According to Alexey Fenenko, Associate Professor at Moscow State University’s World Politics faculty, the US is aiming to upgrade its military potential.
"Over the last 25 years there was more talk than action in this respect. They (the US) spoke a lot about a revolution in the military sphere, about new ‘smart’ weaponry. But almost all of the cruise missiles currently employed by the US military were adopted in the early 1980s. Now they want to upgrade both their conventional weapons and the nuclear triad," Fenenko told RIA Novosti.
He also remarked that this move may not bode well for Russia as "it may drag us into a conventional and nuclear arms race."
"It is important for us not to repeat the mistakes made by the Soviet Union and to avoid trying to achieve numerical parity," Fenenko said.
His concerns were echoed by Sergei Rogov, research director at the Institute for American and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to Rogov, the situation is far more dangerous than a mere increase in defense spending and that an arms race escalation is now a clear and present danger.
"We’re talking not just about more money for the military-industrial complex, but about a campaign against the two remaining key nuclear weapon agreements: New START and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty," Rogov said during a roundtable panel discussion held in the Russian parliament.
He warned that US President Donald Trump may choose to withdraw from both treaties and that the US may resume nuclear tests, which in turn would require Russia to develop an adequate response to such challenge.
Meanwhile, according to Pavel Palachzhenko, expert at the Gorbachev Foundation and former translator to Mikhail Gorbachev himself, the US may actually seek to normalize relations with Russia though it would definitely be a lengthy and arduous process.
"There is a desire — not just in the Trump administration but among members of the US expert community as well – to normalize and improve relations (with Russia). But everyone agrees that it will be a difficult process," he said.
He also pointed out that while Trump’s actions and statements are somewhat unpredictable, some members of his administration gradually work on returning the US foreign policy to a more predictable state.
"As for our relations with the US, I hope this process will afford us an opportunity to establish dialogue and cooperation so we can gradually work on normalizing our relations instead of sitting and waiting for a miracle to happen," Palachzhenko said, adding that these are merely his personal assumptions.
