SCOTT RITTER: ‘My Life’s Work Melting Before My Eyes’

July 7, 2024

As was the case in June 1982, people of the United States need to send a collective signal that they will not tolerate policies that lead toward nuclear war.

Oct. 18, 1988: Roland LaJoie, director of the U.S. On-Site Inspection Agency, leads a delegation of Soviet inspectors who had come to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona to monitor the destruction of ground-launched cruise missile weapon systems in the first round of reductions mandated by the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (U.S. National Archives, Public domain)

By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News

On July 1 the Russian delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control organized a round table on “The Transformation of the World Order in the context of the Ukrainian Crisis.” This article is derived from the author’s presentation there.

Reflecting on my participation on July 1 in the Russian-hosted forum in Vienna on the ongoing transformation of the world order, I was struck by the words of Ambassador Alexander Lukashevich, the permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). 

The ambassador told a very personal story when he took part in the Istanbul summit back in November 1999 as a junior diplomat in the delegation he now heads. There, despite tensions that existed between the United States/NATO and the Russian Federation over NATO’s then bombing of Serbia, OSCE leaders, through a process of dialogue, adopted three foundational documents that served as the framework for European security for the next two decades. 

These were the Charter for European Security; the Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe; and the Istanbul Summit Declaration.

The Charter for European Security reaffirmed the commitment to a free, democratic and integrated Europe as defined by the geographic and political boundaries set forth by the territories encompassed by the OSCE,  which coexisted in peace, with their respective individuals and communities enjoying freedom, prosperity and security.

The Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) served to modify the existing CFE Treaty to consider the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact; the unification of Germany; and the expansion of NATO, all with the goal of facilitating equitable security and stability for all parties to the treaty.

Finally, the Istanbul Summit Declaration outlined the shared vision for European security and cooperation, emphasizing strengthening cooperation between the OSCE and other international organizations,  enhancement of OSCE peacekeeping efforts, and expansion of OSCE-backed police activities designed to maintain the rule of law.

Ambassador Lukashevich lamented that the conflict in Ukraine, beginning with the 2014 Maidan coup that saw Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich ousted by U.S. and E.U.-backed Ukrainian nationalists, has undermined and destroyed all three of the Istanbul Summits crowning achievements.

INF

Helmeted protesters face off against police on Dynamivska Street during the Maidan uprising in Kiev, Jan 20, 2014. (Mstyslav Chernov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The OSCE, working at the behest of NATO, used the Minsk Accords to further the expansion of NATO, instead of brokering peace in Ukraine. Today, NATO is engaged in a war with Russia using Ukraine as its proxy. In short, the very processes of peace and security Lukashevich said he’d worked so hard to create and implement back in 1999 were “melting before my eyes.”

I had been involved in a process of foundational importance to European security — the implementation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The INF Treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987. 

In February 1988 I was one of the first military officers assigned to the newly created On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA), created by the U.S. Department of Defense to implement the INF Treaty. 

In June 1988 I was dispatched to the Soviet Union as part of an advanced party of inspectors to install a multi-million-dollar monitoring installation outside the gates of a Soviet missile factory in the city of Votkinsk, some 750 miles east of Moscow in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. 

For the next two years I worked in the company of my fellow American inspectors, side-by-side with our newfound Soviet colleagues, to implement a treaty which, without our mutual commitment to making the world a safer place through disarmament, would most likely have failed in the face of deep-seated opposition in both the U.S. and Soviet Union (you can read about my experiences in my book, Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika.) 

Square One

Gorbachev and Reagan signing the INF Treaty in the White House in 1987. (White House Photographic Office – National Archives and Records Administration, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

On June 28 last month, a mere three days before the Russian round table in Vienna, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was going to resume production of short- and intermediate-range missiles — the very weapons myself and my fellow American and Soviet inspectors had worked so hard to eliminate. Putin said he would weigh their potential deployment in Europe and elsewhere to offset similar deployments by the United States of intermediate-range missiles in Europe and the Pacific. 

Putin was referring to the deployment by the U.S. of Mk 70 containerized missile launchers capable of firing the SM-6 “Typhon” dual-capability missile as well as the Tomahawk ground-launched cruise missile. The SM-6 has a range of under 310 miles, making it compliant under the terms of the INF Treaty, the Tomahawk’s range of 1,800 miles makes it an INF-capable system.

The United States withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019, during the presidency of Donald Trump. Russia, however, indicated that it would not either produce or deploy INF-capable missiles (despite being accused by the U.S. of doing just that in justifying its decision to withdraw from the landmark arms control agreement) so long as the U.S. did not introduce them into Europe. 

U.S. Army Typhon medium-range capability missile system. (US Army, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

In September 2023, the U.S. deployed two Mk 70 launchers onto the soil of Denmark as part of NATO military exercises. And in May of 2024 the U.S. likewise deployed the Mk 70 launcher on the soil of the Philippines. These actions prompted Putin’s response.

In short, we have literally gone back to square one when it comes to arms control and nuclear disarmament — to a time when Cold War politics nearly brought the U.S. and Russia to the edge of the nuclear abyss.

That is where we stand today.

Like Ambassador Lukashevich, I am literally watching my life’s work melt before my eyes.

The difference between now and then is stark. Four decades ago, we had an engaged public, and diplomats who talked to one another.

June 24 marked the 42nd anniversary of the million-person march in Central Park against nuclear war and for nuclear disarmament.

The political pressure created by this event resonated into the halls of power.

‘Walk in the Woods’

 Nitze, left, visiting The Hague in January 1985 while serving as U.S. arms control adviser. (Rob Croes/Anefo, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)

July 16 will mark the 42nd anniversary of the famous “Walk in the Woods” conducted by Paul Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky, respectively the U.S. and Soviet lead negotiators for INF talks that, at the time, were stymied.

Faced with a calcified recalcitrance on the part of U.S. hardliners, the two men took a walk in the woods outside Geneva, Switzerland, where they outlined possible ways to break the negotiation impasse.

The ideas that Nitze and Kvitsinsky came up with never came to pass — neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union were ready to undertake such drastic actions.

But their courageous stab at diplomacy at a time when neither side was talking to the other shook free the rust that had frozen their respective sides, lubricating the machinery of diplomacy, and set in motion the processes that led to Reagan and Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty some five and a half years later.

The key take-away from the Nitze-Kvitsinsky “Walk in the Woods” was that, when it comes to meaningful arms control, success is not immediate. The process of arms control must be seen in the long term. 

It was also clear that fear fueled consideration of positive outcomes that eventually led to an equitable solution in the form of the INF Treaty.

There is no doubt in my mind that within the ranks of the Russian and U.S. diplomatic corps today are two men possessed of the vision and courage of Paul Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky who can, if given the opportunity, recreate the magic of the “Walk in the Woods.” That magic helped create the conditions for negotiations that helped pull the U.S. and Soviet Union from the nuclear abyss more than four decades ago. 

But two hurdles must be crossed first. It is difficult to imagine a U.S. and Russian diplomat walking and talking today when, as Professor Sergey Markedonev, a fellow participant at the Vienna round table pointed out, official U.S. policy precludes even shaking hands with Russian diplomats. 

It’s Up to the American People

To cross that bridge the U.S. government needs a signal from the American people that such behavior is not acceptable.

We need a modern-day version of the June 1982 Central Park million-person rally in support of nuclear disarmament and arms control and against nuclear war.

America has an election coming up in November where issues of our collective existential survival as a people and nation are on the line.

There is no more existential issue than that of nuclear war.

As was the case in June 1982, we, the people of the United States, need to send a collective signal to all who seek to represent us in the highest office of the land, that we will not tolerate policies that lead toward nuclear war.

That we insist on policies that promote nuclear disarmament and arms control.

That we demand that our diplomats begin talking with their Russian counterparts.

I’m tired of watching my life’s work melt before my very eyes.

It’s time to rebuild the foundations of our collective survival.

To make mainstream the cause of disarmament that once saved us from nuclear Armageddon.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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Michael Popok and Karen Friedman Agnifilo on the Legal AF podcast, debate how high a sentence Judge Merchan will impose on Trump for his felony convictions and whether he will vacate any part of the jury’s felony conviction verdict against Trump under the new immunity ruling by SCOTUS. Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Support the MeidasTouch Network: https://patreon.com/meidastouch Add the MeidasTouch Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Buy MeidasTouch Merch: https://store.meidastouch.com Follow MeidasTouch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Facebook: https://facebook.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on Instagram: https://instagram.com/meidastouch Follow MeidasTouch on TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@meidastouch

Trump Makes HUGE BLUNDER with his DERANGED MESSAGES CORPORATE MEDIA IS NOT REPORTING TRUMP'S DEMENTIA!

 

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Pressure

 

A message to Republicans feeling the pressure to vote with their party: this isn't your party anymore. The Lincoln Project is a leading pro-democracy organization in the United States — dedicated to the preservation, protection, and defense of democracy. Our fight against Trumpism is only beginning. We must combat these forces everywhere and at all times — our democracy depends on it. Don’t forget to like, share, and follow The Lincoln Project on social media below! DONATE TO THE LINCOLN PROJECT https://action.lincolnproject.us/donate JOIN OUR MAILING LIST https://action.lincolnproject.us/join FOLLOW LINCOLN PROJECT TWITTER: https://bit.ly/3zwZFva INSTAGRAM: https://bit.ly/31yyrHR FACEBOOK: https://bit.ly/3zCBHhT PODCAST: https://apple.co/3G7zr4L REDDIT: https://bit.ly/39PLnxi TIKTOK: https://bit.ly/3xHYRCY We can’t do our work without your support. Thank you.

We Will Not Comply CORPORATE MEDIA IS NOT REPORTING!

Note the kind words of Carol, a new paid subscriber: "We need hope and guidance to keep our democracy free, safe and legitimate in a world gone wild with populist wannabe dictators." We Will Not Comply Donald Trump, Kevin Roberts and their fascistic Project 2025 gang want to scare you into submission. Don't let them. STEVEN BESCHLOSS JUL 8 As a Trump motorcade passes by. (Photo by Yuri Gripas/AFP via Getty Images) Kevin D. Roberts, president of the increasingly far-right Heritage Foundation and a central advocate for Project 2025, wants you to be scared. More than that, Roberts wants you to feel resigned, overwhelmed, unable to withstand the extremist onslaught and unwilling to fight back against it. He also wants you to believe that—if you refuse to accept what he, Donald Trump and the rest of the rogue’s gallery of anti-democratic extremists are shoving down the throats of the American people—it will be your fault if it leads to extreme force and bloodshed. Roberts—who speaks in a smooth and pleasing tone that masks the viciousness that is at the heart of his purpose, much like House Speaker Mike Johnson—articulated his thinking during an interview last Tuesday on The War Room. That show is usually hosted by convicted felon Steve Bannon, but Bannon was unavailable to conduct the interview because he went to prison the previous day for contempt of Congress. The dangerously self-important Roberts insisted that the country is “in the process of the second American Revolution” and further noted that this so-called revolution “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Get the point? It’s up to “the left”—which I think includes essentially every Democrat and every other American who rejects their authoritarian agenda—to shut up, lay down and let them do what they want. And if there’s pushback? Well, don’t blame them if the sick menagerie of domestic terrorist groups like the Proud Boys, other paramilitary organizations or even triggered stochastic terrorists feel duty-bound to respond. I highlight this not to alarm you, rather to remind you that Roberts and his operatives are determined to intimidate all of us before they have any control over the levers of power. I urge you to keep in mind the wise words of Yale professor Timothy Snyder from his bestselling book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. In the first chapter, titled “Do Not Obey in Advance,” Snyder writes: Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do. This is surely the ugly game Trump is playing. Year after year he’s pushed the boundaries of the law to see what he can get away with—not just in defiance of the courts and the rule of law, but with a public that may raise its voices in protest but fail to effectively push back. It’s why the failure of leading media organizations to focus aggressively on his lying, his scapegoating and his promise to take office as a dictator—in other words, normalizing what he says, as if it’s not really news anymore—is so dangerous for the survival of democracy. It’s also why Trump’s huge new lie—that he knows nothing about Project 2025 or the people involved, in order to create deniability right up to and through the election—should be a leading story of every news broadcast and on page one of every newspaper and digital outlet. Despite the fact that a numbers of the project’s authors, organizers and promoters are past or current Trump officials, he wants us to believe that he would not do those terrible things—that is, until we are no longer in the position to successfully thwart him. Snyder’s sage counsel also brings to mind the similar wisdom of Frederick Douglass in an address, entitled “No Progress Without Struggle,” delivered on August 4, 1857. “Find out just what a people will submit to,” he said, “and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Do not obey in advance, Snyder says. Do not submit to a tyrant’s injustice, Douglass says. Both warn us that if we do, the tyrants will feel unfettered, free to keep going. Douglass, an enslaved man who endured unimaginable torture and yet refused to be broken, deserves our devoted attention. He did back then, before the terrible bloodshed of the Civil War, and he surely does now. Douglass also warns us what we face if we fail to deny Trump and his fellow tyrants the reins of power in November. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will,” he said. And in those few years before Lincoln’s determination to bring slavery to an end, Douglass foreshadowed the violent future that was coming to make progress possible: Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its mighty waters. The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, or it may both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. In these days, as the media frenzy over President Biden’s mental acuity continues, let’s keep in mind that the Trumpist tyrants are gleefully plotting their takeover while their beloved leader yearns for carnage and revenge. It remains to be seen who will be prosecuting the case against this danger—although I’m increasingly expecting that Kamala Harris (a former top prosecutor) will be central to that effort, be that as Biden’s vice president or as the presidential nominee. The task could not be more urgent or more existential in nature for the American democratic project and any version of progress in the years ahead. If Kevin Roberts and Donald Trump have their way and begin their Project 2025 onslaught from the White House—assisted by a rogue and radical Supreme Court—we can expect they will pursue their dictatorial goals shamelessly and cruelly, convinced of their righteous mission. That includes rounding up and deporting millions of migrants without due process. Loading the civil service with Trump loyalists. Seeking to enact total abortion bans and contraception bans. Cutting Social Security and Medicare. Ending the Affordable Care Act. Ending climate protections. Ending marriage equality. Expanding trillions in tax breaks for the richest Americans. Pushing Christianity in our public schools and government. The Project 2025 list, covered in a 920-page document, goes on and on. But this is not inevitable. We are not obliged to submit to their injustice or their dark, regressive plan for America. They cannot force us to comply in advance. We still have an election to win to secure the democratic future that we want.

Why isn’t the media reporting on Trump’s growing dementia? The evidence is increasing ROBERT REICH JUL 8 Friends, A few weeks ago, at a rally in Nevada, Trump told his followers that boat manufacturers are now required to use electric engines. He claimed that someone at a boat company in South Carolina told him, “It’s a problem, sir. They want us to make all-electric boats.” (There is no such requirement.) Trump then said the South Carolinian warned him “the boat is so heavy it can’t float. Also, it can’t go fast because of the weight.” Trump continued: “So I said, ‘Let me ask you a question,’ and [the South Carolinian] said, ‘Nobody ever asked this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT — very smart. He goes, I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’ By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that, a lot of sharks? I watched some guys justifying it today. ‘Well, they weren’t really that angry. They bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were, they were not hungry, but they misunderstood what who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said there’s no problem with sharks. ‘They just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming now.’ It really got decimated and other people do a lot of shark attacks. So I said, ‘So there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here, do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking? Water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?’ Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question.’ I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that.” I ask you: Is this the speech of a rational human being? But how much attention did this incoherent ramble attract in the media? Very little, especially in comparison with the nonstop media assessment of Biden’s verbal stumbles during the debate. Trump is showing growing signs of dementia, but isn’t facing nearly the same scrutiny as is Joe Biden. In April, Trump spoke to a rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, about the famed Civil War battle at Gettysburg. Trump told the audience: “Gettysburg, what an unbelievable battle that was. It was so much, and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible, and so beautiful in so many different ways— it represented such a big portion of the success of this country." Trump then began talking about Confederate General Robert E. Lee and how Lee was now “out of favor.” Trump said that Lee told his troops, “Never fight uphill, me boys!” (Historians deny Lee ever said such a thing.)   Trump continued, “Gettysburg, wow — I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch."  These are not isolated examples of Trump’s incoherence. During the last several months of Republican primaries, Trump repeatedly claimed that his opponent Nikki Haley was in charge of Capitol security on January 6. (Haley never had any connection to Capitol security.) He has repeatedly confused who he ran against in the past, such as stating, “With Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won.” (Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.) Trump has confused Biden with Obama so often that he’s had to put out a statement that the slips have been intentional.  Last September, Trump suggested that the way to prevent wildfires in California’s forest lands is to keep them damp. Here are his words: “They say that there’s so much water up north that I want to have the overflow areas go into your forests and dampen your forests, because if you dampen your forests you're not gonna have these forest fires that are burning at levels that nobody’s ever seen.” In October, Trump warned his supporters that Biden will lead America into World War Two. True, Biden has occasional difficulty keeping his train of thought, as we witnessed during the debate. But Biden has gotten major bills passed. He’s been negotiating with world leaders. In terms of running the government, Biden has been functioning as well if not better than most presidents. And what of Trump? As president, he accomplished nothing except dividing the country with his paranoid bloviation, and since then has mounted an attempted coup against the United States. It’s Trump — who has a family history of dementia — who’s increasingly unhinged. Trump has said that under his administration, “If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store.” Trump has claimed that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group, is “very smart.” That whales are being killed by windmills. That he won all 50 states in 2020. That he defeated Barack Obama in 2016. That the outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be executed. The most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is found in his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering his entire presidential campaign. On November 11, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire, that: “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.” Are these the words of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac? Even if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be central to the coverage of his campaign for reelection? I’m no physician, and I have no idea whether Biden or Trump is suffering from early dementia. But the weight of the evidence suggests Trump is. So why isn’t the media covering this? When I’ve asked members of the media, they say Trump’s malfunctioning brain is “old news.” After all, in 2017, 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals concluded in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump that Trump’s mental health posed a “clear and present danger” to the nation. Members of Trump’s own Cabinet — horrified by the January 6, 2021, violence at the Capitol and Trump's lack of urgency in stopping it — discussed whether to invoke the the 25th Amendment to remove him from office due to mental incompetence. But just because Trump has shown mental instability in the past doesn’t make his mental problems any less relevant now that he is seeking reelection. They’re more relevant. He appears even more delusional than before. If Biden’s difficulties are fair game, why isn’t Trump’s apparent mental decline front and center? Biden may appear frail, but he’s rational. The growing evidence of Trump’s dementia and paranoia, on the other hand, poses a clear potential danger to the future of America — if he’s reelected. At the least, the media should be investigating and reporting on it. Right? So glad you can be here today. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber of this community so we can do even more.