"The arms race is already on the way, not only between the US and Russia but also between the US and China," said Dmitry Babich, a political analyst for Sputnik International in Moscow.

US President Donald Trump confirmed his plan to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty or INF last Saturday. He said the Russians had been violating it "for many years" while China, not a signatory, was not bound by the treaty. Russia responded by saying the US decision is not a surprise but "very dangerous."

"It's a very dangerous arms race, a lot more dangerous than at the time of the Cold War, because this time we don't have a system of arms control," Babich added.

The former USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and the then US President Ronald Reagan negotiated the INF in 1987, which stipulates that they should eliminate all land-based nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges between 500 and 5500 kilometers and thus paved the way for arms reductions. 

Now, President Trump has said that the US would increase its nuclear arsenal until other nations "come to their senses," increasing the threat of an arms race. His announcement came as his national security adviser, John Bolton, was in Russia to meet with his counterparts and discuss, among other things, treaty compliance.

"It looks very much like John Bolton (suggested the exit)," said Eleanor Clift, a columnist with the Daily Beast from Washington DC. "He seems to have the president's ear more than anyone else. He's in Moscow. Maybe the goal is to negotiate better terms, but I think this president sees the world now as more of a competition with China than with Russia. This treaty is getting in the way of that."

However, Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said, "The China stuff is nonsense. INF does not leave the US at a significant disadvantage in the Pacific. It does not prohibit sea-and- air-based systems, nor does it prohibit South Korea and Japan from developing long-range missiles. If China were a real problem, the US and its allies could have acted long ago."

Clift agrees with Lewis' view that China is not the real target here and believes that withdrawing from the INF is dangerous.

"This president ran on the slogan of 'America first.' That was interpreted to be that he would be more of an isolationist than the presidents before him, but he defines isolationism in his own way. He defines 'America first' in his own way. It's the unpredictability of this president that has people really uneasy," Clift added.

However, Dmitry Babich doesn't think that President Trump is solely responsible for the withdrawal. "The point I want to make is that it has been a general US policy over the last 25 years to try to achieve military superiority over Russia and China. It's not just Mr. Trump.  It's the whole American establishment."

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