Friday, December 23, 2016
Will Trump take the world to the brink of nuclear war?
The USA has enough nuclear warheads to destroy the world several times over and yet the President-elect, Donald Trump wants to reverse decades of disarmament and add to that arsenal.
As the Independent reports, in a single comment on Twitter, that will raise more questions about both his temperament and foreign policy experience, the Donald Trump said the US must "greatly strengthen and expand" its nuclear arsenal until "the world comes to its senses regarding nukes". Shades of Dr. Strangelove already!
The paper usefully reports on the current state of nuclear armaments across the World:
The Federation of American Scientists has estimated there are currently 15,375 nuclear warheads held by eight countries. Of those, Russia has an estimated 7,300, the US has 6,970, France has 300, China possesses 260, the UK has 215, Pakistan has 130, India has 120 and Israel has 80, though it refuses to confirm or deny its arsenal.
The question is why would we need anymore. More importantly, what sane person would want to expand the number of countries who have nuclear weapons or think that the USA and Russian might combine to use nuclear weapons against a third party?
That appears to be where Trump is going. If 2016 has proved to be a dreadful car-crash of a year then 2017 is beginning to look like a potential disaster for world peace.
As the Independent reports, in a single comment on Twitter, that will raise more questions about both his temperament and foreign policy experience, the Donald Trump said the US must "greatly strengthen and expand" its nuclear arsenal until "the world comes to its senses regarding nukes". Shades of Dr. Strangelove already!
The paper usefully reports on the current state of nuclear armaments across the World:
The Federation of American Scientists has estimated there are currently 15,375 nuclear warheads held by eight countries. Of those, Russia has an estimated 7,300, the US has 6,970, France has 300, China possesses 260, the UK has 215, Pakistan has 130, India has 120 and Israel has 80, though it refuses to confirm or deny its arsenal.
The question is why would we need anymore. More importantly, what sane person would want to expand the number of countries who have nuclear weapons or think that the USA and Russian might combine to use nuclear weapons against a third party?
That appears to be where Trump is going. If 2016 has proved to be a dreadful car-crash of a year then 2017 is beginning to look like a potential disaster for world peace.
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As ever, on things American you get it wrong Peter. Trump is talking about increasing stability between the US and Russia. That both should invest in modernising their nukes, which are getting very old and unreliable to say the very least. Also, Trump wants Putin in his camp vis-à-vis China. It's one big chess game. I explained to you et al that Putin was going to use Kaliningrad as a chess piece by moving nuclear capability ballistic missiles and some while later it hit the news. Now please listen: Trump sees China as the major threat, not Russia. He wants to team up with Russia. The game plan being to replace old nuclear warheads, hence modernising their nuclear arsenals. Like 'wot she wrote'; their nuclear arsenals have gotten old and potentially unreliable. Nuclear logic dictates that the new nuke warheads will be very similar to the older siblings in order to obviate the need to do actual nuclear testing. Building new designs will be difficult because of this world-wide ban on actual nuclear explosive tests. China will have the same problem. What can be done in terms of actual new designs will largely be limited to delivery systems and decoys BECAUSE actual testing of new delivery systems can be done by actual live fire tests, e.g. firing a new delivery rocket at far off island target. So there will be that, but the 'name of the game' is to build a US/Russian axis to counter China.
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