It isn’t possible to advance the cause of arms control in one place while delivering fatal blows to it in another.
Marc Thiessen’s spin on Trump’s INF Treaty blunder is comically bad:
If withdrawing from the INF Treaty is meant to send North Korea such a message, we have to assume that Bolton is sending it in the hopes of sabotaging all negotiations with North Korea. Bolton hates all arms control agreements, and if he can prevent one from being reached with North Korea by destroying an existing one that is just an added bonus for him. There is no way that leaving the INF Treaty makes successful negotiations with North Korea more likely. Scrapping one of the few remaining arms control treaties tells North Korea that the Trump administration can’t be trusted to honor even a long-established, successful diplomatic agreement ratified by the Senate by an overwhelming margin (93-5). The possibility that the U. S. could build even more nuclear weapons and base more of them within range of North Korea is a good way to make sure that they refuse to make any concessions.
