Donald Trump said Friday he welcomes an international nuclear arms race, a comment that some experts are calling both “puzzling” and ill-informed.
“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all,” Trump said in an off-camera interview with MSNBC, which reported it Friday morning.
On Thursday, the president-elect tweeted: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
Trump, who is slated to be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, offered no further details as to what prompted the tweet. However, the message came after Putin made a statement that Russia needs to build up its military, including nuclear weapons.
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Rideau Institute president Peggy Mason said the United States is already a leader when it comes to nuclear capabilities and Trump’s comments hurt nuclear disarmament efforts around the world.
“If the president-elect had paid attention to his security briefings he would know the world is awash in nuclear weapons,” Mason told Global News. “We are talking about an overkill capacity beyond imagination. Anyone of them being detonated inadvertently or deliberately would be catastrophic.”
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According to the Arms Control Association, there are roughly 15,500 nuclear warheads in the world and 90 per cent of them are controlled by Russia and the U.S. Roughly 10,000 of those are in military service while the rest are waiting to be dismantled.
Mason said it was unclear if Trump was aware the U.S. is in the midst of a $1-trillion, 30-year modernization of its aging ballistic missile program — a price tag that some experts say the U.S. can’t afford.
“This demonstrates what we all know; the ignorance, the arrogance, and the irresponsibility of the president-elect,” Mason said.
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Christian Leuprecht, a political science professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, called the timing of Trump’s comments “puzzling.”
“Trump’s comments are a reaction to Putin’s remarks about its strategic arsenal,” said Leuprecht, who is also senior fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute. “Trump’s relationship with Putin is going to be a lot more ambiguous than what the rest of the world has made it out to be.”
Meanwhile, Canadian officials were tight lipped when it came to Trump’s comments.
“The Government of Canada will have a productive working relationship with the next U.S. administration and the Minister looks forward to discussing international security issues with the next U.S. Secretary of State,” said Chantal Gagnon, a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion, in an email to Global News.
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This is not the first time Trump has raised eyebrows over his comments on nuclear weapons.
During the presidential election, Trump was criticized for refusing to rule out using nuclear weapons against ISIS or in Europe.
And in a debate in December he was seemingly unaware of the “nuclear triad,” a term that refers to the three different parts of the U.S. nuclear arsenal: bomber-launched missiles, land-based ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched missiles.
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Trump spokesman Sean Spicer defended Trump’s comments on CNN on Friday saying they were meant to send a general message of strength to countries like Russia and China.
-With files from Reuters
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