China, Russia: The United States triggering arms race with new missile

This US Department of Defense handout photo shows the flight test of a conventionally configured ground-launched cruise missile at San Nicolas Island, California, on August 18, 2019. (Via AFP)
China and Russia have warned that a new US missile test has heightened military tensions and risks triggering an “arms race.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a news briefing in Beijing on Tuesday that the US should “let go of its Cold War mentality” and “do more things that are conducive to... international and regional peace and tranquility.”

“This measure from the US will trigger a new round of an arms race, leading to an escalation of military confrontation, which will have a serious, negative impact on the international and regional security situation,” Geng said.

On Monday, the US Defense Department announced that it had tested a type of ground-launched missile that was banned under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, a bilateral agreement with Russia that the US scrapped earlier this month.

Separately, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Tuesday also accused the US of ramping up military tensions with the new missile test.

“The US has obviously taken a course toward escalation of military tensions. We won’t react to provocations,” the minister told Russia’s TASS news agency. “We will not allow ourselves to get drawn into a costly arms race.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov gives a press conference on the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in Moscow, Russia, on August 5, 2019. (Photo by AFP)
Ryabkov said the test showed that Washington had been working on such missiles long before its official withdrawal from the INF treaty.

The INF was signed toward the end of the Cold War in 1987 by the then-US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It banned all land-based missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers and included missiles carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads.

In the Monday US test-launch, the missile blasted from a launcher on San Nicolas Island, a Navy test site off the coast of Los Angeles, California, and sped above the Pacific Ocean for more than 500 kilometers before striking its designated target, the Pentagon said in a statement.