has gotten rid of medium-range missiles in its arsenal. Because of the treaty restrictions, the U.S. “The goal is to be able to deter them from thinking that this month or this year is a good time to move on Taiwan or the Senkakus,” he added.Īt best, it will take years for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and an adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. Putting missiles in Japan or Guam is “another way to enhance the deterrent capability,” said Eric Sayers, a former consultant to U.S.
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free to deploy as many sea- and air-based missiles as it chooses.īut some experts say basing medium-range cruise missiles on land in Asia would significantly increase the Pentagon’s ability to constrain China, deterring Beijing from using force to reclaim control over Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands, an archipelago in the Western Pacific controlled by Japan but claimed by China.
The treaty only covers missiles based on land, leaving the U.S. already had the capability to hit sufficient targets in China using air- and sea-based missiles.īoth types of weapons could strike targets on the Chinese mainland from far offshore, fired from ships and planes that can move around, making them harder for the Chinese to target. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in July 2017 that there was no military necessity to withdraw from the treaty because the U.S. warships and attack submarines carry highly accurate Tomahawk cruise missiles, while its warplanes are armed with air-to surface missiles that can hit targets hundreds of miles away.Īir Force Gen. The Pentagon would by no means be helpless if war broke out with China. He added: “We have no ground-based capability that can threaten China because of, among other things, our rigid adherence - and rightfully so - to the treaty that we signed on to, the INF treaty.” Indo-Pacific Command, who is now ambassador to South Korea, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March. “We are at a disadvantage with regard to China today in the sense that China has ground-based ballistic missiles that threaten our basing in the western Pacific and our ships,” Adm. is especially concerned about China’s DF-26, an intermediate-range ballistic missile fielded in 2016 that has a maximum range of 2,500 miles, enabling it to strike U.S. should either expand the treaty to cover China or “abrogate it entirely so that we can rebuild our own deterrent capabilities.”Ī Pentagon report on China’s military capabilities released in August said Beijing had conventionally armed short- and medium-range ballistic missiles as well as ground- and air-launched land-attack cruise missiles. In 2011, Bolton argued in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the U.S. “In the case of China, one-half to one-third of their ballistic missile capability would violate the treaty if they were party to it,” Bolton said. military rivalry with Beijing and Moscow, both of which are likely to deploy new weapons to counter any U.S. It would risk intensifying a growing U.S. Unless Russia and China agree to a new agreement, Trump has said, “we are going to develop the weapons.”Ībrogating the treaty could come at a high price, however. If Trump follows through on his vow to withdraw from the treaty, the Pentagon would be free to deploy medium-range missiles in Asia capable of hitting targets in China, current and former officials say. air bases and aircraft carriers central to the Pentagon strategy for defending allies in Asia.
President Trump says he is withdrawing from a landmark Cold War-era arms treaty with Russia because Moscow has been violating the agreement for years.īut scrapping the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty also serves another key Trump goal: intensifying military pressure on China.īecause Beijing is not a signatory to the agreement, it has been able to build an extensive arsenal of medium-range ballistic missiles armed with conventional warheads.
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