Trump and Putin nuclear arms race

It's worth going back to 1987 to see Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan exchanging quips as they signed the historic Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. There was positive bonhomie between them as they signed a deal which was to eliminate a whole category of nuclear weapons for the first and last time in history. Reagan even attempted a joke in Russian. He said there was an old Russian proverb - "doveryay, no proveryay" - which means "trust but verify". Reagan suggested Gorbachev should remember that every time they had a meeting together. Much merriment followed. It was a truly extraordinary event, and the INF Treaty which banned ground-launched nuclear and conventional cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges of between 500 kilometres and 5,500 kilometres has lasted all this time - until today. Trump announced that the US was going to withdraw from the treaty because Russia had already breached the 1987 agreement by developing a ground-launched cruise missile called Novator which had a range of around 2,000 kilometres and therefore posed a threat to Nato. Actually the Russians have been developing this missile for ten years and it has been a point of fierce argument between Nato and Moscow since it first became known. The Russians deny - of course - that it breaches the treaty and have reacted with alarm over Trump's announcement. Obama went on about it too but never got close to pulling the US out of the INF Treaty. Putin took heart and carried on developing the cruise missile which is now apparently ready for deployment. I don't think Putin will worry one jot about the US withdrawing from the INF Treaty. He has got his new missile ready, its deployment will scare Nato which the Russian leader will always be happy about, and if the US starts developing a similar type of weapon, the Moscow propaganda machine will work at full pitch to denounce Trump as the architect of a new nuclear arms race. And, adding to Putin's smiles, any request by the US for European allies to host matching cruise and ballistic missiles all over again - remember Greenham Common and Molesworh in the 1980s? - there is almost bound to be a political backlash. So win win all round for Putin. I reckon he thinks farther ahead than even the Chinese if that is possible when it comes to strategic plotting. There is never going to be a smiling Gorbachev/Reagan-style relationship between Trump and Putin. So it will all be about who gets to be the more macho of the two. We can only sit and hope and pray that sensible minds will sort this one out.