Both US, Russia should cut nuclear arsenals: American author
Incoming US President Donald Trump should find a way where both the United States and Russia cut back their nuclear arsenals, otherwise no nuclear arms reduction deal with Moscow will work, says an American author and investigative journalist.
In an interview with The Times of London published on Monday, Trump said he will offer to end sanctions imposed on Russia if the Kremlin agrees to “substantially” reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal.
Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counter Punch and a contributor to Business Week and other news organizations, told Press TV on Monday that Trump’s proposal is “consistent with what he has been saying for some time.”
“But because he has been getting hit so hard by the Obama administration’s political appointees and the intelligence community and by the US media, and people trying to say that he is a puppet of Vladimir Putin, he has to look for some kind of a way to do it where he is getting tit for tat in dropping the sanctions,” the analyst explained.
He said that asking Russia to substantially cut its nuclear weapons would not work, “because meanwhile he [Trump] has said nothing about the trillion-dollar upgrade of the US nuclear arsenal that Obama wanted to place with Congress, and has talked about bolstering America’s nuclear power.”
“So the real trade-off would have to be the US and Russia both cutting back their nuclear arsenals, which would be a smart thing,” Lindorff stated. “Maybe this is an opening to go there.”
“It’s a non-starter for him to just ask Russia to cut back its nuclear arsenal and that the US would end in return sanctions. I don’t think Russia is that troubled by sanctions,” he noted.
Washington and its allies have levied broad economic sanctions against Russia over Moscow’s alleged involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
Late last year, Trump said that the US must "greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." Around the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin also called for the strengthening of his country’s "strategic nuclear forces."
The US and Russia have by far the largest nuclear weapons arsenals in the world. The US has 1,367 nuclear warheads on deployed strategic missiles and bombers, while Russia has 1,796 deployed warheads, according to the latest assessment by the US State Department.
The two nuclear powers agreed to limit the number of deployable long-range, strategic nuclear weapons under the 2010 New START treaty.
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