Trump may soon kill a US-Russia arms control deal. It might be a good idea.

President Donald Trump is planning to withdraw the United States from a three-decade-old arms control treaty with Russia. If the White House follows through, it could imperil US relations with Moscow and European allies in the near future — and increase tensions with China down the line.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1987. The agreement prohibited Washington and Moscow from fielding ground-launched cruise missiles that could fly between 310 and 3,400 miles.

Both countries signed the agreement as a way to improve relations toward the end of the Cold War. However, both sides still could — and since have — built up cruise missiles that can be fired from the air or sea.

The problem is that Russia has clearly violated that agreement in recent years. In 2014, the Obama administration blamed the Kremlin for testing a cruise missile in direct violation of the accord. (Russia says the US has violated the agreement too, a charge the US denies.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has continued to improve those weapons; in March, he even made the striking claim that Russia will soon have a nuclear-powered cruise missile that can reach the United States.

“Across two administrations, the United States and our allies have attempted to bring Russia back into full and verifiable compliance with INF,” a senior Trump administration official told me, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive ongoing talks.

“Despite our objections, Russia continues to produce and field prohibited cruise missiles and has ignored calls for transparency,” the official added.

And it seems the Trump administration has had enough. “[W]e’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons, and we’re not allowed to,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday.

Experts are divided on whether leaving the treaty is a good or bad idea. Some say it could lead Russia to develop more of the weapons and fuel an arms race, while others say it unnecessarily handicaps America’s military prowess.

Gorbachev, the Soviet premier who signed the treaty with Reagan, called Trump’s announcement “unacceptable” and “very irresponsible.”

The US has yet to formally notify Russia that it will leave the agreement, which would start the process to officially withdraw from the accord six months later. But there’s one person — National Security Adviser John Bolton — who will likely smile if it happens.

Experts I spoke with unanimously agreed that Russia has violated the agreement and that the US needed to do something about it. Where they differed, though, was over how to do that.

The answers fell into two camps: those who felt the US should try to coerce Russia into compliance with what they say is a historic and useful treaty, and those who said the US should leave the treaty entirely because it’s hurting America’s security.

Let’s take each in turn.

Having the treaty in place reduces tensions between the US and Moscow, some experts say, mostly because both countries destroyed about 2,600 ground-based cruise missiles in total along with their corresponding launchers as a result of the treaty.

That was particularly important for Washington’s allies in Europe, who were directly threatened by Russia’s stockpile. “Living in Europe, they care about INF more than anyone because they are within INF ranges,” Heather Williams, an arms control expert at King’s College in London, told me.

But it seems Trump made the announcement that he would be pulling the US out of the treaty before consulting with America’s European friends — and they’re not happy about the decision. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Sunday called it a “regrettable” move, saying that the treaty is “an important pillar of our European security architecture” and that the US decision “raises difficult questions for us and Europe.”

However, European leaders have never publicly criticized Russia for its treaty violations, thereby putting little extra pressure on Moscow to comply.

Experts also point out that leaving the agreement will do little to make Russia want to abide by it. “Punching out isn’t going to bring them into compliance, and now lets them justify a buildup even more while painting us as the bad guys,” said Vipin Narang, a nuclear expert at MIT.

These are legitimate worries. It’s possible Russia could have been even more brazen in its development of ground-based cruise missiles, and that remaining a signatory in the agreement somewhat curbed Moscow’s ambitions. But if the US tears up the deal, Russia could openly and more quickly build up its arsenal — all while claiming the US made it okay to do so.

That could kick-start a new arms race between the two countries, where each side would try to one-up the other with better weaponry. Washington and Moscow would grow their arsenals of ground-launched cruise missiles. That, along with other issues in the relationship, could potentially put both countries on the path to war, many worry.

There are ways to pressure Russia to comply with the agreement, experts told me. Here’s one idea from James Miller, the top Pentagon policy official from 2012 to 2014: The US should develop cruise missiles that carry nuclear weapons and can be launched at sea.

Remember: The INF treaty doesn’t prohibit the US from fielding and testing cruise missiles that can be shot from planes, ships, or submarines — only land. Increasing America’s stockpile of those other weapons, then, might pressure Moscow financially and militarily to come to the table to discuss a way to improve the accord for both sides.

But if Trump leaves the deal, the US will lose any and all leverage with Russia on this issue.

Other experts are equally passionate that leaving the agreement was long overdue. The main reason, they say, is that America should have these weapons if other countries won’t stop building them.

“[T]here was no hope of getting Moscow to return to compliance,” Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear expert at the Atlantic Council think tank, wrote in a blog post on Saturday after Trump’s announcement. “It doesn’t make sense for the United States to be unilaterally constrained by limits that don’t affect any other country.”

Having ground-launched cruise missiles may not actually be all that useful for combating Russia nowadays, these experts say, but they are necessary to fight off the growing military threat from China. That’s an argument that John Bolton, who became Trump’s national security adviser in April, made for years when he was a pundit outside of government.

The case has merit. According to a 2018 Pentagon report, Beijing has vastly improved its cruise missile arsenal, which would likely make it harder for US warships to approach the country’s coast during a fight. Experts say that puts the US at a massive disadvantage and should be promptly reversed.

Eric Sayers, a defense expert at the Center for a New American Security, told me it wouldn’t be too hard to place cruise missiles on the ground near China — like in Japan or the Philippines — as long as those countries agree to it. The US could also deploy longer-range cruise missiles along China’s periphery to fend off Beijing’s ships.

What’s more, he continued, those weapons are cheaper overall than their air or sea variants because they are usually launched from trucks. Planes, ships, and submarines are complex to build and very expensive to maintain, making land-based cruise missiles a good option.

In effect, those who want the US to leave the INF Treaty say the US is missing out on a vital weapon to safeguard the country. “There’s a reason China and others have them and there’s a reason Russia is developing them,” says Rebeccah Heinrichs, a nuclear expert at the Hudson Institute. “Those who confidently insist we don’t need them are spitballing.”

But while Bolton’s argument in this case has merit, this decision is also part of a much broader effort by the Trump administration to undo years of arms control work — and it all just so happens to correlate with Bolton’s time at the White House.

Bolton has been very open about his dislike of arms control agreements for years. In his 2007 book Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations, he spends dozens of pages railing against what he calls the “arms control theology” that “had been painstakingly developed during the Cold War, and kept on life support during the Clinton presidency by devotion and prayer rather than hard reality.”

It’s therefore no real surprise that the Trump administration has withdrawn from multiple arms control agreements during Bolton’s six months as national security adviser. For example, in May the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, which the Obama administration put in place to constrain Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon. But Bolton — and Trump — felt that it didn’t go far enough, and ultimately decided to pull out of the deal.

Bolton is currently in Moscow to meet with top Russian leaders, and this issue will certainly come up. Arms control came up when Bolton was in Russia four months ago, when he and his counterparts discussed extending the New START nuclear treaty between the United States and Russia for another five years. That agreement came into effect on February 5, 2011, with the goal of limiting the size of the American and Russian nuclear arsenals, the two largest in the world.

At the time, three sources familiar with Bolton’s thinking told me that he was “very upset” he had to discuss extending the agreement when he spoke to Putin about it. Before joining the administration, Bolton called the accord “unilateral disarmament” by the United States.

Some experts worry that Trump’s announcement about the INF Treaty means New START may soon die. Bolton, however, would likely celebrate that move.