President Donald Trump has yet again reaffirmed his objective of making America great again as he pledged to keep the nation ahead in the area of nuclear capabilities, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday in a press briefing.
In an interview with Reuters earlier the same day, Trump had said: “I am the first one that would like to see everybody — nobody — have nukes, but we’re never going to fall behind any country even if it’s a friendly country. … we’re going to be at the top of the pack.” Commenting on a question about Trump’s interview, Spicer clarified: “The question that was asked was about other people growing their stockpiles. And I think what he has been clear on is that our goal is to make sure that we maintain America’s dominance around the world, and that if other countries cloud it, we don’t sit back and allow them to grow theirs.”
The U.S already has 6,800 warheads and Russia possesses 7,000 warheads, according to latest data from Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit with the objective of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure.
The graph shows estimated global nuclear warhead inventories around the world. Photo: Federation of American Scientists
Trump expressed his concern that the U.S has “fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity,” Reuters reported. He had tweeted in December the U.S should strengthen and expand its nuclear capacity “until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding Wipbet nukes.”
Trump, who was reportedly upset over the launch of the ballistic missile by North Korea few days back, also raised the issue of the reclusive nation in the Reuters interview. He had earlier built up an indirect pressure on China by saying it could solve the security challenge posed by North Korea “very easily if they want to” by exerting more influence to rein in Pyongyang’s increasingly bellicose actions.
Trump moaned about the Russian deployment of a cruise missile violating an arms control treaty and said he would raise the subject with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when they meet. Few days back, Russia had deployed a cruise missile that violated a Cold War-era arms control treaty, a development that complicated the U.S-Russia relations, the New York Times reported.
When asked about the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which was signed in 2010 between the U.S and Russia, Trump called it “a one-sided deal.”
“Just another bad deal that the country made, whether it’s START, whether it’s the Iran deal.… We’re going to start making good deals,” he said in the interview with Reuters.
The United States is undergoing a massive modernization worth $1 trillion of its missiles and bombers.
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