The breakdown of nuclear arms control and the escalation of U.S.-Russia confrontation over Ukraine highlight a dangerous return to Cold War dynamics, but with more advanced and operational weapon systems.
The nuclear clock is ticking again. With Washington and Moscow trading threats, Trump flaunting nuclear subs, and Russia scrapping its INF moratorium, the world has stumbled back into a Cold War mindset—but this time with more lethal, fully operational weapons.
This is not just history repeating—it’s history accelerating. Europe is once again under the nuclear crosshairs, Ukraine is the frontline laboratory, and the world is edging closer to an era where Mutually Assured Destruction is no longer a relic of the past but the reality of the present.
What few noticed at the time will likely be considered in retrospect as having had been one of the biggest blunders of his administration during his 2016 term. The INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty), in short was a 1987 arms control agreement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (later Russia) that banned both nations from possessing, producing, or testing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km.
The INF’s demise has not just reopened an arms race—it has returned the world to a hair-trigger environment where miscalculation, not intention, could spark annihilation.
President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty in 1987. It was an agreement that followed the realization, “A nuclear war cannot be won, and must never be fought.”, and intermediate range ballistic missiles made the idea of a sneak attack more likely. Their banning was a major reason for the peaceful end of the Cold War, not to mention the continuation of life on earth, and Trump chose to withdraw from it on 2nd August 2019.
But it was all the faults of the Russians, at the time, at least according to Pentagon Statements:
“Russia has failed to c omply with its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and as such, the United States has withdrawn from the INF Treaty effective today, Aug. 2, 2019,” Defence Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said in a statement today. “This withdrawal is a direct result of Russia’s sustained and repeated violations of the treaty over many years and multiple presidential administrations.”
Needless to say, little evidence of Russian violations was given, with comments about “secret weapons programs” and claims of extended range versions of cruise missiles that supposedly violate the treaty, something Russia was quick to deny.
I suspect that, like with Israel, any US accusation is really an admission. With their placement of missile systems in Poland and Romania, as well as threatening China from Taiwan and the Philippines, the US is accusing its opponents of what it is doing itself. The other elephant in the room regarding the INF treaty was that it didn’t cover China, but, rather than try and bring China into the INF, the US simply tore up the treaty, while expecting Russia to keep to its terms.
Nonetheless, with the latest sabre-ratting, including Trump deploying two submarines close to Russian waters in August, in what appears to be a repetition of the early 80s threats by the US to perform a “grand strategic mugging” using depressed trajectory nuclear missiles, the reality of how the threat level has been escalated has never been closer than now. Moscow’s announcement on August 4, 2025,that it would no longer be bound by the INF Treaty should have come no surprise in light of American rhetoric, finger pointing and recriminations in recent years, especially over Ukraine.
The Russian Federation announced the termination of its unilateral moratorium on deploying ground-launched intermediate-range (1,000–5,500 km) and shorter-range (500–1,000 km) missiles
All the while, such pundits, as Matthew Kroenig, of the Atlantic Council, who is the vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Centre for Strategy and Security, are upping the ante with new threats, claims that
“Putin is most afraid of American nuclear weapons, and he will not like the prospects of having more of them arrayed at his doorstep—the prospect of being boxed in by American nuclear weapons is a direct threat to his imperial dreams in a way that sanctions simply are not, at least according to the so-called experts.”
This statement is not without timing, as of August 1, Trump announced in a social media post that he was ordering two U.S. nuclear submarines “to be positioned in the appropriate regions” in response to former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s “statements.” Medvedev had taken to social media in the preceding weeks to expose the reality of U.S. “ultimatums” for Moscow to end the war in Ukraine, in light of the reality on the ground, and that Russian was no longer negotiating from a position of weakness.
In response to Trump’s threats regarding the deployment of nuclear submarines, which were assumed to be capable of launching nuclear armed Trident missiles, Medvedev alluded to Russia’s “Dead Man’s Hand” system, which would automatically launch Russian nuclear retaliation in the event of any attempt at a decapitation strike on Russia.
It makes perfect sense to do this, as the system was developed to stop the US from trying a decapitation strike using submarine launched ballistic missiles and Intermediate Ranged Ballistic Missiles stationed in West Germany during the height of the Cold War, something that the Americans seriously considered doing.
Needless to say, Medvedev was accused of nuclear sabre-rattling, “threatening the world” etc, in western media, who, not surprisingly, but rather hypocritically, ignored the outrageous nuclear threats issued by US Senator Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump, to which Medvedev was responding.
This brings us to why IRBMs and Cruise Missiles were covered by the INF treaty because they allow little time for an opportunity to react to a sudden strike, potentially allowing a sudden attack which would annihilate the government of the target, leaving little chance for retaliation (unless you have the Dead Man’s Hand, of course.
Now we are rapidly returning to the situation of the early 1980s, where both sides will rush to place missile systems to threaten their opponents, with one important difference to the Cold War days.
The Russian missiles actually work
For example, the placement of the Oreshnik system in Belarus puts all of Europe squarely under the sword of Damocles, as there is no missile system capable of intercepting the latest Russian missile system.
With Oreshniks on the front lines of the war in Ukraine and Trump possibly opening a new war front no one is talking about, neighbouring states such as Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States, and other frontline NATO allies are placed under heightened threat. The use of advanced systems in Ukraine, especially the “Oreshnik” strike, shows Russia’s willingness to operationalize new technologies in active war zones, and the fact that it has a significant technological advantage.
As Medvedev himself has put it quite clearly, the West’s anti-Russian path has driven the Russian Federation to withdraw from the INF saying:
“The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of Nato countries’ anti-Russian policy. This is a new reality, all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps.”
The worst of it is, that it is becoming increasingly obvious that the “Peace President” is anything but. Having secured contracts for billions of dollars of weapons from his European tributaries, it looks like Trump is now happy to sit back and let the killing continue. If he was truly serious about peace, he would be well advised to cut the supply of weapons to Ukraine, which would finish the war in a matter of weeks. Instead, the US continues to supply weapons, intelligence, planning, and direction of the war effort.
To the last Ukrainian, which might well turn into “To the last European” as well.
The lesson of the INF Treaty was simple: nuclear wars cannot be won, and must never be fought. By tearing it up, Washington and Moscow have abandoned that wisdom—and with modernized weapons and diminished restraint, the world edges closer to a 1980s-style showdown, only this time with systems designed to actually work.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs
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