Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump continues to isolate America from allies and to withdraw from treaties as the nation's transition to autocratic rogue nuclear failed state status continues largely unabated.

President Trump has decided to withdraw from another major arms control accord, according to senior administration officials, and will inform Russia on Friday that the United States is pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty, negotiated three decades ago to allow nations to fly over each other’s territory with elaborate sensor equipment to assure they are not preparing for military action.
Mr. Trump’s decision will be viewed as more evidence that he also may be poised to exit the one major arms treaty remaining with Russia: New START, which limits the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear missiles each. It expires weeks after the next presidential inauguration.

American officials have long complained that Moscow was violating the Open Skies accord by not permitting flights over a city where it was believed Russia was deploying nuclear weapons that could reach Europe, as well as forbidding flights over major Russian military exercises.+

And, in classified reports, the Pentagon and American intelligence agencies have contended the Russians are also using flights over the United States to map out critical American infrastructure that could be hit by cyberattacks.

American officials also note that Mr. Trump was angered by a Russian flight directly over his Bedminster, N.J., golf estate, in 2017.

But Mr. Trump’s decision, rumored for some time, is bound to further aggravate European allies, including those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, who are also signatories to the treaty.

They will remain in the accord, but have warned that, with Washington’s exit, Russia will almost certainly respond by cutting off their flights, too, which the allies use to monitor troop movements on their borders — especially important to the Baltic nations.

For Mr. Trump, the decision marks the third time he has renounced a major arms control treaty.

Two years ago, he abandoned the Iran nuclear accord, negotiated by President Barack Obama. Last year he left the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, again saying that he would not participate in a treaty that he said Russia was violating. The Open Skies Treaty was negotiated by President George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But the idea was first presented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the summer of 1955, and was rejected by the Soviets as an elaborate plan to spy on a weaker foe.

For more than a year, Mr. Trump has said he would not renew it unless China also joined. Beijing, which has a nuclear arsenal one-fifth the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s, has rejected the idea.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will try for a brief extension of the treaty of several months — the current wording allows only for a single, 5-year extension — or abandon it altogether if China refuses to join.

So Trump is blaming Russia and China and withdrawing anyway, which is exactly what both Russia and China want.

Putin maneuvering Trump into throwing away another decades-old treaty that leaves NATO more vulnerable is going to be just one example of the damage Trump's regime will cause that will take the rest of my lifetime to fix, if not longer.