PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald J. Trump on Friday intensified his threat to “expand” America’s nuclear arsenal, saying he was willing to restart a nuclear arms race even as he released a letter from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that pointed toward the possibility of a “pragmatic” set of understandings between Washington and Moscow, as per reports of local and international dailies.
Echoing the conciliatory approach toward Mr Putin that he exhibited throughout the campaign, Mr Trump praised the Russian leader for sending a private holiday greeting that called for the two men to act in a “constructive and pragmatic manner.” In a statement as he made Mr Putin’s letter public, Mr Trump said the Russian leader’s “thoughts are so correct.”
But earlier in the day, the President-elect also made clear that he meant what he said in a Twitter post on Thursday when he bluntly threatened to expand America’s nuclear arsenal after more than three decades in which the number of American and Russian weapons has shrunk.
Sweeping aside efforts by his aides to temper his comments, or to suggest that he was merely talking about curbing the spread of nuclear technology, especially to terrorists, Mr. Trump told a talk-show host, Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
Through a combination of militaristic bravado and diplomatic outreach four weeks before moving into the Oval Office, Mr. Trump appeared eager to employ his self-described skills as a successful business negotiator, threatening new nuclear deployments as potential leverage against Mr Putin and other nuclear powers.
While previous presidents have spent as long as a year conducting nuclear posture reviews, Mr Trump once again demonstrated that he has little patience with such traditional niceties and is not holding back his conduct of foreign policy before taking office next month. It is somewhat unprecedented that thousands of journalists, policy makers and political pundits are spending so much time trying to figure out exactly what Mr Trump wishes to say in his 140 word tweets. His earlier tweets about replacing aircraft made by Lockheed Martin and replacing them with Boeing warplanes shaved USD 1.2 billion dollars of the vale of Lockheed Martin — a financial disaster for any company.
If Mr Putin, who is just as aggressively nationalistic and jingoistic as Mr Trump, decides to step up the game and increase the number of Russian nuclear warheads, it would have the makings of disaster. That would mean that this simple 140 word message would result in an increase of the 14000 odd nuclear weapons held by the two powers.
We are surprised that the President-elect Mr Trump has so simplistic ideas for giving leadership as a world leader. Danger of nuclear weapon is no more a danger to him. He wants to engage in a competition of nuclear weapons with Russia.
