DONALD Trump’s plan for a nuclear “arms race” is misguided, impractical and illogical, it is claimed.
The US President-elect said his country must “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability” in a pre-Christmas tweet, going on to say the following day: “Let it be an arms race... we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
Writing for the Royal United Services Institute defence think tank, Tim Stafford of the Pacific Forum-Centre for Strategic and International Studies says the comments are significant because they “go well beyond” current Republican Party policy.
America’s nuclear arsenal has been slowly reducing since the end of the Cold War. In signalling that he will reverse this policy, Stafford says Trump’s comments are “misguided” and such a move would “serve no practical utility” because its current stockpile is “more than sufficient”.
Stafford continues: “Trump’s call for more nuclear weapons defies strategic logic. The fundamental weakness of current US deterrence posture lies not at the nuclear level, but at the sub-strategic end of the escalation spectrum.
“Russia, China and North Korea, the three nations US nuclear weapons primarily serve to deter, are all proving increasingly adept at manipulating escalatory risk. Each is moving to perfect the art of swift interventions, capable of adjusting the status quo in their favour, without triggering a nuclear response by the US.
“The danger Washington is likely to face is not the prospect of being ‘outmatched’ or ‘outlasted’ in terms of nuclear numbers, but being confronted by a conventional, asymmetric or hybrid challenge, for which it lacks credible response options.”
Stafford argues that warheads would do nothing to tackle “aggression” if Russia was to move in on its Baltic neighbours or if China tried to take islands claimed by Japan or North Korea and Trump’s incoming administration should adapt existing defence plans to “devolve greater responsibility to local allies” such as South Korea and India.
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