The United States has said that it wants to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) because of alleged violations by Russia. Moscow denies the charges and says the move is consistent with U.S. plans to loosen all international constraints on its behavior. Russia is likely cheating on the INF, but that is no reason to abandon the treaty yet. It has served European security well and abandoning the agreement would do more harm to arms control efforts generally, a development that could have profound implications for Asian security too.

The INF treaty was agreed in 1987 between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It bans all nuclear-armed missiles in Europe with ranges from 500 to 5,500 km. It eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons and effectively capped a nuclear arms race that threatened Europe. At their summit last summer, NATO defense ministers confirmed that the INF treaty "has been crucial to Euro-Atlantic security."

Four years ago, Washington accused Moscow of violating the treaty by testing a ground-launched cruise missile, the 9M729, that exceeded INF limits. Three years later, the U.S. said that Russia had "secretly deployed" one operational unit of the weapon, called the SSC-8. Moscow called the charges "totally unfounded" and countered that U.S. plans to deploy antimissile systems in Europe make it the real violator of the treaty. The U.S. denies that allegation.