WASHINGTON – America’s flawed political leadership and planned expansion ofnuclear weapons will lead to a major conflict with Russia and China, says aformer US foreign policy adviser and diplomat.
“There is definitely a move towards a new arms race with Russia, the kindof thing that should have ended completely when the first Cold War with theSoviet Union ended,” James Jatras said in an interview with Press TV onThursday.
“This is a consequence less of military technology than it is of very badpolitical leadership,” he added. “This eventually can lead in one thing andthat’s a major war.”link->PressTV-‘Trump nuke policy to ignite arms race with Russia’link->The Trump administration is planning to adopt a new nuclear weapons policythat experts say would lead to an arms race with Russia.link->
As the administration of US President Donald Trump prepares to unveil itsreview of the US nuclear posture, more experts are warning that developinga new type of nuclear weapons to meet President Donald Trump’s demandswould trigger an arms race.
A leaked version of the review, which the Pentagon is set to release nextweek, shows that military officials in Washington are calling for thedevelopment of a low-yield nuclear bomb that is designed to be used on thebattlefield instead of urban areas.
The Trump administration could explicitly leave open the possibility ofnuclear retaliation for major non-nuclear attacks, according to a leakeddraft policy document published by the Huffington Post website.
The new nuclear policy is significantly more hawkish than the postureadopted by the administration of former President Barack Obama, whichsought to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the US military.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that modernizing andmaintaining the nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years will cost more than$1.2 trillion. Maintenance of the existing stockpile would account fornearly half the projected costs.
Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association advocacy group inWashington, said that the development of new weapons in the US nucleararsenal was “dangerous, Cold War thinking.”
“The United States already possesses a diverse array of nuclearcapabilities, and there is no evidence that more usable weapons willstrengthen deterrence of adversaries or compel them to make differentchoices about their arsenals,” Kimball wrote on the group’s website.