The INF Treaty still lives. The President cannot lawfully withdraw from a treaty on his own.
See the resolution in the sidebar below, right (House and Senate versions). Ask your representative (and/or senators) to get it introduced and passed.

WALL news & commentary

Viewing President Donald Trump’s action to quit a major weapons treaty with Russia as lawless and perilous, activists have been seeking congressional action to preserve the treaty.

On grounds of Russian violations, Trump decided to withdraw the nation from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). It permits a “party” to withdraw six months after giving notice.

In 1987, 93 members of the Senate approved the treaty, submitted by President Ronald Reagan. (Only five senators opposed it.) Trump presumes that he alone can terminate it.

On February 1, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States was “suspending” the treaty, effective the following day. He gave Russia six months to return to compliance. He did not make it clear what the U.S. would do in the meantime.

A resolution proposed for Congress would declare that —

(1) A president alone cannot lawfully repeal a treaty — or any other law.

(2) Unless a majority of each house of Congress or two-thirds of the Senate votes to undo it, the INF Treaty remains in effect.

The War and Law League’s Legislative Committee drew up the proposed resolution (see right sidebar) in two similar versions: one for the House of Representatives and one for the Senate. The measure would not be subject to presidential veto.

A new nuclear arms race — risking a war with Russia that destroys mankind — will probably be the outcome of Donald Trump’s exit from INF.

Two credible sources for that statement, published in the Washington Post last December, are Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian ex-president, and George P. Shultz, secretary of state under President Reagan. They participated in negotiations for INF, which Gorbachev and Reagan signed in December 1987.

Warning of those dire consequences, they urged continuing the pact, confident that differences could be ironed out through diplomatic and military meetings between Russia and the U.S.

Both sides have alleged treaty breaches. The Trump administration considers a certain Russian missile in violation. Putin’s government sees a violation in U.S. deployment of certain systems in Europe.

Yet INF has been successful. It prohibited both nuclear and conventional missiles (plus their launchers, devices to initially guide them) with ranges between about 300 and 3,400 miles. Russia and the USA conducted mutual inspections and scrapped nearly 2,700 missiles, which could have sent some 4,000 nuclear warheads to kill millions of people.

Presidents can’t repeal laws

A treaty must get the consent of at least two-thirds of the Senate to go into effect.  Many authorities have pointed out that a treaty is a law. A president cannot repeal a statute on his own (an argument goes); so how could he presume to repeal a treaty on his own? The Constitution mentions neither type of repeal, but it’s unlikely that a president could get away with the former.

When Thomas Jefferson served as vice-president, he wrote a Manual of Senate Procedure, which said:

Treaties are legislative acts…. Treaties being declared equally with the laws of the United States to be the supreme law of the land, it is understood that an act of the legislature alone can declare them infringed and rescinded. This was accordingly the process in the case of France in 1798. [Congress passed, and President John Adams signed, a bill to abrogate treaties with France.]

James Madison, the fourth U.S. president, sometimes called “Father of the Constitution,” saw the need for “the same authority precisely being exercised in annulling as in making a treaty.” Presidents Grant, Hayes, and Taft (later as chief justice) recognized the need for some type of congressional action to undo a treaty. Seven federal judges took that view, though not decisively.

In Goldwater v. Carter, the senator challenged President Carter’s notification of termination of a treaty with Taiwan. DC District Judge Oliver Gasch ruled in 1979 that prior congressional action was required, either (1) a majority of both houses or (2) two-thirds of the Senate. He wrote that the repeal of a treaty —a law of the land— by the executive alone raised the same fears of unchecked power that prompted the Founding Fathers to require Senate participation to enact a treaty.

The Court of Appeals in DC reversed that ruling. The Supreme Court vacated both courts’ rulings and dismissed the case, in a 6–3 non-decision (1979). Justice Rehnquist saw a “non-justiciable political dispute that should be left for resolution by the Executive and Legislative branches….”