Washington sources reported that A U.S. withdrawal from a Cold War era nuclear arms treaty with Russia could give the Pentagon new options to counter Chinese missile advances but experts warn the ensuing arms race could greatly escalate tensions in the Asia-Pacific. Meanwhile U.S. officials have been warning for years that the United States was being put at a disadvantage by China's development of increasingly sophisticated land based missile forces, which the Pentagon could not match thanks to the U.S. treaty with Russia.
As per report President Donald Trump has signaled he may soon give the Pentagon a freer hand to confront those advances, if he makes good on threats to pull out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which required elimination of short and intermediate range nuclear and conventional missiles. Accordingly Dan Blumenthal, a former Pentagon official now at the American Enterprise Institute, said a treaty pullout could pave the way for the United States to field easier to hide, road mobile conventional missiles in places like Guam and Japan.
Blumenthal said "It will change the picture fundamentally". Furthermore even as Trump has blamed Russian violations of the treaty for his decision, he has also pointed a finger at China. Beijing was not party to the INF treaty and has been fielding new and more deadly missile forces.
