Russia's secret deployment of a new cruise missile in violation of a 1987 agreement with the United States calls into question the whole value of making deals with President Vladimir Putin.
Again, as previous presidents, there is value to the United States in arriving at agreements with the then-Soviet Union, and now Russia, particularly if they involve weaponry. Not only do such agreements reduce the risk of the two nuclear powers destroying the human race, they save money on development and defense.
Before any other deals that President Donald J. Trump might seek to arrive at with the Russians, it is almost certainly useful to clear this problem off the table, perhaps as part of a new mutual weapons-reduction agreement. If the United States and Russia are at the dawn of a new period of cooperation, as Trump suggests, a good beginning would be to see to observation of the 1987 treaty, re-eliminating a class of missiles aimed at each other in Europe and elsewhere.
Editorial on 02/24/2017