The Trump administration has watered down U.S. global leadership to coercive deal-making. The dangerous contours of a world in crisis are now coming into stark relief.

The test puts the nail in the coffin of the INF Treaty, which the US withdrew from earlier this month.

A junior GOP congressman will challenge the Democratic House leadership to restore $96 million in funding for intermediate-ranged conventional missiles, cut by the Democratic majority for fear the new weapons would reignite an arms race that ended in 1987.

The US could develop more than a dozen different land-based weapons for $7 to $12 billion, thinktank CSBA estimates.

The resignation of Trump’s assistant secretary for arms control and verification weakens the State Department’s already shaky bench in arms control talks.

Let a hundred hypersonic flowers bloom, Pentagon officials say, instead of a single cumbersome mega-program.

The Pentagon has quietly asked defense contractors for ways to spot enemy missile launchers — so the US can destroy them before they even fire.

France’s commitment to a cutting-edge sixth-generation fighter — working in tandem with drones and long-range sensors — is a sign of its commitment to deterring Putin’s Russia.

The Pentagon has almost completed a study of how to shoot down hypersonic missiles. It’s also developing new offensive weapons — conventional, not nuclear — whose deployment will become legal with the end of the INF Treaty.

“For far too long, Russia has violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with impunity,” a statement from the White House said. Moscow has refused to admit that it has for years been “covertly developing and fielding a prohibited missile system that poses a direct threat to our allies and troops abroad.”