US trying to trigger an arms race

THE UNITED STATES withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on Friday, as scheduled. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

Russia said it is not bound by the INF Treaty any more at the same time. It means that after being in place for 32 years, the treaty is now dead.

The treaty limited both nations from fielding both "short range" and "intermediate range" land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and missile launchers that could be used to house either nuclear or conventional payloads, in a bid to pull Europe from under the shadow of an arms race between the two giants.

The world has lost a de facto brake that was designed to prevent it from sprinting to a nuclear war and an arms race. Nuclear proliferation will have a more solid foundation to rise again as a threat to global stability, world peace and security.

In April, the US administration pulled the US out of the Arms Trade Treaty, saying that staying in it does not accord with the US' national interests. The treaty is an international treaty that regulates the international trade in conventional arms and seeks to prevent and eradicate illicit trade and the diversion of conventional arms by establishing international standards governing arms transfers.

This marked Washington taking the first step toward dismantling the current arms control system, which was a foreshadowing of its withdrawal from the INF Treaty months later.

The US' unilateral withdrawal from the two arms control treaties has wasted all previous efforts that the international community had made, including the US itself.

It is foreseeable that the US will put in more money, technology and manufacturing capacity into expanding and upgrading its arsenal that will avail it better to exercise strategic deterrence against other countries.

Which looks set to incur countermeasures from other big countries, such as Russia, and throw the world back into a new arms race and stalemate.

While emphasizing its resolve and urgency to expand the US' military advantages, Washington has clearly distinguished Moscow and Beijing as its strategic rivals. That will also make relations among big countries more complicated and difficult to handle.