How to Rebalance US Global Security Cheaply and Easily

by Stephen Blank and Peter Huessy • December 5, 2018 at 5:00 am

Russia, evidently not restrained by the agreement, is already building missiles outside the INF treaty, according to an October 29, 2018 report from the Congressional Research Service. The bottom line is: If the Russians do not comply with the INF arms control treaty, there is no treaty to be saved.
Worse, as China was never a party to the INF treaty, it is deploying thousands of such INF range missiles in the Pacific, thereby putting the USA and its allies at a serious military disadvantage.
To counter such threats effectively and stand up to the culture of intimidation and threats of both Russia and China, the US needs create a conventional missile and nuclear deterrent capability that is at least on a par with those of Moscow and Beijing. Such deployments, rather than undermining arms control, might even induce Russia and China to negotiate any future arms negotiations with the US in better faith, while simultaneously strengthening US security.
If created with US allies in the Pacific, such relatively inexpensive and easily produced conventionally armed missiles would, in short order, rebalance the Pacific security situation in the favor of the US and its Indo-Pacific alliances.

The reason the Soviets eventually signed the INF treaty in 1987 was because the US and NATO deployment of hundreds of Pershing and ground launched cruise missiles in Western Europe exemplified NATO solidarity and vitiated the coercive threat that the earlier Soviet SS-20 missile deployments had hoped to secure to prevent a NATO response to potential Soviet aggression. Pictured: Pershing II missiles at Fort Bliss McGregor Range. (Image source: US Dept. of Defense)

The US renunciation of the 1987 United States-Soviet Union Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) has generated much skepticism in the arms-control community – particularly in much of Europe, and from Japan.

These countries hoped not only to keep Russia and the United States in the 1987 treaty, (despite Russia's major violations of the INF treaty) but also to persuade China to become a party to the treaty and thus be forced to eliminate the multiple hundreds of INF-range missiles China has deployed in Asia ranged against US and its allied interests.

Critics have presented the following five main arguments against the US move:

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Sweden's Parliamentary Election Crisis

by Kent Ekeroth • December 5, 2018 at 4:00 am

This morning, December 5, we will get more information from speaker Norlén when a third vote on who is going to be prime minister will be held. Once again, Löfven (S) will most likely be running for the position. If C and L betray their Alliance-coalition and supports Löfven, he wins; if negotiations fail, he loses for the second time.
The main reason Sweden will probably not have a re-election is that if we did, the party that has the most to gain from another election is SD – which all the other parties are fervently trying to stop.
Also, if there were a re-election, both the Liberal party and the Green party have a high likelihood of failing to get enough votes even to get into parliament.
In fact, out of the 349 seats in Swedish parliament, it would take only 21 more seats to go to SD, M or KD for these three parties to get a majority in parliament.

Sweden's House of Parliament in Stockholm. (Image source: Holger.Ellgaard/Wikimedia Commons)

Sweden has always been extremely stable when it comes to our governments and the time it takes to form them.

After the election in 2014 (we have elections every four years) the government took office 19 days later. Until this year, in fact, it has never taken more than 25 days after an election to form a government; the average time is just six days.

Today, however, 86 days have passed since Sweden's last election without a government having formed – a record by a wide margin.