Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Thursday warning
that the deployment of US intermediate-range missiles into Asia would
pose a threat to international security. US Defense Secretary Mark Esper
has advocated such deployments.
This comes amid a Thursday meeting of the UN Security Council related to
the collapse of 1987’s Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and
subsequent US talk of substantial development of new weapons that the
treaty would’ve banned.
As has been the case ever since the INF collapsed, the US and Russia
again traded blame for its failure, with the US officials repeating
unverified claims of Russian violations, and Russia pointing out that it took the US like two weeks from the treaty’s end to conduct its first arms test, saying that proved the US was violating it all along.
The Pentagon has been agitating for a large budget for developing new
such weapons, and while Russia hasn’t made any specific announcements on
weapons of their own, they have warned that they will respond to any US
attempts to push weapons into Eastern Europe or Asia targeting them.
History would suggest the abandonment of the INF will result in a race to re-arm, as in the 1930s. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Cold War was the peace. The world has experienced periods of peace (or relative peace) throughout history. The Thirty Years Peace between the two Peloponnesian Wars, Pax Romana, Europe in the 19th century after the Congress of Vienna, to name a few. The Congress System finally collapsed in 1914 with the start of World War One. That conflict was followed by the League of Nations. It did not stop World War Two. That was followed by the United Nations and other post-war institutions. But all the indications are they will not prevent a third world war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
This little spatter reminds me of that oldie song called “ I shot the Sheriff, but I didn’t shoot the deputy.”