President Donald Trump has expressed hope that he will restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and eventually see all three countries agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump expressed dismay that the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars strengthening its nuclear deterrent and has proposed cutting that spending.
Trump said, “There is no reason for us to build new nuclear weapons, we already have plenty. You can destroy the world 50, 100 times over. But we are building new nuclear weapons and they are building nuclear weapons,” indicating that the current nuclear weapons stockpile is sufficient. He also emphasized that the money spent with such large budgets should be directed to more productive areas.
While the US and Russia have had large stockpiles of nuclear weapons since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China’s nuclear destructive capacity would increase in the next five to six years. He said that if the weapons were used, such a devastating outcome would be catastrophic for the world, but that in that case, “they would probably fade away.”
Trump has indicated his intention to begin nuclear talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin once the Middle East and Ukraine issues are resolved. Trump said he plans to propose “Let’s cut our military budget in half” at the start of those talks, and he believes that can be accomplished.
During Trump’s first term, the US and Russia were negotiating an extension of the nuclear arms control treaty signed in the 2010s, known as “New START,” and he tried to include China in those talks without success. Since then, the US and Russia have continued with their major weapons programs, while Russia suspended its participation in the treaty during the Biden administration.
Trump’s proposal is a call for major change in global security and arms control, and if those talks are resumed and successful, they could shape the future of nuclear weapons around the world.
