A M A C D O N A L D - L A U R I E R I N S T I T U T E P U B L I C A T I O N

Gorbachev transformed the political climate, and with the Reykjavik Summit, the subsequent signing of the INF Treaty became a symbol of the beginning of the end of the Cold War. [...] In the process, which publicly began in 2014 with the US Bureau of Arms Con- trol’s report of Russian non-compliance, leading to the demise of the INF Trea- ty, and in the current and foreseeable future, none of the conditions which had led to the INF question in the late 1970s are present. [...] On the American side,10 the central concern or focus of the debate that would emerge was the deployment of a new generation of Soviet IRBMs – the 14 A RELIC OF THE PAST: Why the demise of the Cold War’s INF Treaty will not alter the strategic military balance SS-20.11 The SS-20 lacked the range to strike at the continental United States, and thus by definition was not a strategic weapon. [...] By the time of the NATO Brussels Foreign and Defence Ministers’ Summit in December 1979, where the dual-track decision was made, however, the polit- ical relationship between the East and the West had deteriorated significantly, 18 A RELIC OF THE PAST: Why the demise of the Cold War’s INF Treaty will not alter the strategic military balance with détente coming to a screeching halt with the Soviet. [...] In that report, the United States noted that the missile in question was not the 22 A RELIC OF THE PAST: Why the demise of the Cold War’s INF Treaty will not alter the strategic military balance short-range SSC-7 (R-500) GLCM or the RS-26 ICBM.32 In 2018, the United States identified the GLCM as the SSC-8 (9M729; see USA 2018b, 12).