ALMOST 30 years ago to the day, Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the-then Soviet Union, flew to Washington and sitting alongside President Ronald Reagan, signed a groundbreaking nuclear arms agreement.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INFT) eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Inside four years, more than 2,600 of these missiles had been destroyed by both Washington and Moscow.

Three decades on and America is accusing Russia of welching on the INFT. This March this year a US general told Congress that Moscow had deployed a cruise missile, the Novator 9M729 that breached the treaty. The Kremlin has denied this. But at the same time it has said the United States is about to break the INFT with its deployment to Romania and Poland of Aegis Missile Defense Systems. Washington refutes Russian claims the systems could launch Tomahawk cruise missiles. The Americans are also rejecting Moscow’s protests that rocket engine tests were not allowed under the INFT. Indeed, they are claiming that they are clearly permitted.

But the Trump White House response has been surprisingly moderate. There will be “restrictions” — not “sanctions” — on the companies involved in the new Novator. Meanwhile, the Americans themselves will restart research on the short and medium-range missiles that were banned under the INFT.

Analysts say the measured US response has been informed by next year’s negotiations to extend the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) beyond its 2021 expiry date. This is the deal on the big intercontinental missiles which for so long have kept superpower peace with their promise of mutual destruction.

However, when all is said and done, there is a great deal of hokum around the INFT. The treaty always had one major hole - which was that it did not cover nuclear-tipped short and medium-range cruise missiles carried by submarines. If research on such land-based missiles was supposed to be banned under the INFT, what was the point of allowing rocket scientists to press ahead with their work on virtually the same missiles, which however escaped the treaty because they were launched from beneath the waves?

The idea that the Americans and the Russians took all their missile development plans and honored by INFT by locking them in a safe and throwing away the key is patently absurd. Of course both governments have continued with their researches, not least because of the missile development plans of other countries, including Iran, Israel, China, India and Pakistan who were not INFT signatories.

When Gorbachev and Reagan inked the deal three decades ago this month, the world was a very different place. There is an argument that the INFT has outlived its operational usefulness. But in one important respect it remains an extremely important agreement. It demonstrated that at a time of immense mutual suspicion, a way could be found to defuse tensions and create cooperation. It is now once again an era when suspicions have been revived and indeed the cast of suspects has been greatly increased. If the INFT and perhaps also START II are on the verge of failing in their aim, then now is the time to repurpose them, not simply in negotiations between Moscow and Washington but between all those who now possess or are on the verge of possessing the means to deliver horrific destruction.