U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, when asked to clarify his recent comments about expanding U.S. nuclear weapons capability, said “Let it be an arms race!”, and that the United States would win it (as reported on Friday by MSNBC).
According to one source, there were a total of ~70,000 nuclear weapons world wide in the mid to late 1980’s, and as of 2010, the total was down to ~20,000. Another source says, as of 2015, there are now only ~10,000 between the U.S. and Russia.
First, wasn’t it great that someone finally came to their senses (after ~thirty-five years of proliferation) and decided enough was enough, and convinced others of this, such that the two superpowers with 99% of these nuclear weapons agreed to substantially reduce their stockpiles by ~85%, bringing the total down to ~10,000?
Second, ten thousand nuclear weapons are more than enough to destroy every major city in the world (assumption: 1,000 major cities in the world) ten times over. Someday (hopefully sooner rather than later), we will come to the realization that we only need just a thousand nuclear weapons to kill us all, thereby causing a further (and significant) reduction in our stockpiles.
Third, after twenty-five years of reducing our stockpile, and seeing the other major player in this arena doing the same exact thing, what f’ing President-elect Nut-job would want to cause significant world alarm by saying, Hey! – all bets are off, and “the U.S. must greatly…expand its nuclear capability.”??
Who, in their right mind does such a thing? If you were truly presidential, this would be a internal discussion/conversation to have with your team of national security advisors – and not something you twitter to all the world.
The world is watching you, Mr. President-elect.
And, they are watching the U.S.
Please stop with the twitter/tweeting nonsense.
It causes confusion.
It causes alarm.
And, someday, it will cause a reaction.
And, you won’t be able to say afterwards “no, I didn’t say that”,
or for you to have your press secretary say (afterwards) “oh, he really didn’t mean that, this is what he meant – …”.
Because, it will be too late.
[a quote from NBCNews: “James Acton (co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) called Trump’s tweet unprecedented, not only for its content, but for the notion that a president-elect would make a pronouncement about something so sensitive as nuclear weapons policy over a medium as casual as Twitter.”]
[Copyright 2016/Brian S. Williams]
