This article's headline says America pulling out the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia "could escalate tension with China." But check out the causal chain to reach that conclusion:
A U.S. withdrawal from a Cold War-era nuclear arms treaty with Russia could give the Pentagon new options to counter Chinese missile advances but experts warn the ensuing arms race could greatly escalate tensions in the Asia-Pacific.
U.S. officials have been warning for years that the United States was being put at a disadvantage by China's development of increasingly sophisticated land-based missile forces, which the Pentagon could not match thanks to the U.S. treaty with Russia.
China has been fielding increasingly sophisticated intermediate range missiles.
America is constrained in matching China because when the treaty was signed China was a friend and not a missile threat. And so not part of the treaty.
And Russia is violating the treaty whose verification provisions expired some time ago, anyway.
And when America begins to match China's missile arsenal expansion by abandoning the treaty, China may expand their expanding missile arsenal even more.
Therefore our withdrawal from the treaty with Russia could "cause" tension with China.
Got it.
