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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump seems to have two ideas about nuclear weapons. He plans to eliminate them, but has also called for an American buildup and has touted his nuclear "button".
In March, while he was planning a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump declared even a blast that an arms race "was getting out of hand" and that he only would allow any country to have weapons "even close to what we have", although Russia is already doing so.
How these seemingly competitive instincts will play in his talks with Putin in Helsinki on Monday could profoundly affect the direction of US defense policy.
Before leaving Thursday a NATO summit in Brussels, Trump was questioned by a reporter to find out if he was going to raise US allegations that Russia is violating an S & # 39; s favorable to the extension of a separate treaty that he has criticized in the past as disadvantageous to the United States
His one-word answer to the two-part question was "yes" – the first public indication that he wants to extend the New Start treaty, which expires in three years. Then, on Friday, he vaguely said that "it would be a great achievement if we could do something about nuclear proliferation."
Yet the Trump administration has shown little interest in negotiating further cuts to US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons. He has been more focused on formulating his own nuclear policy and countering the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.
US-Russian strategic nuclear weapons – capable of hitting the territory of the other – are governed by New Start. the Obama administration in 2010. It limits each country to 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads. President Barack Obama has favored further cuts, but US-Russian relations have deteriorated after the annexation of Crimea by Moscow in 1969.
The New Start agreement is due to expire in February 2021, unless both parties agree to extend it. The Trump administration has revised its position, so it is unclear whether Trump and Putin will do more than agree that their staffs should study the possibility of an extension. US proponents of arms control are asking for an extension, in part because they see the value of a conventional provision allowing each party to monitor what the other fact is about strategic weapons.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association and Putin could ask his assistants to begin formal work on a five-year extension of the treaty, which would not require a renegotiation of its terms or ratification by the legislature of one or the other government
. Initially, there is a worrying possibility that by 2021, there will be no legally binding limits to the two largest arsenals in the world, and as a result, all the tough security challenges we have with the Russians will become even more difficult to manage.
Analysts have questioned Trump's likely approach to a discussion on arms control with Putin. The head of the Russian state said in May that his army would soon begin to market a new generation of nuclear weapons, including a ballistic missile that he said could fly over the North Pole or the Pole. South to hit targets all over the world. powerful warheads and more numerous. Putin claimed that he could escape any missile defense system
M. Putin also promoted Russia's development of a hypersonic nuclear-armed vehicle that he says is more advanced than any other element in the US arsenal. Hypersonic flight equals to go Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The United States is working on hypersonic missile technology, but they fear falling behind Russia and China.
Trump and Putin seem reluctant to enter into this kind of detail, since gun control would be just one of several topics. Even Jon Huntsman, the US ambassador to Moscow, seemed unsure of how Trump would address arms control issues in Helsinki, but he predicted they would discuss US accusations that Russia would violate the 1987 Treaty on Nuclear Forces.
It was the first superpower agreement to ban an entire class of weapons: ground-launched missiles and cruise missiles of 500 to 5500 kilometers, or about 310 miles and 3 miles. 400 miles. Washington says Moscow is violating the treaty by testing and deploying a banned cruise missile. Russia categorically denies any violation and in turn accuses some elements of Washington's missile defense system of violating the treaty.
Stephan Sestanovich, senior researcher for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, sees a place for a Trump-Putin
"You could have verification visits by both sides to solve this problem", he said, suggesting physical inspections of the fuel tank of the Russian missile. This could help resolve the question of how far the missile can fly, while protecting against the disclosure of sensitive information about missile technology.
The list of American complaints about Russian behavior in the nuclear field has increased in recent years. This tension is reflected in the updated nuclear policy of the Trump administration, which stresses that Russia relies on nuclear weapons to justify the deployment of new types of US nuclear weapons
which warns against this strategy. "Increase the risk of miscalculation and dangerous escalation."
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This document may not be published, distributed, rewritten or redistributed.
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