Trump Is Blundering Into an Arms Race
Yes, the U.S. can outspend Russia and China on nuclear weapons. That doesn’t mean America will win.
The Reykjavik deal may soon belong to history.
Photograph: Bettmann/Getty Images
President Donald Trump channeled his predecessor Ronald Reagan by warning the U.S. would outspend any other power in a nuclear arms race that might follow a U.S. pullout from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Trump has a point, but unfortunately for him, it’s no longer the 1980s.
“We have more money than anybody else, by far. We’ll build it up,” Trump said Oct. 22 about the U.S. nuclear arsenal as he repeated his vow to withdraw from the INF treaty. “Until they come to their senses. When they do, then we’ll all be smart and we’ll all stop.” “They,” of course, are Russia, the other party to the pact, and China, which isn’t a signatory to the agreement and is free to develop short- and intermediate-range missiles.