Donald Trump says US will pull out of landmark nuclear arms pact with Russia
● Pact was signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987
● US hawks argue pact ties country’s hands in strategic rivalry with China
US President Donald Trump said the United States planned to leave a cold war-era nuclear weapons treaty with Russia, which criticised the move as Washington’s latest effort to be the sole global superpower.
Trump claims Russia has long violated the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the INF, was signed in 1987 by president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.
But a foreign ministry source told the RIA Novosti state news agency that Washington’s “main motive is a dream of a unipolar world”, one that won’t be realised.
“We’re the ones who have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honoured the agreement, but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement, so we’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” Trump told reporters in Elko, Nevada on Saturday.
Asked to clarify, the president said: “Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and they say, ‘Let’s all of us get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons,’ but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable. So we have a tremendous amount of money to play with our military.”