the Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations committee said he hoped it was “just a move” to achieve a new deal, in the way the president threatened then renegotiated the Nafta trade agreement.

Ditching nuclear arms treaty would be dangerous step, Russia warns US Read more

“This could be a precursor to try to get Russia to come into compliance,” said Bob Corker, of Tennessee.

Russia appeared to have drawn a similar conclusion: deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov called Trump’s announcement a “very dangerous step” and “blackmail to forcefully get certain concessions in a number of areas”.

The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. Its ban on ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km has kept Europe free of nuclear missiles. The US argues that Russia’s Novator ground-based missile violates the treaty.

On Saturday in Nevada, Trump told reporters: “Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement so we’re going to terminate the agreement, we’re going to pull out.”

On Sunday another Republican senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, summed up alarm across the political spectrum when he told Fox News Sunday it would be “a big, big mistake to flippantly get out of this historic agreement”.

But Trump also hinted that talks could be possible if “Russia comes to us … and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons.’”

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Corker appeared to seize on that, telling CNN’s State of the Union that though there was “no question” Russia had been in violation of INF “for years”, Trump’s move “could be somewhat like the fact that they were going to end Nafta. And then they ended up negotiating some small changes and it looks like it’s going to be extended.”

Trump threatened to abandon Nafta before talks with Canada and Mexico resulted in a new deal, the United States Mexico Canada Agreement or USMCA.

The Guardian reported on Friday that the national security adviser, John Bolton, was behind the push to withdraw from INF. On Sunday, Corker said “Bolton’s on his way to Russia”.

Corker also said: “We’ve also heard that maybe they want to end the New Start treaty. I think that would be a huge mistake.”

That deal was signed by the US and Russia in 2010 and is due for renewal in 2021. It limits the number of deployed strategic warheads on either side to 1,550. Bolton opposes it.

“I think the Start treaty has worked,” Corker said. “I feel responsible, with others but I really led the charge to cause it to be ratified and it works. So I hope we’re not moving down the path to undo much of the nuclear arms control treaties that we put in place.”

UK backs Trump withdrawal from Russia nuclear treaty Read more

Fears of a renewed nuclear arms race have stalked the Trump presidency. On Saturday, the billionaire hinted that the US would develop missiles of the type banned under INF, saying: “We have a tremendous amount of money to play with with our military.”

The defense secretary, James Mattis, has suggested that a proposal to add a sea-launched cruise missile to the US nuclear arsenal could provide leverage to persuade Russia to honour INF.

Corker said: “If we are going to get out of it I hope we are at least in a place development-wise where we too have developed some mechanisms, otherwise they’re going to move ahead of us quickly.”

On Saturday one nuclear weapons expert, Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told the Guardian: “This is a colossal mistake. Russia gets to violate the treaty and Trump takes the blame.

“I doubt very much that the US will deploy much that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Russia, though, will go gangbusters.”