In uncertain times the last thing anyone needs is the most powerful man on earth kicking off a new nuclear arms race. But that’s exactly what president-elect Trump did just before Christmas, tweeting that ‘the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes’.
There are so many ways in which this tweet is wrong, dangerous and ignorant!
Just look at the US’s nuclear capability. It currently has 7,300 nuclear warheads, with plans to spend over $350 billion over the next decade modernising and maintaining them. Some of these weapons are many, many times the size of the Hiroshima bomb, so the US already has the capacity to destroy all life on earth. What conceivable reason could Trump possibly have for wanting to increase the US arsenal? Indeed Trump’s ignorance about nuclear matters and his seemingly cavalier approach to their use is extremely alarming given that he will have his finger on the nuclear button in a matter of days.
During his election campaign he promised to tear up the nuclear deal with Iran. This agreement was a huge achievement which replaced the Bush war drive against Iran with a deal to end sanctions and reduce nuclear facilities. Ripping it up may well push Iran down the road to nuclear weapons, potentially opening the door to Egypt and Saudi Arabia going down the nuclear route.
Those of us who remember the fear of nuclear war in Europe in the 1980s when the US was bringing cruise and Polaris to our shores would do well to be aware that Trump is open to nuking Europe because it’s a ‘big place’ and that he thinks ‘you want to be unpredictable’ with nuclear weapons.
Of course some people write these comments off as throw away remarks with no substance but the fact is Trump has repeatedly said that more countries should get nuclear weapons, in particular referencing Japan and South Korea, saying he’d be ‘OK’ about an arms race in Asia.
This has raised the question of Trump’s commitment to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. With his support for more countries getting nukes, Trump has called into question the bipartisan policy in the US for pretty much seven decades: non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
If the US President sanctions nuclear proliferation then we are heading on a disastrous path. This brings us to the second part of Trump’s tweet: ‘until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes’. The fact is, most of the world has already come to its senses – in fact had never lost them! Only nine countries have nuclear weapons and the vast majority of the rest want global nuclear abolition.
This has never been clearer than it is today. Last month the UN General Assembly voted to start negotiations on a global nuclear weapons ban treaty. They start in New York in March. When it came to voting, the US voted against negotiations – as did the UK, in spite of its repeated insistence that it wants a multilateral disarmament process. Of the other nuclear weapons states, Russia, France and Israel also voted against a ban treaty, China, India and Pakistan abstained, and North Korea voted in favour.
So it is the US, UK and the nuclear weapons states that need to come to their senses, not the rest of the world! Here in Britain, let’s put the maximum pressure on our government to take part in the global ban negotiations and support the treaty.
Join us at the Trump inauguration protests on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st January and for our Parliamentary Lobby in support of the global nuclear ban on 1st March.