The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, called on Tuesday 18 December for the strengthening of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
On 4 December, the United States gave Russia 60 days to comply with the agreement before it too would no longer respect its obligations under the INF.
“So let us try to turn this current crisis that we would not like to see develop in a negative manner into an opportunity [...] and not to dismantle but to strengthen the [INF] Treaty and to move forward on the path towards disarmament”, she stressed in a speech to the Seventh EU Conference on Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.
“The only way forward on all non-proliferation and disarmament issues is to enforce the existing agreements, to modernise and universalise the current architecture and to expand it with better rules and better guarantees,” she added.
Ms Mogherini expressed the “serious” concerns of Europeans about Moscow's compliance with the INF Treaty, saying that these concerns need to be addressed in a “very substantive and transparent way - not by words, but by deeds”. “We do not need a new arms race in Europe,” she warned.
American misunderstanding
On 7 December, in an interview with three journalists, including EUROPE, the US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, hoped that Europeans would support the US position. “We were hoping that the EU will join us in recognising that Russia is not in compliance and that it is not necessarily in our interest or in the interest of the EU to remain in a treaty where we have one hand tied behind our back by observing the treaty and that Russia does not because they’re not observing the treaty”, he explained. He had hoped that Europeans would recognise that “the United States is doing the right thing,” and that they would agree with Washington. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)