Arms race is on! Vlad Putin decries US ballistic missile testing

Concerns over the possibility of a New Cold War have been swirling in the international community for some time, and the latest escalation in this deadly game of cat-and-mouse has made the reality of such a conflict abundantly clear.

Russia is no friend of the United States, and hasn’t been for nearly a century.  Our brief cooperation during World War II was just that, brief, and the two massive countries have been locked in a global competition ever since.

Much of the tension comes from an arms race between the nations that has pushed the limits of a number of deadly technologies, not the least of which are the advancements found in the realm of nuclear weapons.  The recent abandonment of an INF treaty between the White House and the Kremlin has pushed this relationship ever further toward conflict, with the beginnings of a new arms race seemingly unavoidable.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said the United States’ testing of a new missile – which had been banned under a now-defunct arms treaty – raises new threats for Russia and will warrant a response.

The Pentagon announced on Monday that the military conducted a test of a ground-based version of a Navy Tomahawk cruise missile, which accurately struck its target more than 310 miles away.

For Russia, Putin said, the test means “the emergence of new threats, to which we will react accordingly.”

The Russian government has launched several attacks against the United States in recent years, most notably with their attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential elections – a move that has been widely chastised by the international community and US lawmakers.