President-elect Trump called for an increase the United States’ nuclear capability Thursday morning, but it was unclear whether he was agreeing with the Obama administration’s ambitious nuclear moderization plans or advocating an increase in the number of warheads in the nation’s 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 tweeted, without any further explanation.
Trump’s statement comes as the United States and Russia have been decreasing their supply of nuclear weapons in line with arms treaties. The United States has about 7,000 nuclear warheads, including about 2,000 that are slated for dismantlement, leaving about 5,000 in the active stockpile, according to arms control advocates.
Nine countries in the world possess a total of 15,375 nuclear weapons, with the United States and Russia accounting for 93 percent of them. Thirty years ago, there were roughly 70,300 such weapons.
Trump’s statements come at a time when his foreign policy seems to be directed at pivoting toward Russia and normalizing relations with the United States’ top antagonist on the world stage.
But in a speech in Moscow Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin also called for a military buildup, including nuclear forces, to “neutralize any military threat.”
“We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems,” Putin said according to Agence France-Presse.
The U.S., Russia and the U.K. are all decreasing the number of weapons in their possession, while countries such as India, Pakistan, China and North Korea are increasing their stockpiles, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Trump’s tweet echoed a theme he raised during a presidential debate in September, when he cited nuclear weapons as the single greatest threat facing the world, and singled out Russia’s ongoing modernization of its nuclear arsenal as a major part of the problem.
“Russia has been expanding,” Trump said. “They have a much newer capability than we do. We have not been updating from the new standpoint.”
What Trump did not mention, then or now, is that the United States has already embarked on an ambitious plan to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad of submarines, bombers and land-based missiles at an estimated cost of $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
The plans have bipartisan support in Congress, although not all the new weapons, including a replacement for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines and a still-to-be designed long-range stealth bomber, are yet fully funded.
On a tour of U.S. military nuclear facilities three months ago, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the U.S. needs to spend the billions to upgrade the triad, because the nation has not built a new nuclear weapon or delivery system in 25 years, and most have already been extended decades beyond their original expected service lives.
“So it’s not a choice between replacing these platforms or keeping,” Carter said, “it’s really a choice between replacing them or losing them. That would mean losing confidence in our ability to deter, which we can’t afford in today’s volatile security environment.”
Or as Trump put it in the September debate in a more plain-spoken style, “I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over. At the same time, we have to be prepared. I can’t take anything off the table.”
Carter argued then that nowadays nuclear weapons are not used as much to deter all-out war, as to coerce a conventionally superior opponent to back off or abandon an ally during a crisis.
“We cannot allow that to happen,” Carter said, after inspecting U.S. nuclear forces at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.
Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said Trump’s reasoning for the tweet isn’t exactly clear. But, he presumes Trump was trying to say that the current U.S. nuclear deterrent is inadequate and more warheads are needed.
Reif said that’s “inaccurate, would be a significant departure from past and current U.S. policy and would send a destabilizing signal to other, particularly nuclear-armed states, that could prompt them to respond in ways that undermine U.S. security.”
Reif said Trump would be breaking with a trend of Republican presidents of being more proactive in reducing the nuclear arsenal than Democratic presidents. In addition, the current American arsenal of nuclear warheads is more than the U.S. needs to meet security requirements.
Reif said the plan to modernize the arsenal to the tune of $1 trillion over the next 30 years is already unsustainable, regardless of what Trump wants to do.
He said the U.S. doesn’t need more nukes.
“The real question is not whether the United States doesn’t have enough (it has more than enough), but whether the size and configuration of the current arsenal and the planned modernization plans are necessary and sustainable,” he said. “The answer is that they are unnecessary and unsustainable.”
