Nuclear Issues

The July 16 summit in Helsinki between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin presents a unique opportunity to reverse the dangerous nuclear competition between the United States and Russia and should be welcomed, despite its inherent risks. The opportunity to stabilize U.S.-Russian nuclear relations by extending New START, a key nuclear treaty that is set to expire in 2021, is paramount and worth the issues that come with any meeting between Trump and Putin.

Belfer Center experts offer insight and analysis of the Trump-Kim summit through statements and interviews.

Reversing a trend toward cutting nuclear stockpiles that dates to the early ’90s, a recent Pentagon report called for ramping up U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons in order to keep pace with an aggressive arms buildup by Russia. Complicating matters, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted today of having new weapons that could evade U.S. defense systems, taunting that their sophistication would force America to “listen to us now.”

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un trading threats with words like “fire and fury”; Pakistan deploying tactical nuclear weapons to counter Indian conventional threats; Russia enunciating an Orwellian doctrine of “escalate-to-de-escalate” that calls for early use of battlefield nuclear weapons; and major nuclear-weapons states modernizing their arsenals — nukes are back. The cruel irony: This is happening after eight years of a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize largely for his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.