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.
US and Russia Trade Blame for INF Treaty’s Failure
Russian FM: US missiles in Asia would pose a threat to international security
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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