On Aug. 8, an explosion at the Neuksa missile test site in northern Russia took place during a new nuclear missile test that killed at least seven people, including scientists who were at the scene, and spreading nuclear radiation into the atmosphere.
Analysts in Washington and Europe say the explosion could signal a technological weakness in Russia's new weapons program. More worryingly, the dangers of a new Cold War and arms race could develop between the United States and Russia.
In February, the administration of President Donald Trump withdrew from the mid-range missile agreement, which the US ambassador to Russia considered one of the best arms control agreements in history, which banned 500 to 1,500 kilometers of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.
The United States has accused Russia of violating the agreement, and Russia has accused the United States of violating the agreement by adopting the UAV program.
This summer, the Trump administration has given indications that it will not ratify the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which is due to expire in 2021.
On Friday, August 9, the New York Times published an editorial by Brett Stevens: "The United States needs nuclear weapons," echoing the position of US national security adviser John Bolton. "The problem with arms control agreements is that the bad guys are deceiving, the good guys don't, and the world usually discovers that late," Stevens wrote. He says that Russia is now deceiving again, although Stevens did not provide any evidence in his article to confirm what he says. According to Stevens, the US presidents, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, set a set of criteria for effective government policy by responding to the Soviet Union's deployment of SS-20 missiles, medium-range nuclear missiles that threaten military bases in the United States. Western Europe at the end of the 1970s, by deploying hundreds of medium-range Pershing 2 missiles and cruise missiles in Europe.
Stevens, for his part, believes that the Trump administration and its predecessor should respond to Russian and Chinese incitement today by making and deploying weapons similar to what they are doing. During the Cold War, during the 1960s, the United States built a huge arsenal of 22,229 nuclear warheads, prompting the Soviet Union to make a major effort to catch up with Washington's arsenal.
Stevens believes that Russia and China are bad players that pose a threat to the United States today, while the United States has overseas bases 15 times more than the two countries, and spend more on the military than Russia and China combined, in addition to six other countries with them on the least.
America spends more on the military than Russia and China combined, plus at least six other countries.