Russian missile test provokes a new arms race: But who's responsible?

The rat race for advanced weapons between Moscow and Washington has once again conferred a new facelift to the arch-arms-rivalry after Russia successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile, capable of penetrating American defenses, threatening a new cold war-style arms race.

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Amid growing tension over the period, the new intercontinental ballistic missile can well be estimated as active counter-measures in response to Washington's plans to base interceptor missiles and radar installations in eastern European nations of Poland and the Czech Republic, a move that possibly will change 'the world's strategic stability'.

The threat of a new arms race comes at a time when relations between Russia and the U.S. are at their worst for a decade. While, America under George Bush is seeking to create a 'world of one master, one sovereign', Russia on the other is stressing for strategic stability.

The US may time and again have emphasized that the new bases in Europe are designed to knock down atrocious missiles fired by Iran or North Korea, but the topography of the positioning of radars just identifies Russia and China as the main targets. Moreover, defense experts around the world believe that the real target of the shield is Russia, bringing back the days of the Cold War.

It appears that the U.S. had reneged on an agreement after the collapse of the Soviet Union to abandon cold war politics, therefore, Russia had ruled out any possibility of cooperating with the U.S. over the shield and turned to its new missile system to balance the situation, which they believe was tilting towards America.

What's difficult to digest here is that, at a time when Russia is co-operating in the War on Terror, America is driving a wedge between both states and undermining any progress that has been made in post-cold-war era.

The arms race isn't just confined to western part of the world, but growing nations like China, Iran, N. Korea, India, Pakistan and many more have also been developing lethal arms for quite a while. Undeniably, China owns a major arms and nuclear arsenal before long.

Indeed, china has gone a step further after it knocked out an aging weather satellite, using a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile, 537 miles above the Earth on January 11 through 'kinetic impact', threatening a potentially dangerous new arms race in space.

Who's responsible?

The flawed assumptions of Washington have time and again proved disastrous to the world peace and this time these uncoordinated approaches towards Russia and China in the face of inherently contradictory American policies have back fired bringing a tremendous change to the strategic balance in Europe.

Interventionist US foreign policy is responsible for the genesis of other nations' ambitions to acquire Nuclear Weapons while trashing the sovereignty of other nations and making the world a more dangerous place. Indeed, it may be argued that the logic of U.S. moves over recent years, particularly NATO expansion, on the east and west sides of the Eurasian heartland have blown a fuse of the dormant arms race.