Mon, Oct 30, 2017 page1

• Trump team planning to bolster US nuclear arsenal

  • The Guardian
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  The administration of US President Donald Trump is working on a nuclear weapons policy that is intended to mark a decisive end to the era of post-Cold War disarmament by bolstering the US arsenal and loosening the conditions under which it would be used.

  A draft of the new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was presented last month at a White House meeting between Trump and his top national security advisers.

  The US Congress and US allies have been briefed on the progress of the draft.

  The document is still being debated with a target for completion by the end of this year or the beginning of next.

  Among the new elements under consideration are a low-yield ballistic missile intended primarily to deter Russia’s use of a small nuclear weapon in a war over the Baltic states; a sea-launched cruise missile; a change in language governing conditions in which the US would use nuclear weapons; and investments aimed at reducing the time it would take the US to prepare a nuclear test.

  Trump has frequently voiced his intention to build up the US arsenal. According to one report, he was outraged at a meeting with military leaders in July when he was shown a downward sloping graph of the US weapons stockpile since the Cold War, and had to be talked out of ordering a 10-fold increase.

  The White House denied the report, but it has repeatedly made clear it aims to adopt a more aggressive nuclear stance.

  “You can be assured that our administration is committed to strengthen and modernize America’s nuclear deterrent,” US Vice President Mike Pence said on Friday on a morale-boosting visit to the Minot air force base in North Dakota, home to Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles and B-52 strategic bombers.

  “History attests the surest path to peace is through American strength. There’s no greater element of American strength, there’s no greater force for peace in the world than the United States nuclear arsenal,” Pence said.

  Like much else about Trump’s presidency, the policy is aimed at erasing the legacy of his predecessor.

  Former US president Barack Obama began his administration with a major speech in Prague in April 2009, committing the US to disarmament and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons globally.

  A year after the speech, the US and Russia signed the New Start agreement, restricting both sides to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and bombs, down by about 30 percent from previously agreed limits.

  However, the “Prague agenda” petered out. Aspirations to cut the strategic stockpile by another third, unilaterally if necessary, were abandoned in the face of congressional resistance, North Korea’s growing nuclear weapons program and worsening relations with Russia.

  In February, Russia was reported to have deployed a new ground-launched cruise missile that the US said violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed in 1987 with the aim of reversing the nuclear build-up in Europe.

  The alleged violation brought calls from defense hawks for the US to respond in kind. Trump officials present it as yet another sign of the failure of Obama’s policies.

  On Thursday, Christopher Ford, special assistant to the US president on weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation, told a meeting on nuclear threats organized by the Ploughshares Fund: “The traditional post-Cold War approach of seeking to demonstrate disarmament bona fide by showing steady numerical movement toward elimination, while trying to avoid steps that could actually undermine US national security, has largely run its course and is no longer tenable, especially given evolving security conditions. So it’s time to explore alternative approaches — and we are.”

  Ford did not provide further details, as he said the NPR was still being worked on.

  Several sources briefed on its progress said elements under consideration include a low-yield ballistic missile, possibly using the Trident D5 missile, but using only the first — fission — part of its two-stage warhead.

  A relaxation of constraints laid down in Obama’s 2010 NPR, which pledged that the US would only use its nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners” and never against non-weapons states in compliance with their non-proliferation obligations, is also being considered.

  Any change in the US arsenal would have to be approved by Congress, which controls the funding for the nuclear weapons program and which is already concerned that its ballooning cost is eating away at conventional capabilities.

  The Congressional Budget Office is expected to issue a report tomorrow that would revise cost estimates for the nuclear weapon modernization program approved by Obama from US$1 trillion to US$1.25 trillion over the next three decades.
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