US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said on Saturday that he was in favour of placing ground-launched, intermediate-range missiles in Asia relatively soon, a day after the United States withdrew from a landmark arms control treaty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Esper\u2019s comments are likely to raise concern about an arms race and could add to an already tense relationship with China.\u201cYeah, I would like to,\u201d Esper said, when asked whether he was considering placing such missiles in Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States formally left the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia on Friday after determining Moscow was violating the treaty, an accusation that the Kremlin has denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within the next few weeks, the United States is expected to test a ground-launched cruise missile, and in November, the Pentagon will aim to test an intermediate-range ballistic missile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 1987 pact banned ground-launched nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 310 to 3,400 miles .US officials have been warning for years that the United States was being put at a disadvantage by China\u2019s development of increasingly sophisticated land-based missile forces, which the Pentagon could not match due to the US treaty with Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States has so far relied on other capabilities as a counterbalance to China, like missiles fired from US ships or aircraft. But advocates for a US land-based missile response say that is the best way to deter Chinese use of its muscular land-based missile forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see an arms race happening, I do see us taking proactive measures to develop a capability that we need for both the European theater and certainly this theater,\u201d Esper said, referring to the Asia-Pacific region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said on Saturday that he was in favour of placing ground-launched, intermediate-range missiles in Asia relatively soon, a day after the United States withdrew from a landmark arms control treaty. Esper\u2019s comments are likely to raise concern about an arms race and could add to an already tense relationship with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67488,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67486\/revisions\/67488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}