Imagens : OVOODOCORVO
'Let
it be an arms race': Trump appears to double down on nuclear
expansion
It
was unclear who Trump was directing arms race threats against, but he
said he received a letter from Putin calling for ‘collaboration on
the international scene’
Ed Pilkington and
Martin Pengelly in New York
Friday 23 December
2016 17.28 GMT
The president-elect
Donald Trump has stunned nuclear weapons experts by appearing to call
for a renewed arms race on his Twitter feed and in a TV interview.
“Let it be an arms
race,” the president in waiting was reported to have told Mika
Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe programme, in an early
phone call on Friday.
According to
Brzezinski he went on to say: “We will outmatch them at every pass
and outlast them all.”
The incendiary
comment followed a tweet on Thursday in which Trump threatened to
preside over a major ramping up of the US nuclear arsenal.
“The United States
must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such
time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” he wrote.
The volley of
remarks had Trump aides scrambling into damage limitation mode, but
their efforts were powerless to neutralise the shock waves of alarm
and bewilderment provoked by the president-elect’s remarks.
They appeared to fly
in the face of 35 years of bipartisan US policy geared towards
reducing the number of nuclear weapons around the world. Nuclear arms
specialists were quick to cry foul.
“It is
irresponsible and reckless for the president elect to be articulating
future US nuclear policy in a tweet and on a morning news show,”
said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the independent Arms
Control Association.
He added: “Just
the words have damaging effects. It invokes confusion and can stir
hostility among our adversaries.”
In tune with many of
his Twitter-based pronouncements, Trump’s intervention prompted
confusion about exactly what he was saying. One issue that remained
particularly opaque was whom his threats of a renewed arms race were
directed against.
The only world power
that can match the 1,800 deployed strategic nuclear weapons the US
commands is Russia, whose president Vladimir Putin has been showered
with praise by Trump.
On Friday, Trump put
out a statement in which he said he had received a “very nice
letter from Vladimir Putin” and added: “His thoughts are so
correct.”
More ominously, the
president-elect said: “I hope both sides are able to live up to
these thoughts, and we do not have to travel an alternate path.”
A copy of a letter
dated 15 December accompanied the statement, in the name of Putin and
bearing the postal address “Moscow, Kremlin”. It was billed as an
“unofficial translation” – the identity of the translator was
unclear.
Putin supposedly
wrote: “I hope that after you assume the position of the President
of the United States of America we will be able – by acting in a
constructive and pragmatic manner - to take real steps to restore the
framework of bilateral cooperation in different areas as well as
bring our level of collaboration on the international scene to a
qualitatively new level.”
Trump's conflicts of
interest: a visual guide
Read more
It was unclear
whether the release of Putin’s supposed letter was prompted by an
exchange of remarks with Moscow on nuclear weapons. Earlier on
Friday, Putin said at a press conference that “if someone is
stimulating a nuclear arms race it’s not us”.
“We don’t
violate anything,” he said. “We are in line with our obligations
as to the number of our warheads.”
On Thursday, Putin
had gone further and said Russia needed to “strengthen the military
potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile
complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective
missile defence systems”.
Trump’s
unrestrained language stands in sharp contrast with the stance
adopted by President Obama over the past eight years.
Though Obama has
struggled to deliver on his early promise to oversee a sharp
reduction in the US nuclear arsenal, agreeing to a $1tn modernisation
program over 30 years for the triad of air, land and sea delivery
systems, he has consistently adopted the vocabulary of disarmament.
In 2013, the White
House worked with Pentagon chiefs to carry out a detailed review of
the US nuclear capability. It concluded that the country already had
a third more strategic weapons than were necessary to ensure nuclear
deterrence.
Kimball said the
findings of the 2013 review proved that “from a military strategy
and security standpoint, there’s absolutely no need to get into any
arms race”.
Trump’s comments
to MSNBC were revealed by the host Joe Scarborough, who like
Brzezinski was presenting the Christmas-themed show while dressed in
pyjamas and slippers, sitting in front of a roaring fire.
He said: “Mica
asked the president-elect while we had the opportunity … to clarify
the tweet yesterday regarding the nuclear arsenal. And the
president-elect told you what?”
“‘Let it be an
arms race’,” Brzezinski said. “‘We will outmatch them at
every pass.’”
“‘And outlast
them all’,” Scarborough added.
Trump intervenes to
sideline Obama over Israeli settlements
“You can put that
down as breaking news,” Scarborough said.
Trump’s pick to be
the incoming White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, led the damage
limitation push.
He told NBC Trump
would not allow an arms race, because he would stop other countries
from increasing their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
“He’s going to
ensure that other countries get the message that he’s not going to
sit back and allow that,” Spicer said. “And what’s going to
happen is they will come to their senses, and we will all be just
fine.”
Trump, who also
tweeted on Friday morning a complaint about his son Eric being forced
to give up charity work over perceptions of selling access to the
president-elect and his family, is spending Christmas at his
Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. His main engagement for the day was a
round of golf with Tiger Woods.
Trump’s
latest tweet about nuclear weapons is both daft and dangerous
Simon Jenkins
The
president-elect’s promise to enlarge the US nuclear arsenal shows a
woeful grasp of how the world, and wars, work today
Friday 23 December
2016 10.41 GMT
After post-truth
comes post-sense. The curt utterances of Donald Trump recall those of
the oracle at Delphi, except that its enigmas were clever. The
president-elect’s latest 140-hieroglyph message on nuclear weapons
is either daft or dangerous – and therefore both.
So far in foreign
policy, Trumpism has included welcome signs of realpolitik. The new
man has hinted at scepticism towards interventionism, a questioning
of Nato, a re-evaluation of Vladimir Putin and a pause to
globalisation. These are fine, except that they have been
unsystematic turns of phrase, mere trips off the tongue. Yes,
presidents elect can fly kites, but there needs to be some sign of
string.
Trump wants America
to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such
time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes”. How does
that parse? Trump’s acolytes outside the tent says it means he
cares about nuclear proliferation. But who says it does? And how is
the world meant to react?
It will hardly do so
by disarming. The essence of deterrence is to reply to strength with
strength. Since Trump’s tweet was in response to Putin’s similar
tub-thumping earlier in the week, “the world coming to its senses”
is the last thing that will happen. Trump has already said he regards
Japan, North Korea and other states going nuclear as “inevitable”.
The best that can be said is that this is just another display of
machismo.
Whatever Trump or
Putin says in this childish “willy-waving”, they must know that
nuclear weapons have no role in modern conflict. They are useless
against terrorists, who are undeterrable and anyway pose no
existential threat to western states. They are beyond cruel in “wars
among the peoples”. Civil and border disputes have to be fought
with conventional weapons. From the Falklands to 9/11, nuclear
weapons have deterred no aggressor, toppled no dictator. They are not
so much unthinkable as pointless.
Obama at least tried
to de-escalate nuclear competition. He sought to refocus America’s
defence (which should be called attack) policy on technology and
battlefield sophistication. That is what policy demanded. Perhaps the
calmest answer to Trump is that, if he wants to waste yet more
billions of dollars, who cares?
The real question is
who will curb this man – or at best distinguish between the
pertinent ideas and the senseless? The easy answer is the system. As
Obama found, the lumbering giant that is American foreign policy has
a mind of its own. It means well but is slow-moving, conservative and
militarily inept.
Trump has sworn to
fight the system, and surrounded himself with tough guys to help him.
I doubt that they will win. But a nuclear arms race with Russia is a
dire echo of the 20th century at its worst. It is wasteful, stupid
and sets a terrible example to the world.
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