NYT Editorial Urges Urgent Trump Diplomacy to Pursue Global Nuclear Restraint
A new year is customarily cause for joy and hope. However, the global expansion of nuclear arsenals is cause for fear and dread. A lengthy New York Times editorial said, “The global nuclear balance is more tenuous in 2024 than it has been in decades.”
“The last remaining major bilateral accord limiting U.S. and Russian arsenals, New START, expires in 14 months,” the editorial explained. “Russian leaders have rejected the Biden administration’s offers to discuss a new nuclear arms control framework, which follows the dismantling of other accords meant to lessen the risk of conflict. We are on the precipice of living in a world with no restraints on how many nuclear weapons are deployed.”
Happy New Year.
As the NYT editorial noted, nuclear proliferation isn’t just a U.S.-Russian problem. China, which launched its nuclear program to counter arsenals in India and Pakistan, plans to double its 500-warhead nuclear stockpile by 2030 because of worsening relations with the United States. India and Pakistan are expanding their respective 170-warhead arsenals.
North Korea has showcased its capability to send ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear bombs deep into the Pacific Ocean. In response, South Korea and Japan are considering creating nuclear weapons. Several European nations, including Ukraine, are openly discussing developing their own nuclear capability in light of Russian aggression and growing U.S. isolationism.
The Federation of American Scientists reports the existence of 12,121 nuclear warheads globally, with roughly 9,585 in the military stockpiles for use by missiles, aircraft, ships and submarines. It says 3,904 are deployed with operational forces on missiles or bomber bases. Of those, approximately 2,100 U.S., Russian, British and French warheads are on high alert status, ready for use on short notice.
Call for Trump Leadership
The editorial implores President-elect Donald Trump to embrace a leadership role to restrain the spread of nuclear weapons even as he promotes modernizing U.S. nuclear weaponry. It recalls how Trump, when as a real estate develop in 1986, gained an understanding of nuclear annihilation from his uncle, MIT physicist John George Trump, who was known for his contributions to radiation therapy.
“Mr. Trump reached out to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which had just received a Nobel Peace Prize for its disarmament work,” the editorial recounted. “He hoped to arrange negotiations with the Soviets to lower the nuclear threat.”
Now would be a perfect time to return to that mission.
Attending to nuclear common sense will require Trump to backtrack from stances taken during his first term when he and other nuclear nations refused to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and he unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and Open Skies Treaty.
During his campaign, Trump bragged about his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. But he also told reporters he is open to new talks with Iranian leaders, as reported by Politico. “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.”
“Mr. Trump, to his credit, grasps the dangers here. Perhaps he can also use some of his influence with President Putin to come to terms on the issue,” encouraged the NYT editorial board. Putin has routinely threatened use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
China, the third nuclear superpower, also may be open to frank discussions. The editorial speculates the door-opener could be Chinese willingness to jointly agree on a “blanket no-first-use policy” as a way of underscoring its nuclear superpower status.
While expanding and modernizing their nuclear weaponry, the United States, Russia and China have been faithful to a moratorium on underground testing of nuclear warheads for three decades, even as their respective militaries conduct routine preparedness drills. The editorial cites evidence that could change:
“All three nations update and expand the infrastructure and sites needed to test nuclear weapons, according to commercial satellite imagery by Planet Labs PBC. The photos, analyzed by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, show each nation is adding buildings, cutting roads and boring tunnels — construction that many fear could presage live explosions.”
Ignore Project 2025 Advice
Trump taking leadership on nuclear common sense may run counter to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 guidelines for a second Trump presidency that “specifically calls for preparing the nuclear testing site in Nevada for a new generation of tests, which involve detonating actual nuclear explosives.”
If Trump orders resumption of nuclear explosive testing, China and Russia will follow suit. In addition to inching closer to actual use of nuclear weapons in battlefields, testing also has environmental impacts. And a test launch could cost more than $18 million.
Photo Credit: Brittainy Newman/The New York Times
A Trump Legacy All Can Celebrate
“One paradox of the nuclear age is that it often has been the most bellicose leaders who become the most committed and most effective at securing arms control deals and shrinking global stockpiles,” the NYT editorial concluded.
“Dwight Eisenhower, who led the allied war effort against the Nazis, came to warn against the military-industrial complex. Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy were swaggering brinksmen until they brought the world close to annihilation. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev each came to see that nuclear weapons were vastly more dangerous in an unstable world.
“Donald Trump ran a campaign of peace through strength. Time will tell if he can deliver what he promised. But all Americans should rejoice if Mr. Trump leaves the world a safer place from nuclear weapons than it was when he took office for the second time.”
Oregon’s Champions for Nuclear Commonsense
Former Oregon Congressman Les AuCoin and the late Senator Mark Hatfield left a mark as champions of nuclear restraint.
As a member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, AuCoin supported a nuclear freeze agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1983, he helped pass House Joint Resolution 13, which called for “a mutual and verifiable freeze on and reductions in nuclear weapons.”
“In its key arms-control feature, it banned ballistic-missile flight tests – thus preventing improvement of first-strike accuracy,” AuCoin wrote in his memoir. “U.S. and Soviet surveillance satellites would easily observe even a single such test, making compliance of a mutual freeze easy to verify. Moreover, the absence of flight testing would degrade the reliability of existing weapons. That was the point: if an aggressor can’t be certain his weapons will destroy their targets, it would be suicidal to initiate use of them.”
HJR 13 passed the House but not the Senate.
Hatfield worked across the political aisle in the Senate on legislation to ban nuclear testing and avoid building huge nuclear stockpiles. He co-wrote an op-ed with Senator Ted Kennedy in 1982 that said:
“Despite its obvious logic, amply documented by incredible human suffering at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and compellingly argued in many studies since then, the two superpowers have built their arsenals far beyond the simple requirements of deterrence, each fearful that the nuclear forces of the other might somehow yield significant military advantages. Some theorists argue that even perceptions of advantage might induce political capitulation from the disadvantaged side or reckless adventure from the advantaged power. Neither the American nor the Soviet military establishment has been content simply to possess the potential for devastation. Both have made assiduous preparations for actually fighting a nuclear war. Both have come to believe that their security depends upon an ability to organize massive nuclear attacks on extremely short notice – a few minutes, perhaps a few hours.”
