The Trump regime announced their intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia a long time ago, but now it's official.
Trump made the explicit decision to withdraw from the treaty and the Pentagon is preparing to test new weapons systems that were banned under it, but the Trump regime is still pointing fingers directly at Russia.
"Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Friday announcing the US' formal withdrawal from the Cold-War era nuclear treaty.
Pompeo said, "Russia failed to return to full and verified compliance through the destruction of its noncompliant missile system."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN's Hala Gorani that the treaty's end is a "serious setback."
Pompeo may be right and accusations that Russia has already violated the treaty are probably correct, but I would argue that it doesn't necessarily matter if that's true.
Even if that's true, Trump is still the one making the call to visibly and publicly abandon the treaty. And the Russians aren't the only ones watching.
Iran and North Korea are also watching as the Trump regime develops and tests new nuclear-capable weapons systems all while pressuring them to either abandon or never pursue (in the case of Iran) their own weapons programs.
From the Iran nuclear deal to the nuclear treaty with Russia -- we cannot expect to mount international pressure of any significance against our so-called enemies when Trump goes out of his way to isolate the United States before we've even had chance to engage our partners.
I suppose it would be nice if the world were capable of quickly reaching a consensus and declaring that the Russians are the bad guys, because they are, but the world is not that simple. It still matters that we're lowering ourselves to Russia's level. We're officially abandoning the high road.
The INF treaty was signed by the GOP's Saint Ronald Reagan in 1987.