Trump Doubles Down on Nuclear Arms Race
As predicted, Trump has doubled down on his tweet about the US expanding our nuclear capability. This time, he did not even grace us with a 140-character tweet, but with a quote from an interviewer, who he called. The quote from co-host Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC Morning Joe is “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” That was a nice quote for a Christmas show. Russian President Vladimir Putin, during his four hour yearly interview, clarified that what he meant in his own statement was not to escalate the number of weapons from the START III nuclear limitation proposal. Trump either did not get this message, or ignored it. Trump’s new Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Trump’s new Counselor Kellyanne Conway, and Trump’s top spokesman Jason Miller, unfortunately embarrassed themselves by denying Trump’s increase in nuclear capacity in his tweet (as usual).
The START III treaty was never signed, it was replaced by the Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT) Treaty of Moscow, from 2003 to 2011. It was superseded by the New START treaty in 2010. It expires in 2021, with an option to extend until 2026 (thank you Wikipedia). This was signed by President Barack Obama, and then President Dmitry Medvedev of the Russian Federation. It was even ratified by the US Senate.
New START limits deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550. That counts each bomber only once, since it can’t be determined how many warheads are on each bomber. Currently the Russian Federation has 1,796 deployed warheads, and the US has 1,367. The US number of warheads has been considered adequate for the assigned missions.
The total US nuclear weapons are 7,000, with 7,300 for the Russian Federation. They are probably only airborne or artillery weapons, not deliverable in the earliest strikes. Their use would really take the planet to maximum destruction.
It occurred to me since writing yesterday’s post on whom Trump could have consulted, that I only listed ex-Texas-Gov. Rick Perry, Trump’s new head of the Department of Energy, which develops nuclear weapons. I now include in that list the entire, intact, current Department of Energy, with 15,000 employees, where 60% of the budget is spent on nuclear weapons. The current Secretary of Energy is Prof. Ernst Moniz, a nuclear physicist from MIT, who also gave the technical advice for the Iranian nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Optimistically, upgrading our nuclear weapons to greater accuracy, could have the beneficial effect of making them smaller, thus causing less collateral damage, and a smaller nuclear winter and radioactive cloud. With evasive and stealth warheads, fewer missiles would have to be launched. However, this has been countered, since the new testing would encourage non-nuclear countries to develop their own. It will also encourage Russia to upgrade its nuclear systems. It would also make it more likely for someone like Trump to use the weapons.
Any nuclear war would lead to a nuclear winter, of solar radiation absorbing dust and ash clouds, damaging or killing food crops. To study this effect, the Trump administration should continue funding climate science and climate scientists, directed to analyzing this problem. Since the DOE will control the upgrades, and the analysis of nuclear weapons on the climate and environment, there should be no reductions for the DOE itself.
