In an apparent response to Russia, President-elect Donald Trump said the United States must expand its nuclear arsenal.
“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” Trump said in a tweet Thursday morning.
The post came after Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech, called for Russia to increase its nuclear capabilities.
“We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems,” Putin said, Agence France-Presse reported.
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The expansion would go against the longtime reduction policy that began during the Cold War, based on the philosophy of “mutually assured destruction.”
Under the New START Treaty, the U.S. and Russia must deploy no more than 1,550 strategic weapons by February 2018.
Since the treaty was enacted 2011, Moscow increased its total warhead stockpile from 1,537 warheads to 1,796 warheads, reported the Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz in October.
The Obama administration, however, has cut U.S. nuclear forces by 433 warheads during the same period.
According to the Arms Control Association, the Washington Post reported, independent experts have estimated the total cost of modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal could reach $1 trillion over 30 years.
During the campaign, Trump said he wouldn’t “rule out anything” regarding the use of nuclear weapons if he became president.
The Pentagon estimated last year it must spend an average of $18 billion a year over 15 years, beginning in 2021, to carry out a necessary replacement of aging weapons.
The U.S. wrongly assessed in its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review that there was little chance of conflict with Russia, noted Heritage Foundation policy analyst Michaela Dodge, according to the Washington Post.
Moscow, amid a large-scale modernization of its program, has violated many arms control treaties, she said.
“There is already an ongoing nuclear arms race, except now the United States isn’t racing,” she told the paper. “It’s mostly Russia and China.”
