German Foreign Ministry Announces Arms Control Plan in Europe

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas presented his own plan for disarmament in Europe amid US declarations of withdrawal from the missile treaty with Russia. According to the publication in Der Spiegel there are four points: the need for data exchange between the United States and Russia; the comprehensive monitoring of missiles, including cruise missiles; a greater transparency in arms control issues in China; the need to control new types of weapons. Maas explains his concern that, after the end of the Cold War, the world ceased to be divided into two “predictable military-political blocs with equal forces”. The main responsibility for the lack of trust between the parties he placed on Russia. The diplomat urged it to prove the absence of violation of the Treaty on Intermediate-Range and Short-Range Missiles (INF) with the U.S. The agreement concluded between the United States and the USSR in 1987 prohibits the creation and use of land-based missiles with a range from 500 kilometers to 5.5 thousand kilometers. In October, President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the INF Treaty, accusing Moscow of violating it. Russian authorities deny the charges. They called the “blackmail” the decision of the United States and threatened with “retaliatory measures of a military-technical nature”. In September, the Breaking Defense, citing sources at the U.S. Department of Defense, reported that the Pentagon was developing, for the first time since the collapse of the USSR, a land-based missile system with a range of 1600 kilometers. The same source recently said that the U.S. Department of Defense presented to Congress potential options for adopting medium-range missiles. Source: svoboda.org