This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/us/politics/trump-nuclear-arms-race-russia-united-states.html

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 4 Version 5
Trump Says U.S. Would ‘Outmatch’ Rivals in a New Nuclear Arms Race Trump Says U.S. Would ‘Outmatch’ Rivals in a New Nuclear Arms Race
(about 9 hours later)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Friday welcomed a new nuclear weapons arms race, vowing in an off-camera interview with a television host that America would “outmatch” any adversary. The comment came one day after he said in a post on Twitter that the United States should “strengthen and expand” its own nuclear capabilities. WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Friday intensified his threat to “expand” America’s nuclear arsenal, saying he was willing to restart a nuclear arms race even as he released a letter from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that pointed toward the possibility of a “pragmatic” set of understandings between Washington and Moscow.
The president-elect escalated his comments about nuclear weapons with the show of bravado during a brief, off-air telephone conversation from his estate in Florida, according to Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. Echoing the conciliatory approach toward Mr. Putin that he exhibited throughout the campaign, Mr. Trump praised the Russian leader for sending a private holiday greeting that called for the two men to act in a “constructive and pragmatic manner.” In a statement as he made Mr. Putin’s letter public, Mr. Trump said the Russian leader’s “thoughts are so correct.”
“Let it be an arms race,” Mr. Trump said, according to Ms. Brzezinski, who described her conversation with the president-elect on the morning news program moments later. Mr. Trump added: “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” But earlier in the day, the president-elect also made clear that he meant what he said in a Twitter post on Thursday when he bluntly threatened to expand America’s nuclear arsenal after more than three decades in which the number of American and Russian weapons has shrunk.
A few hours after those comments, Mr. Trump released a letter he said he received on Dec. 15 from President Vladimir V. Putin in which the Russian leader offered holiday greetings and urged a “constructive and pragmatic manner” among leaders in both countries. Sweeping aside efforts by his aides to temper his comments, or to suggest that he was merely talking about curbing the spread of nuclear technology, especially to terrorists, Mr. Trump told a talk-show host, Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
“Relations between Russia and the U.S. remain an important factor in ensuring stability and security of the modern world,” Mr. Putin wrote in the letter. “I hope that after you assume the position of the President of the United States of America we will be able — by acting in a constructive and pragmatic manner — to take real steps to restore the framework of bilateral cooperation in different areas as well as bring our level of collaboration on the international scene to a qualitatively new level.” Through a combination of militaristic bravado and diplomatic outreach four weeks before moving into the Oval Office, Mr. Trump appeared eager to employ his self-described skills as a successful business negotiator, threatening new nuclear deployments as potential leverage against Mr. Putin and other nuclear powers.
In his statement, Mr. Trump called it “a very nice letter” and said “his thoughts are so correct. I hope both sides are able to live up to these thoughts, and we do not have to travel an alternate path.” Mr. Trump could choose to continue, or even expand, President Obama’s vigorous nuclear modernization plan, already underway, and decide over the next few years whether it is worth spending close to one trillion dollars to replace America’s aging fleets of bombers, submarines and long-range ballistic missiles. Russia and China are in the midst of their own major nuclear modernization efforts.
Mr. Trump did not elaborate on what he meant by an “alternate path.” But despite his praise of Mr. Putin’s letter, the president-elect’s comments on Friday about nuclear weapons appear to reflect a willingness on his part to restart the costly and dangerous Cold War-era weapons competition between the United States and the old Soviet Union. Both nations have sought for decades to reverse that buildup of huge nuclear arsenals. While previous presidents have spent as long as a year conducting nuclear posture reviews, Mr. Trump once again demonstrated that he has little patience with such traditional niceties and is not holding back his conduct of foreign policy before taking office next month.
The comments on Friday and the Twitter post Thursday appeared to be meant specifically for Mr. Putin, who had said in an end-of-the-year speech to his military this week that Russia must bolster its nuclear capabilities to “reliably penetrate” the missile defense systems of any other nation. “I think it’s putting every nation on notice that the United States is going to reassert its position in the globe,” Sean Spicer, who will be Mr. Trump’s spokesman in the White House, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Friday.
The Russian leader, who spoke during a lengthy news conference in Moscow on Friday, said the Kremlin would continue to modernize its armed forces, including nuclear weapons. Russia is not seeking a new arms race or to develop new nuclear warheads, he said, but is instead seeking ways to improve its armaments so that they could pierce American missile defenses. Mr. Trump appears to be open to a new relationship with Russia even as he makes threats about what could happen if Mr. Putin crossed him.
Mr. Trump, who spent Friday morning playing golf with Tiger Woods at Trump International Golf Club, has not provided any details about his plans regarding an expansion of nuclear abilities. But Sean Spicer, the incoming press secretary for Mr. Trump’s administration, said earlier on the “Morning Joe” program that the president-elect’s Twitter post about nuclear weapons was intended to send a message to America’s adversaries around the world. In response to Mr. Putin’s letter, Mr. Trump said that a failure by either side to “live up to these thoughts” would require the United States to “travel an alternate path.” That apparently includes Mr. Trump’s belief that his administration would win the upper hand in a renewed, expensive competition over the size and effectiveness of the countries’ nuclear arsenals.
Asked if Mr. Trump’s post on Twitter was a response to Mr. Putin’s speech to the military, Mr. Spicer said, “I think it’s putting every nation on notice that the United States is going to reassert its position in the globe.” It is unclear what prompted Mr. Trump’s focus on nuclear issues two days before Christmas; senior aides refused repeated requests for an explanation about the roots of his statements. It is also hard to know how much of Mr. Trump’s claim that he could outspend and outpace any adversary amounts to strategy, and how much is simply a negotiating stand.
Mr. Spicer added: “Other countries need to understand that if they expand their nuclear capabilities, this president is not going to sit back, he’s going to act.” Activists who have been fighting for years to reduce nuclear stockpiles reacted with alarm at the prospect that the president-elect might engage in a new nuclear competition with Russia.
After Mr. Trump’s comments to Ms. Brzezinski, Mr. Spicer appeared on NBC’s “Today” program and said the president-elect was trying to avoid an arms race by signaling to the Russians and other adversaries that he was willing to match any nuclear expansion they might try. “The statements made by President-elect Trump undermine decades of work the United States and its allies have been involved in to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles and to prevent the additional proliferation of nuclear weapons,” said Byron L. Dorgan, a former senator from North Dakota and a board member at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “A nuclear arms race puts everyone on this planet in greater danger.”
When Matt Lauer, one of the show’s hosts, suggested that matching an adversary’s expansion was the definition of an arms race, Mr. Spicer insisted that would not happen while Mr. Trump was president. Mr. Trump’s warning on nuclear weapons came after Mr. Putin vowed to continue modernizing his nation’s nuclear weapons and asserted Russia’s military superiority over the United States.
“There’s not going to be,” Mr. Spicer said, “because he’s going to ensure that other countries get the message that he’s not going to sit back and allow that. And what’s going to happen is they will come to their senses and we will all be just fine.” “Of course the U.S. has more missiles, submarines and aircraft carriers, but what we say is that we are stronger than any aggressor, and this is the case,” Mr. Putin said at an end-of-year news conference in Moscow on Friday.
Friday morning’s comments by Mr. Trump and Mr. Spicer about the president-elect’s intentions regarding the nuclear arsenal stood in contrast to what other aides said late Thursday evening. Jason Miller, the incoming communications director, said in a statement that Mr. Trump’s post on Twitter was about the spread of nuclear capabilities around the globe. Mr. Putin said Russia was not seeking a new nuclear arms race with the United States that his country could ill afford, and he reacted dismissively to Mr. Trump’s Twitter post about strengthening and expanding the American arsenal, noting that it was similar to what the president-elect had promised on the campaign trail.
“President-elect Trump was referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it — particularly to and among terrorist organizations and unstable and rogue regimes,” Mr. Miller wrote. “So there is nothing unusual here,” Mr. Putin said.
Kellyanne Conway, who will become counselor to the president in the White House, appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC on Thursday evening and downplayed the significance of Mr. Trump’s post. As far back as 1987, Mr. Trump talked about his desire to negotiate nuclear arms control agreements with a declining but aggressive Soviet Union.
“I don’t think the tweet was groundbreaking in this regard. It seems that President Obama himself has invested, has called for an upgrade in our capabilities,” Ms. Conway said. Referring to Mr. Trump, she said, “I think in his quest to keep us safe and secure, he’s putting the world on notice that he will do what he thinks he needs to do to keep us safe and secure.” In recent weeks, he has met with some of the most savvy survivors of the Cold War — notably Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, and Robert M. Gates, the former defense secretary — at a moment when American relations with Russia are clearly at a turning point.
Republicans who have spoken to Mr. Trump say he seems to realize that his opening gestures to Moscow will be closely observed at home, in Europe and among other allies. Republicans have split with him on Russia’s meddling in the American election, promising congressional inquiries after intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had used a combination of hacking and information warfare techniques to help elect Mr. Trump as president.
At the heart of the question about Mr. Trump’s nuclear plans is what he meant by the phrase “greatly strengthen and expand America’s nuclear capability.” Had he used the word “modernize,” he would have been echoing the phrase used by the Obama administration. But the idea, Mr. Obama has said, is to shrink the arsenal, not increase it.
The modernization effort began in earnest after the passage of the New Start treaty in 2010, an arms control treaty that Mr. Obama pushed through with Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the Russian president. But in the name of improving safety and reliability, some experts — and prominent arms strategists — argued that Mr. Obama was setting the stage for a new president to expand the arsenal.
Mr. Obama acknowledged that danger in the spring, warning of the potential for “ramping up new and more deadly and more effective systems that end up leading to a whole new escalation of the arms race.” It was a startling admission for a president who had come to office more than seven years earlier talking about eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
China, for its part, has been modernizing a fleet of several hundred nuclear missiles and embarked on an aggressive space-weapons program to blind United States satellites in a conflict.
But Mr. Obama’s Pentagon is also leaving a number of projects that Mr. Trump could embrace, including an ultra-high-speed warhead that can travel up to 17,000 miles per hour. The Chinese are working on a similar weapon that is designed to avoid American missile defenses, prompting a warning to a congressional commission last year that an arms race was in its opening moments, long before Mr. Trump was elected.