Political theater cooked up between Putin and Trump behind closed doors in Helsinki, in order to distract from Russian election meddling, Trumps complicity in that, and his criminality, in general
I expect a version of Wag the Dog (let's call it Bay of Pigs 2), when Russia rolls into Venezuela to protect Maduro, and they bring us to the brink of nuclear war to provide false justification for subsequent build up of tactical nukes and new weapons systems.
9
maybe Russia,if it has indeed ignored our nuclear arms treaty, has called the whole world's bluff: if it is inconceivable for anyone sane to use these terrible bombs, and plenty of the insane have access to them anyway, first: what good is a bilateral treaty, and second, who needs these stupid things anyhow, and why are we wasting so much money on them? is it only to show the deterrent is our willingness to outspend Russia even as we allow our own country to disintegrste for lack of funds? sure, between Russia and the USA we have most of the nukes, but the other 10% are the most dangerous ones anyhow not because of their power but because of who controls them. you can't fix stupid, so why not just stop spending ourselves into oblivion to counter Russia, when even a win on that front is not a victory, and turn to the magic, invisible hand of the market to make things better at home while waiting for the possible end - by selling some of our thousands of excess nukes to cash customers around the world, funding things we so desperately need but are too cheap to afford? nukes don't kill people, after all, insane megalomaniacs kill people... and there's no ruling them out.
1
So we are just going to let Donald Trump and Vlad Putin blow up the Earth?
6
Is it all coincidence? US policy has made a number of 180-degree turns since Trump has taken office, and just about all of them directly or indirectly benefit Russia.
At first glance, a renewed nuclear arms race doesn't appear to benefit Russia as obviously as Trump's undermining of NATO, his plans to leave Syria and Afghanistan, or his destabilization of US relationships with China and other powers. But Russia's nuclear arsenal is one of the few vestiges of its former status as a super power, and Putin will welcome the chance to rebuild that arsenal to Cold War levels and use it to Russia's advantage. Normally, the US could be counted on to oppose such a build up, but Trump welcomes the chance to resume US production of nukes.
To recap: Russia tampers with a US election, and succeeds in electing a president who reverses US policy in numerous ways that benefit Russia. A president who, rather than express shock and horror at the prospect of an adversary nation interfering in our election, seems determined to discredit and block investigations into what happened. A president who has had numerous secret meetings with Putin in which the subjects discussed supposedly not known even to his closest advisors. A president who lied about business dealings in Russia and who will not release his tax returns.
Probably all just a big coincidence. Fake news! With hunt!
28
Does anyone remember that Trump allegedly said in one of the
early briefings before he became President, " We have
nuclear weapons. Why don't we use them?" That ignorance, coupled with Trump's need to win and his vindictive temperament , should terrify everyone, especially if he gets
cornered or embarrassed.
16
It's always good to follow the money. Could it be that a lot of Trump's friends in the military industrial complex will benefit greatly from this move? There is a ton of money to be made in the weapons industry. Just like a lot of money can be made by building a big beautiful wall.
10
Hey NY Times, I thought Trump and Russia are friends and colluded with each other. Why then is Trump tearing the nuclear armament agreement and now threatening Russia. Isn't Russia our enemy now? Don't the Democrats want Trump to slam the Russians anyway he can? Please explain NY Times Editorial Board.
2
Sure sounds like Trump is in the pocket of the Kremlin, doesn't it.
7
Ya think?
4
It would be very dangerous to not match or exceed anything that might be used against the US. That might result in a mistake and a nuclear war.
2
When you already have an effective deterrent, as the U.S. does, then putting in place an effective missile defense gives you a first-strike capability.
This is the capability that Pres. Reagan et al. have always wanted: "Wage and Win."
@Joe Ryan If your missile defense was 100% that was never the goal, it was to eliminate the threat from those with far less delivery systems. A first strike even if effective would impact the globe way too much.
2
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/bush-pulls-out-of-abm-treaty-putin-calls-move-a-mistake.html
December 13, 2001
Bush Pulls Out of ABM Treaty; Putin Calls Move a Mistake
By TERENCE NEILAN
In a move that reflected what he said was "a vastly different world," President Bush formally announced today that the United States was withdrawing from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty that it signed with the Soviet Union in 1972....
1
@Nancy And yet the president is called a Russian puppet???
@vulcanalex
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/opinion/tearing-up-the-abm-treaty.html
December 13, 2001
Tearing Up the ABM Treaty
With his decision to junk the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, President Bush is rolling the diplomatic dice. If he is lucky, the Russians will live with the decision and relations with Moscow will continue to improve while Washington freely experiments with new missile defense systems. If he is not, Mr. Bush may alienate the Kremlin and give rise to a dangerous new arms race with Russia and possibly China as well. Why he would choose to take that risk at a moment when he badly needs Russian cooperation in the war against terrorism is baffling. It is not as if the lesson of Sept. 11 was that the United States is vulnerable to a missile attack....
3
The danger posed by Trump's relationship with the Russians is far more dangerous than a missile treaty.
7
Hey, we're spiraling downward towards Nuclear Armageddon! Who are we kidding?? The fact that we have Trump in the White House, and that we countenance his malignant narcissism, again and again, his pathological lies, and early onset dementia is .... astounding! And insane!
Someone, anyone, remove the 45th President from office before it's too late!
10
So, Trump is in the pocket of the Russians and committing treason by cozying up to them.
But he’s also acting recklessly by refusing to trust them and abandoning treaties with them.
I confess, I’m lost: is Trump a Russian stooge out to undermine the US or a war monger bent on nuclear war with the Russians? It CAN’T be both, so will you leftists please decide which?
Unlike NYT leftists, who, like BHO, pooh-poohed the Russian threat as a relic of the 1980s, we conservatives have never trusted the Russians. The only purpose of a treaty, from their perspective, was to limit us while they cheated.
Nothing has changed.
Many of us thought that Russian “interference” in the 2016 election had – a century late – finally persuaded American leftists that they are not our friends. Alas, we see it is not so.
As with everything else, the left opposes whatever DT favors, being consistent on that even if inconsistent on everything else.
1
@Brenda
Withdrawing from the treaty serves Putin's purposes. Having an 'enemy' is the classic strategy taken by brutal autocrats to sty in power. Note that Deripaska and other friends of Putin are making hundreds of millions from U.S. sanctions lifted hastily and with no consultation with the Senate, and that Putin is given free rein to control Syria, invade Ukraine, interfere with navigation in the Black Sea, etc. Trump's behavior serves Putin's purposes to a T. And, the destruction of trust and social capital in the United States must be exceeding Putin's wildest dreams.
I'm an ex-Republican, not a "left-winger", "socialist" or "liberal". I am aghast at the blind loyalty of so many Republicans to a President who compromises national security and has supported policies that damage our country economically (deficits), environmentally (climate change and pollution), and diplomatically (antagonizing allies and not appointing ambassadors).
What do they all so love about DT? Certainly not his morality.
11
@Brenda sorry, but you've got it backwards; leftists have consistently been warning about Putin and the Russian threat, giVing the GOP to look into their election meddling, while Trump and right wingers have been saying "what's so bad about Russia?"
9
Send these thoughts to Vlad, please.
2
If Russia is not honoring the requirements of prior weapons treaties -- why is it exactly that we should just negotiate a new one with them?
1
I'm not sure what this editorial is arguing, actually, though I'm entirely unsurprised by its general theme. Is the suggestion, at bottom, that the United States should abide unilateral compliance with the treaty? Years and much hard work have gone into trying to bring the Russians back into compliance, to no avail. Whatever she says now -- and I don't actually know what she says now -- Evelyn Farkas, who worked on this issue during the Obama administration and is not particularly enamored of the idea of jettisoning nuclear treaties, argued last year that threatening to walk away from the I.N.F. was necessitated by Russian activity.
The Russians are using the I.N.F. to constrain the United States while themselves simultaneously ignoring it, having undertaken initial tests of medium-range missiles in 2008. They now, according to latest reports, field four battalions of banned cruise missiles. Is there to be no consequence for violation?
And all this leaves out the new weapons needed to counter what the Chinese are doing and what the operating environment is like in the Pacific. As of now, and based on what I've read, I agree with Elbridge Colby, who argued in WaPo last October that we should reject the I.N.F. and try to seek a larger agreement. What the Editorial Board wants us to do, we did. It didn't work.
4
In other opinion pieces, I read about how AOC's green new deal is such a pie in the sky, how deficits will come back to haunt our children, and how we will never be able to pay for all these fantasy ideas of the extreme left.
Well, here is exactly how to pay for the green new deal, and for much more. Let's stop all nuclear weapons acquisitions. Let's slash the military budget by 30% - it will still be large enough to annihilate every other country in the world twice over. Let's get rid of these putrid, immoral, inhumane WMDs.
7
@Andy Great plan since some other power will be running our country, so no problem.
1
@Andy Unless you can verify that other countries are doing similarly, yours, unfortunately, is a recipe for suicide.
1
Our "defense" against nuclear missiles might stop a few in an exchange with Russia. We have never demonstrated our defenses can work against a volley with decoys and multiple MIRVs. In the unclassified literature, there are no examples on a successful interception against every warhead of even a single decoy laden MIRV missile. (A competent attacking warhead would likely be on a ballistic path with good shielding against EMP and radiation from a space based nearby ABM nuke.) Even our hit rate against single, black and white painted targets in tests has been poor.
The Russians are not stupid. (Their hypersonic cruise missiles appear to be more of a threat to our aircraft carriers than replacements of Russian ICBMs. In essence, they shorten the lifetime of a carrier from hours to minutes in a nuclear exchange.)
Trump will not start a conflict with Russia and Putin--the source of much of his money. Putin knows this. We are now witnessing an elaborate, expensive, saber-dance between master and servant.
5
Just as the editors did when they approved this piece, many people miss the real nuclear threat: from rogue states like North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and so on...even our beloved Israel has nuclear capability. Why not worry more about the rogues than about those one already knows to be more or less in check? Because it takes more diplomatic and espionage agility, perhaps...
5
Any arms race is deplorable, but stop painting this as something new. Trump merely acknowledged that the mid-range missile treaty has been a sham because of Russian violations, something that Pres. Obama knew.
3
There still seems little analysis on why Russia is deploying new weapons systems. The Russian endgame is not going to be a first strike against Europe or the US since it would quickly lead to the end of civilization. Trump will certainly not act in any rational manner, but will react by spending money on anything as it has been part of the GOP mantra for decades.
Of course, Trump isn’t even asking why.
4
This is one of two core issues of American National Security; the management of the US-Russian nuclear rivalry. Only the longer term management of the Chinese rise is of equal importance, and the US has a bit more time to decide and implement that. Everything else; cyber, ISis, Afghanistan, Africa, trade fights, are all second tier, or back burner issues.
The rebirth of this strategic rivalry, which is what it is in Russian minds, has curious symmetries of the original standoff. In the 1950’s it was America that used the threat of nuclear weapons as a cost effective method of competing with a Soviet Union that had, in the crucial theaters, conventional superiority. The American bluff was called in 1956 (Hungary) and 1962 (Cuba). Much history followed, but the limited utility of nuclear arms was slowly learned by both sides.
Now a revanchist Russia- with a conventional capability limited by demographics, borders, and economics- is tempted to use nuclears as a claim to the top tier of states. That they will be tempted to use them, inappropriately, is just a matter of time and mounting frustration among their elites.
But now the lessons of the past are ignored among Americans as well. For Trump, a nuke is just a bigger bomb. As smaller “tactical” nukes are deployed we will once again face hair trigger situations where front line troops, perhaps 50 kilometers apart, have access to nuclear escalation.
3
You write:
"Then, after years of global protests and skyrocketing budgets, American and Soviet leaders stepped back from the brink and began a process of arms control diplomacy, accelerated by the fall of the Soviet Union..."
This is incorrect for several reasons.
(1) Forget global protests; take it from a recovering protester.
(2) The Soviet economic problem was much more deeply seated than "skyrocketing budgets". What was involved by 1985-87, when nuclear disarmament arrived with such drama, was the breakdown of the command economy.
(3) The arrival of the crisis brought the reformer Gorbachev to power. Fortunately, both he and Reagan were passionate for disarmament.
A useful aside:
The same type of complexity-caused breakdown happened in Czechoslovakia, 1967-68, and led to the Prague Spring.
Now, the advanced Czechoslovak economy was about 20 years ahead of the Soviet one.
An easy inference was that a similar crisis would arrive for the USSR in about 20 years, around, say, 1987. The actual crisis began in the mid-1980s, only a year or two in advance of the prediction.
Note that even without large military budgets this systemic upheaval was built into the system and would have happened anyway.
(3) The "fall of the Soviet Union" occurred in 1991, years after the glory days of disarmament negotiation between Gorbachev and Reagan, and later George H.W. Bush. The Soviet collapse, accordingly, had no effect on the process of disarmament.
3
There is much merit in this type of thinking. It should not be that the U.S. and the R.F. should embark on a reprobate program of nuclear weapons development, especially given the progress, albeit slow, which has been made. Assigning blame for the current situation centers on the R.F.'s alleged development of a cruise missile with a nuclear warhead, and the reluctance, even the refusal of the U.S. to even consider further talks with the R.F. on nuclear arms reduction. The R.F. seems to believe that the charge about the missile being a violation is wrong, and the U.S. seems reticent to answer the charge of insouciance leveled by the R.F. What is needed is either "a big room" where all nations possessing nuclear weapons could begin serious discussions on nuclear disarmament, or discussions between pairs of nuclear powers towards that end, negotiated between them in concert with other pairs, reflecting the whole of the possessing parties. Either way, the possibility that governments could spend in such a way as to increase the quality of life of their citizens would loom as an eminently desirable alternative to ignoring such a goal in favor of development of weapons of mass destruction. That is the only really logical bottom line to eliminating the inanities.
1
@Paul McBride
Echoing Mr. Ludeke , Obama slapped sanctions on Russia after their invasion of Crimea. But what Mr. Ludecke left out was that it was Trump’s National Security Advisor , Michael Flynn , that immediately got on the phone with the Russians and said “hey calm down boys don’t worry we’re not going to put those sanctions in effect, they’ll be lifted don’t worry boys”
And what explains all of those secret meetings that Trump has with Putin where no one can read the notes? Don’t tell me he’s not put in Putin’s pocket ; it’s so obvious. And this move just pleases Putin even more. If Trump was a thoughtful leader he would do what Mr. Ludecke advises and initiate more sanctions, but he’s not. He is giving Putin exactly what he wants.
7
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/52401-nuclearcosts.pdf
February, 2017
Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces
( 2017) ( 2017 - 2026)
Nuclear delivery systems ( 13.3) ( 189) *
Nuclear weapons, supporting laboratories, and naval reactors ( 7.5) ( 87)
Subtotal ( 21.6) ( 286)
Command, control, communications, and early-warning systems ( 5.3) ( 58)
Total Budgeted Amounts for Nuclear Forces ( 26.8) ( 344)
Additional Costs Based on Historical Cost Growth ( ----) ( 56)
Total Estimated Cost of Nuclear Forces ( 26.8) ( 400)
* Billions of dollars
-- Department of Defense and Department of Energy
Henry Kissinger once said, "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." And since nukes are the ultimate expression of power (at least 'til now) it is unsurprising that degenerates like Trump and Putin couldn't wait to get their greedy, stubby hands on more of them.
11
When some of us speak about Donald Trump being a clear and present danger to the national security of United States, the situation with what has evolved between the United States and Russia is a perfect case in point. When we elect a president who has no understanding of true diplomacy and who has no insight into how decisions that are made bode for the future, we end up with the mess that we have now. And it could get a lot worse; we may consider ourselves lucky that Donald Trump in his arrogance and stupidity has not put us into a greater danger than he already has .
And by the way , when an occupant of the Oval Office says that he alone can solve all of the problems at hand, that’s when you need to start thinking about the 25th amendment.
15
Gee, it’s like it has been stupid and dangerous for Trump to trash TPP, bellow about abandoning our commitments in Asia, tell Korea and Japan that building their own nukes might be nifty, ignoring Russian expansionism, trash NATO, evade sanctions against Putinites, defend campaign staff and NSA liasons who sat on boards with Russian bankers, and generally kiss up to Putin.
Not to mention that gee, maybe we might give some thought to what Putin might be up to, given how easy it was to bait our guy with a couple videos and a belligerent speech.
Oh, by the way? If Trump and Trumpists are so all-fired concerned about what happens when nations don’t honor their working treaties and agreements...well, do we really need a rehearsal of the treaties and agreements they’ve gleefully trashed, like a brat handed a Rolex and a hammer?
5
Nuclear weapons! Bad people with beards, who don't speak American, might have them or may soon have them!
I know what to do. Let's tear up all our treaties so everyone will be able to have them!
Remember people, the only way to stop a bad guy with an ICBM is a good guy with an ICBM.
#OpenCarry
6
Trump is now undeniably the toughest president against Russia since Russia's inception in 1991. Some Russian "puppet!" The new concern is a new cold war because our president isn't afraid to confront Russia. I lack a crystal ball to say this is the right move, and it may even be a disaster, but I tend to support calling a spade a spade even if it means we have to take our rose colored glasses off a little earlier than we would like.
Our last commander in chief bears a lot of responsibility for the situation with Russia. He was a nice guy who spoke very eloquently, but he also failed to recognize the threat posed by Russia (e.g., laughing at Romney's claim that Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe in 2012), and he failed to enforce that infamous "red line" that Obama drew in Syria after Assad used chemical weapons on his own citizens. Putin took note of Obama's unwillingness to confront a much weaker adversary in Syria and correctly predicted that Obama would not do a thing to stop him when Putin decided to invade Ukraine and take over some of its territory.
Again, no one can say for sure if President Trump's more muscular stance towards Russia is the right one or the wrong one (we may all wind up dead for all I know), but all things equal I'd rather have a commander in chief who isn't afraid of a fight.
1
@Bill It continues to amaze that given all of the evidence printed on these pages and elsewhere, people like Bill can still come to a 100% incorrect conclusion. When Trump is finally escorted out of the WH in handcuffs, will u still maintain your stalwart defense?
Can Trump do no wrong? R there NOT 17 different felony investigations going on right now? R all of them witch hunts?
Loyalty is wonderful, but misplaced loyalty only confirms the original mistake.
2
@Susan Thomas You as many live is some fantasy alternative reality, the president is not going to be removed at all and surely not in hand cuffs.
1
Okay, one day I'm reading that Russia is not, and has not been, following the treaty. They are developing ballistic weapons that can reach the US undetected. And while the NYTimes believes Trump and Putin are in bed together and continues to push that thought, they also believe that Trump pulling out of a treaty with Russia that is not being followed is a bad thing. Which is it? Defend against Russia's latest weapons, or let them do what they like and we stay true to the treaty? Obama was ready to eliminate thousands of nuclear war heads and told the Russians he would if elected twice. But, he didn't. And Russia, throughout his presidency, continued to develop new weapons. Russia also continued to help NK develop new weapons, and nuclear capability. I believe Russia is a huge threat to the west because of Putin. I also believe that China is an equal threat and they've never signed anything (including the Paris accord, if we were being honest). But Obama told us Russia wasn't a threat during the 2012 election; now they are somehow?
Is there any objectivity when it comes to Russia and China when it comes to the NYTimes, or do opinions flow based on Trump hate?
3
It is hard to believe but the American taxpayers are as dumb as the Chinese and Russian taxpayers. All three governments are, to a certain degree, controlled by their military industrial complexes. Which of the three will be the first to fire off one of those weapons which will without question only be the start of meeting mankind’s seeming desire to kill itself. If only these three leaders could start to change this illusion-based desire where the need for such so-called “protection” tools is initiated. All that money is being spent by governments which want total control of their taxpayers. Charles Dickens forecasted that it is apparent that the problem here is the ignorance of their taxpayers, who allow such tax waste, and who seem to be willing to die for their leaders for whatever reasons. And you thought that the ant populations were the only animals to willing give their lives to protect their leaders. This does prove that the human animal is not much smarter.
2
Great--after generations of US Presidents, Republican and Democratic, from Truman through Obama, have degraded the Russian nuclear menace, Trump, within two years, revives it, emboldening the criminal Putin to do whatever he likes, weakening NATO, excusing the Crimean invasion, and sharing state secrets--not just ours but those of our allies as well.
So much winning...
6
"Outspending Russia on a nuclear arms race, as Mr. Trump has bragged he would do, or abandoning an arms control regime that has helped forestall nuclear war for decades, is a foolish game of chicken, with no possible winners."
Trump is colluding with Putin to bring America to its knees!
4
Trump's so-called policies are created by his urgent need to obey Putin and the hard core right wing extremists who like John Bolton and Pompeo who surround Trump. These are dangerous times indeed and will remain so until the US electorate throws out Trump and his planet-destroying accomplices- aka- the Republican Party.
7
Didn't the US threaten to or actually put missiles in Turkey and in Eastern European countries leaving communism (also eagerly soliciting their joining NATO).
Surely this had no influence on Russian policy makers thinking about missiles. How could it? Any reasoned country/person could see that we are without fault. Our intentions are always impeccably correct and noble. We are pretty much as perfect as humans can be.
This Putin! Sheesh! Join the team guy. Share in our perfection. We might even provide a nuclear umbrella for you (of course we might also make you pay for our services - the ole "America 1st" stuff you know).
5
When you elect a dysfunctional president you get dysfunction. Expecting anything else is magic thinking.
9
@joyce Politicians have prospered for decades by promoting bogeymen and straw man arguments. Have we completely forgotten the lessons of 'Tailgunner Joe' McCarthy and the Gulf Of Tonkin incident? What about the WMD's in Iraq?
Fear is a powerful motivator, endless war an endless profit machine for defense contractors. As long as the body bags don't fall too near and the deficits are declared acceptable there is no motivation to change.
National security (allegedly) equals jobs and votes, even on a false premise.
4
Central Park ,NYC, 1982, the Nuclear Freeze Movement brings a million people to protest the cold war Nuclear Weapons Race. Time now for a New Nuclear Freeze Movement to stop this insane race to Armageddon. Yes, "Winter's Coming" - Nuclear Winter. How do we look our children and grandchildren in the eyes and tell them that we who, yes, have the power, are doing nothing to stop it? Time To Get On It!
5
So Trump is simultaneously too soft on Russia . . . And too tough? I think you need to decide.
2
There are two possible explanations here. One is that Trump is simply getting into a you-know-what contest, so he can puff up his chest to match his stomach, in order to impress his base, or he truly is a compromised Russian asset and the way it will all unfold will be to Russia's benefit and not ours.
This DC circus needs a ringmaster, not a clown at the helm.
3
Does Trump truly run his business out of his back pocket, so to speak?
DJT allegedly isn't worried about climate change.
I sincerely perceive he's vacuous, shallow,
and as ignorant as he appears.
Well, this has been over-looked by the Electoral College, his so called base and many more
They chose him, and, imvho, the nutty guy is scary.
He allegedly knows better than
intelligence agencies and generals.
I'm not making this up.
My confidence in DJT's decision making
capacity is ... zilch.
3
The Times is disingenuous in not bringing to the article that the Russians are not living within the bounds of the agreement, as the President said in his State of the Union address.
How that fact can be left out of this article is absurd and shines a completely different light on the subject. Tell the truth.
1
@Ray
The article did state that Putin is not abiding by the agreement .
“Mr. Trump is right to blame the Russians for beginning to unravel the I.N.F. treaty during the Obama administration by testing and then deploying a cruise missile banned by the treaty.”
You are incorrect .
2
A quick scientific note: missile reentry speed is a function of the height of its trajectory. Typically, on reentry, missiles reach speed of 15,000 MPH. The speed of sound is 767 MPH.
Unless he's referring to a cruise missile (which ICBMs are, by definition, not), five times the speed of sound is not too impressive. Of course a nuclear warhead can make a big impression anywhere.
@Justin Apparently you are not properly informed these are cruise missiles.
The big question is "why?" What is the point of all of these systems and spending billions on new ones? For us, the Russians, or anyone else, for that matter? Thanks to Hiroshima and Nagasaki we know what the effects of these devices are in the real world. And I'm sure the power of the bombs available now make those first two seem like relative firecrackers in comparison. A major nuclear confrontation will do in seconds what global warming is already doing. Do we as a species really have such an ingrained death wish that we keep building devices and acting in ways that lead nowhere but to destruction? Can't we do better than this? Do we really have a choice about it?
11
As President Trump said rather clearly and in simple language, the long term objective of all nations should be to eliminate nuclear weapons. If he wins re-election, I am sure that will be one of his initiatives.
In the meantime, Russia is a competitor. I will note parenthetically that, given various Trump actions over the last two years (sanctions, Ukraine, nuclear weapons treaty), it seems highly unlikely that Mr. Trump is in some kind of conspiracy with Putin, or as you and your readers often put it, that he is Putin's lapdog.
Collusion, whatever that is, is receding from view, and assuming its rightful place in the gallery of failed attempts, some by this editorial board, to delegitimize or reverse Mr. Trump's legitimate election, and to undo the will of the voters.
The next time you intone about freedom and democracy, we will remember that.
1
We've watched Trump conduct himself inexplicably when it comes to Putin, from fighting sanctions and parroting Russia's talking points to withdrawal efforts from Syria and NATO, and on and on.
Why would we view this as a bold move against Putin? It gives Russia the opportunity save money by increasing missile production, rather than building conventional forces. Is it too jaded or frighteningly realistic to interpret anything Trump does as designed to appease Putin, even if it appears to be punitive?
4
We human beings are truly a sad lot. We are busy destroying our space ship earth with endless pollution in the interests of the fossil fuel producers, we are busy producing nuclear weapons in the interests of the arms industry and world leaders drunk with their power and their desire for more.
I wonder if we will survive the 21st Century given the fact that unless we can solve the global warming problem there will mass movements of millions to come as sea levels rise. How will we deal with that problem. I hope a bit better than we have dealt with the nuclear problem.
3
Those of us who lived through the Cold War are watching history...being "forgotten", yet again.
Yes...the US and Russia are moving to the brink again.
This is largely because it suits the political needs and insecurities of both "Leaders". Also, the military and its supporters are always thrilled with more weapons and increased military expenditures, so they support the aberration of building more nuclear weapons, even when these additional weapons have no utility outside of a suicide scenario.
This should be castigated by all sane people.
Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. All of the money and resources spent on bloated militaries, especially nucear weapons, is a waste: all of our populations need more education and more health care. Imminent AI implies large unemployment coming. We NEED those funds for much better purposes.
Without doubt, there IS a common interest in Arms Treaties and reduced, wasteful military expenditures.
Assemble a "Team"...the entire Planet would be better off and wants arms reductions. Work hard and find an international settlement.
Serve the People!
3
The least likely thing to happen is for Putin to be the first to suggest a treaty renewal. If he did, Trump would follow like the dog that he is. Make no mistake, Putin is running this show and perhaps we should all be learning Russian. I say this partly in jest, but we appear to have a Russian president who takes his marching orders from Moscow. This is not likely to come out well, since it is clear that the Republicans support this Putin supporter in chief. Each week or day we dig ourselves in deeper and unless we rid ourselves of this menace to democratic ideals, we weaken our hold on our own country.
1
This is the same old page from the tried and true Republican playbook. We have enough nuclear and other bombs which if deployed properly could destroy the world ten times over. But gin up some new threat, scream that we need more defense spending (as if $750 billion or so isn't enough). If any Democrats object paint them as soft on defense (or border security, or Russia, or crime, etc.). Lather, rinse, repeat.
And the bloated defense contractors and MIC laugh all the way to the bank.
2
There is strong smell of hypocrisy coming out of this article. The US and Russia did not suddenly arrive to this place. From the Russian point of view its security posture vis-à-vis “the West” deteriorated steadily ever since early 90s. No, there was no signed agreement not to expand the NATO, but there were multiple verbal assurance. Yet NATO was expanded consequently eliminating the buffer that Russia was relaying upon to thwart offensive form the west – however improbable it might seem.Then there was US pull out of missile defense system treaty - and yell all you want about defensive nature of this program – the guy with a shield and a sword will have an advantage over guy with just a sword. Then there was subsequent deployment of Aegis ashore According to manufacturer “ MK 41 VLS is the only launching system that can simultaneously accommodate the weapon control system and the missiles -.. anti-aircraft, anti-surface, antisubmarine and land attack. ”. Not to mention US long range strike drones which for all intents and purposes are cruise missiles on steroids – they fly along the same trajectory as cruise missiles deliver their payload and come back. And by the way: “For the purposes of this Treaty: The term "cruise missile" means an unmanned, self-propelled vehicle that sustains flight through the use of aerodynamic lift over most of its flight path.” It says nothing about single use. Russia was bound to react so this outrage appears to be a bit theatrical.
1
Putin got what he wanted from Trump, again. Clearly the Russians have been violating the treaty for years, and the U.S. has been trying negotiate and impose sanctions under the treaty. Putin has now goaded Trump into an irrational move, basically tearing up the treaty. This gives Putin political cover to escalate his intermediate range weapons, as he can now claim there is no treaty and he has to respond in-kind to U.S. escalation.
Where is a military-savvy statesmen like John McCain when we need him/her?
1
The biggest problem with having Trump as commander and chief is his ignorance of facts, his narcissism making him closed to facts he does not like . Trump does not know more than the generals or intel agencies but he is compromised by his family;s financial interests by past Russian deals and current and future deals with Saudi Arabia so his decisions are not in our national interests, We were conned by Trump and will continue to be conned by Trump as that is his M,O, lie and do what ever benefits his family's bottom line,
2
So which is it?
Is he a Putin puppet or is he not?
If he is a Putin puppet, how come there's such tension between the two?
Or was the whole Russia-gate thing conjured by Democratic strategists to delegitimize both the Trump Presidency as well as the progressive Left (who were asking hard questions about the Clinton campaign)?
1
@KS
It's both actually. Putin despises the West and wants to destroy our democracy. That's why there is tension between our two countries. Putin is using Trump to fulfill his goals. Get it? Not a conspiracy. The real investigations are just getting started.
1
It seems foolhardy to be spending “$494 billion over the next decade in the United States” on modernizing nuclear weapons that we may or should never ever use. Having said that, when you have two arguably mad people, “President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who control 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons,” mutually assured destruction (MAD) is not something they fear or worry about.
The wheel is coming full circle, as we race towards Armageddon with two madmen in control. It’s kind of ironic that we’ve gone from START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which was initiated by President Reagan in 1982 at the height of the Cold War, to a likely END (Extending Nuclear Domination) under President Trump—a foreign policy strategy that could “start” with Cold War II and “end” with MAD.
1
February 11, 2019
Well I am please to say that I am fortunate enough for my apartment to have a fall out shelter - and with it underground take cover space for the Armageddon - and what lead by President DJT and his dealings as if a character in a Richard Roth novel - forever perplexed until the end of the book and or times......
1
@Joseph John Amato
Correction Philip Roth
1
The biggest threat currently to the United States and the World is Trump. Congress needs to block budgets for new nuclear weapons of any kind. They need to act now before Trump destroys the planet.
2
The world is witnessing the first real “Perfect Storm” in the nuclear age, since the fall of the Soviet Union.
In today’s hostile and aggressive Russia, there is an old spymaster, Vladimir Putin, who must deflect attention from the failure of the oligarchy he leads to provide the citizenry with the most rudimentary necessities. Putin also realizes that the people are waking up to the fact that he and his cronies looted the country of vast natural resources, so that the looters can live like kings.
In today’s America, Donald Trump is an incompetent narcissist who freely helped himself and his family to large sums of money obtained from donors expecting favors in return and from Vladimir Putin, who was encouraged to rig an American election to put Trump into office.
A nuclear confrontation has resulted because neither Donald Trump nor Vladimir Putin believes that he has anything to lose. Neither man has the moral core to care what happens to the men, women and children who deserve to be protected in Russia and in the United States.
In this climate, a nuclear confrontation can turn into a nuclear conflagration.
Did I miss the UN's latest periodic screed on nuclear disarmament, or are they too busy with the latest tome on weather change? Nothing like a real crisis to sort things out. If Putin keeps this up, he will must certainly determine 2020.
The result, if this situation further develops will be the same as in 1990, when the Soviets spent themselves out of existence trying to keep up with the US. The Slobbovians are bellicose bullies, but with no economic depth to sustain any major buildup of weapons they will never use anyway. I would worry more about their crooked bureaucrats and military selling the technology to terrorists and failed states. I would worry more about China, if only because of their big economy and hi-tech spying capabilities.
Growing up in the '50s and '60s, my generation had great worry and attention on the horrific consequences of nuclear war. It was in the newspapers or on TV every day. It was in conversation among friends and in classrooms.
Somewhere along the line this changed. Subsequent generations don't seem to "get it" anymore: on any given day if certain people push certain buttons, all that we as a race have strived for, all of our advances, will be destroyed. The human race, if it survives at all, will be reduced to a dystopian barbarism. What other issue of our times compares to the importance of this?
Public consensus has very much to do with public policy.
I call on the NY Times and the national media to keep our attention on the seriousness of the existence of these weapons, and on the characters of those with access to these buttons. Publish more editorials and articles like this one. We've become complacent. This must change.
7
@dmj
This exact syndrome of 'subsequent generations not getting it anymore' was foreseen and written about by historian Paul Boyer in his excellent book "By the Bomb's Early Light". Writing at the the height of the Star Wars hysteria in the early 1980's, Dr. Boyer stated that the present time was not the most dangerous and that even the Cuban Missile Crisis was not the most dangerous. No, he correctly advised that the most dangerous time is still in the future, when several generations have grown up habituated to the nuclear peril, to the point where it is no longer a concern; but at the same time the world will be facing crisis of population and resources while the missile systems themselves will be in various states of senescence and new, smaller missiles will be vulnerable to seizure and use by radical elements. Now is that time. A highly recommended book, affordably available through used book services.
I turned 7 at the cusp of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In my classroom, the boys were building bomb shelters out of Lincoln Logs (remember those ?) at recess. The girls were making 'clothespin families' to occupy them.
(yes, it was a more 'gendered' time). The adults were pretending all was well, even as the air raid warning sirens went off and sent us scuttling under our desks.
It is incumbent on our generation, as the ''rememberers" to speak out about this insanity.
1
Neither this editorial or the comments that it has prompted consider that Trump and Putin may be playing a clever game to weaken NATO. Why didn't Trump respond to Russia's apparent violation of the treaty by adding sanctions against Russia -- which really hurt -- rather than announcing plans to withdraw from the treaty? Because Putin doesn't want sanctions, and hopes of getting rid of the existing ones was probably his reason for undermining Clinton in 2016 and deciding to win points with Trump by helping him right up to the end of the election campaign.
Trump's announcement opens the door for Putin to announce Russia's intention to withdraw from the treaty too. The result: no additional sanctions and Putin can proceed to deploy his formerly illegal missiles along the border with eastern European countries in NATO.
Now, it may turn out that Trump's decision is just another example of his rash, uninformed habits, but given his track record with Putin and his dreams of Moscow towers, shouldn't a more nefarious motive be investigated?
9
@Alan Mass While you admit that the Russians have been cheating on the agreement already, the Times fails to bring that point to light.
I think this is a complicated issue and that both sides have exhibited bad faith. However, I also think our domestic political rancor over Trump's election in 2016 has contributed in no small way to the current low point in U.S.-Russia relations. Since even before he took office, Democrats, echoed by the NYT and other mainstream media, have claimed Russia aided Trump to his victory. Putin and Russia have been demonized ceaselessly for more than two years by Democrats determined to de-legitimize Trump's election victory. Trump ran on pursuing better relations with Russia. Once elected, he tried, but failed, to ease sanctions. However, ever gesture of reconciliation with Russia Trump attempted was thrown back in his face by his political opponents as "proof" that Trump was subservient to Russia, or had struck a devil's bargain with Putin in return for Putin's alleged meddling in the election. For true believers on the left, partisan political domestic gain more than offsets, apparently, the risk of needlessly antagonizing a country with 10,000 ICBM's.
2
@Paul McBride
Sanctions were imposed following Putin's invasion in 2014 and subsequent annexation of Crimea. Those sanctions were imposed by a nearly unanimous Congress controlled by the Republicans. Last year the Senate imposed additional sanction, again under Republican control. So, just don't single out the Democrats. Of course the latter were upset for the Russian meddling, at least in social media, in our 2016 elections, as you should as well. Just because you favored the outcome, doesn't mean you can look the other way- what if the Russians had backed Clinton?
Easing sanction without some reversal in the Crimean takeover would just encourage Putin to be bolder in his quest to reestablish Russian hegemony over much of central and eastern Europe. The Europeans sided with us on the sanctions and are seriously concerned about Trumps bromance with Putin at their expense.
4
@Paul McBride
1) Russian hackers working with US citizens (unknown identities at this point but many fingers pointing) influenced the American electorate in 2016.
2) They were working to elect the current Administration. For obvious reasons.
3) The Republic Party platform was altered during their Convention in July 2016 to benefit Russia.
4) More than 100 contacts between Campaign and Administration personnel 2015-2017 and Russian agents ALL of whom then lied about those contacts when questioned by Federal law enforcement agents WHICH IS A FEDERAL FELONY.
5) Remember Benghazi ? Gorsuch?? Remember the number of filibusters and Nominee holds used by the Republic Senators 2007-2006 exceeded the total number used in the previous 110 years..... ?
2
@Paul McBride
How can you truly trust Putin when you consider his invasion of the Crimea with little green men. Putin is a dictator and as such not to be trusted.
1
Humans are, without doubt, the cleverest and most intense effortful animal ever to appear, as far as we know. If they direct themselves long enough and with all their abilities at a goal, they are most likely to achieve it.Their efforts to kill off most other life on the planet, to develop and utilize weaponry of maximum power and destructive ability, to confront the major forces of nature and turn them to their own purposes instead of the ecological balance that provide the platforms for encouraging life forms are all unmatched by any other life forms. The ultimate success in utilizing these huge accomplishments is very near absolute completion and to expect these goals will not be attained is clearly unrealistic.
4
In our more wild dreams we can imagine the world promoting an embargo on the US and Russia over their nuclear arsenals. It makes much more sense than going after Cuba or Venezuela. But of course, this doesn't make sense in our real, "rational" world. The Genocide Club has serious rules about who is admitted in and who manages it, and we are talking about the Founders and Owners.
Cancellation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty can be turned into an opportunity to eliminate all nuclear weapons in support of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The Times should check its earlier news coverage about strong bipartisan support among former United States officials for eliminating nuclear weapons. Ongoing negotiations with North Korea, Pakistan, and other nuclear weapons states would be strengthened if major nuclear weapon powers such as the United States, Russia, and China agreed to freeze existing arsenals during global negotiations to eliminate all nuclear weapons and redirect saved monies to address climate change.
2
Thank you for this analysis. Who are the armaments manufacturers that would benefit and what are their respective lobbying practices regarding this issue? Can we see a breakdown of the money and activities involved? Thank you!
4
The Koch brothers, hlangsner.
3
How much more will it take for people in power in OUR United States of America's political/legal/military/secret service complexes to realize the danger of continuing to allow The Con Don to lurk around OUR white house while his Robber Baron brethren dismantle OUR government 24/7?
It must not stand in OUR America. Not now. Not ever. Please, truly Good Democracy-Loving People, take action NOW. Before he can hit the nuclear button just because he thinks it's "his right". It is not but he is a VERY dangerous, demented individual.
4
$494 billion dollars. To update arms that should never be used.
I do know a very Republican response to that, one that Democrats would wholeheartedly endorse:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -- 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
How much longer must we keep spending on weapons that not only oppress people abroad, but by whose manufacture we repress our neighbors at home?
9
@Jacob Sommer, we will continue spending till the deficit reaches sky high, dollar plummets and the world
move away from the dollar based financial system. We won't be able
to afford not only nuclear weapons
but many other things in life. There is high opportunity cost: money spent on weapons is not available for other things as president Eisenhower rightly pointed.
2
If there are flaws in the Treaty, should we not be seeking improvements or corrections?
Since the initial inauguration of the INF, the world has changed. Russia has changed and moving in a different direction. That itself, should support an updated Treaty. However, to merely say that Russia is not respecting the Treaty, may not be the right approach to insure peace and restraint for either signatory to the Treaty.
1
Leaving this treaty removes some grounds for constraining Russia for Trump, Congress and future presidents.
Trump seems to act in Russia's interests to the detriment of NATO. Trump also tries to distract American voters with faux emergencies and verbal brinkmanship, both to look important and to keep voters spending their energy on something besides assessing corruption. This specific move has the added feature of perhaps setting up an excuse for him to meet 1-on-1 with Putin.
Why is this episode taken at face value and not viewed through the lens established by these trends? Trump only gets less subtle.
6
@Alan Concur. And what exactly were previous 1-1s with Putin about - the ones with no notes?
2
What value is a bilateral treaty with Russia which they are universally believed to be cheating on it? In addition what value is a bilateral treaty from the days when we were the only two significant nuclear powers given that now countries not covered including China, India, Pakistan, and maybe soon to be Iran art all nuclear threats. While a new nuclear arms race is not a positive outcome the US needs freedom to modernize and maintain a credible nuclear deterrent especially if we want to reduce our overwhelming conventional forces the cost of which is so crushing and crowds out so much other spending.
4
@Todd
Putin will be gone one day, and having this treaty on the books will be better than not when that time comes. We do not want these weapons now, and can always choose to leave the treaty later in the unlikely event it seems like a good idea to a competent and loyal administration. We do not repeal too many laws simply because criminals break them.
No one has sufficient doubt that the USA has a credible and distributed nuclear arsenal (and enough precision weapons to assassinate a rogue leader) to launch a major attack. That is all the deterrent one can hope for.
Nuclear weapons are no substitute for American conventional forces. The former are literally useless for anything outside deterring an existential attack on NATO countries while the latter have dozens of valued missions.
@Alan Treaties are not laws, they are bilateral agreements and it takes two to tango. A two party agreement which one party no longer observes is worse not better than nothing at all because all it does it restrict the sole party still trying to remain in compliance.
1
There is a practical purpose behind reorganizing international nuclear armament. Both the US and Russia, although mostly Russia, want to renegotiate nuclear limitations which include China. The US has an interest here however the action would have been unnecessary if Trump hadn't cancelled the TPP. We'd already have sufficient economic leverage over China to demand military concessions.
Trump is also employing the typical Republican strategy where unnecessary military spending is used to crowd-out popular social programs. This is where the infamous "Daisy" commercial originated. Trump is attempting to channel his inner Barry Goldwater. He's not alone in Republican history and the idea certainly didn't originate with Trump. He's not smart enough for that.
Prototypical Trump though, he eliminates our leverage over our adversaries before negotiating a new deal. If Bush 43 was Ready, fire, aim, Trump is aim, fire... ready? We could have used the threat of dissolving the INF to force China into negotiations with Russia. Nope. We're out on our now.
The situation is most definitely dangerous. Of course, climate change is dangerous too. I don't see anyone in Trump's camp offering half a trillion dollars to address that threat. Instead, we're building missiles we shouldn't ever use. If that doesn't scream kickback, I don't know what does. The whole scenario seems corrupt.
2
Being born in 1938, I grew up during the nuclear arms race. I hate the idea my grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to be doing the same. We escaped then, will they now?
2
@KathyC I was born a while later, but not so late that we did not have weekly 'Air Raid Drills' and Nuclear Shelter and Hold, head down along the walls in the hallways of the school, or, if there was time, filing fast to the basements.
We need to be spending a lot less on bullets and bombs and a heck of a lot more on bread and butter, you cannot eat the former, and we don't have enough of the latter.
Let's get our Government to get it's priorities straight, building arms that will never be used and sit there and rot, or be sold to other Nations to let them rot there, vs actually feeding our own people, sheltering our veterans and rebuilding our infrastructure instead of figuring that 'it is all gonna get bombed anyway, why fix it?' mindset.
We need to get the war profiteers and war-hawks OUT of Government and any elected official holding weapons or military manufacturing stock/bonds or from the banks that serve them exclusively, those politicians need to be ridden out of town on a rail as they are more willing to get us, the US, into wars and kill our kids, and the other nation's people, for their high end profit and the dividends from innocent Blood.
Any politician owning such stocks and voting for more conflicts, war backing or weapons spending are self-serving and have the blood of millions of innocents on their hands. I don't care which party, they need removed, but my bet is that most Republicans, the Right Wing, who profits the most, and most intentionally at that.
@B. Honest Should we be ignoring what other countries spend on building up their nuclear arsenals, upgrading their weapons and not abiding by the treaties they signed? It didn't help England to fend off Hitler by hiding their heads in the sand and convincing themselves he wasn't aggressive. We do need to stamp out hunger but please - not too much butter! Obesity is increasing here, remember?
A conversation that purportedly took place between the U.S. and Russian ambassadors to the UN in the early 1960s about a hypothetical agreement that resulted in complete nuclear disarmament by both. When the U.S. ambassador asked what Russia would do if they happened to find one nuclear weapon in their arsenal that was overlooked and not destroyed, the Russian ambassador replied: Russia would do two things. First, we would advise you of the discovery and then we would give you an ultimatum.
This editorial refers briefly to dread of global climate change, suggesting that it—or rather the dread and global climate change—are somewhat less of a factor in people’s lives than fear of nuclear war.
Whether it’s true or not, the mere possibility that people are less worried about global climate change than about nuclear war is evidence that we aren’t paying attention.
Do we need a clock to tell us what time it is, relative to irreversible global climate change?
This is the paramount issue of our time (much as fighting a world war was the paramount issue in the early 1940s).
If we don’t get our butts in gear and our arms around it right quick, we won’t have the luxury of grappling with other issues except as second-tier issues.
Are we taking it seriously? We, as a country, are not.
This fact alone evidences systemic political and social failure, which, it may bear noting, isn’t new in the history of human societies and civilizations.
Unless we turn this failing around, we should expect future generations—beginning with humans being born right this minute—to suffer mightily, and under the thumb of autocrats worldwide; for democracy itself won’t survive.
2
@David Human beings almost made it as a sentient species before their extinction. Unfortunately in only 10,000 years they so destroyed their ecosystems that they caused the extinction of all mammals and 87% of species on the planet. Sadly 2% of the human race did become sentient, but they were never able to figure out a manner to raise that number.
1
@David
Global climate change, catastrophic as it may be for humans, will not in and of itself poison the planet with radioactive fallout for a Very Long Time. Nuclear war will.
One more example of Trump doing exactly what Putin wanted. That was combined with Trump-knows-what-he-knows-when-clueless.
1
We've been experiencing trump and his maniacal behavior, treaty busting, ally alienating, racism and his associated cronies for almost 2-years. And the GOP is letting it go on, and on. There are no 3-branches and checks and balances with the GOP.
Conspiracy Theory 1.
Sometimes, I start to believe that the story about all of these seemingly disparate people [Flynn, Manifort, Page, Cohen, Pecker, Stone, trump, et.al.] whom we are discovering to be all connected, is just a distraction. It’s the theater meant to cover-up something much, much bigger that’s brewing for the future.
Conspiracy Theory 2.
trump violates Peace right out in the open, as if his transparency makes it okay. Hello? GOP? Dems? People?
trump's SOTU just initiated a nuclear arms race (“perhaps we can negotiate a different agreement, adding China and others, or perhaps we can’t—in which case, we will outspend and out-innovate all others by far.”) with Russia that LOOKS as if trump wants to beat Putin, North Korea, and China. But, instead, the three of them, are arming-up, not to fight each other, but to each further control their countries -- to fight us.
I know. I know. It seems way out there in left field. But, just try it. Just try to imagine.
Try to imagine and believe.
1
O please another criticism of the president. If Obama would have suspended the treaty the NYT would be singing his praises. So what should the president do? Just allow them to cheat. More tabloid quality editorials by the NYT. Lets let them continue to cheat and I am sure we will have "peace in our time". And yes that is comparing this editorial to the chief appeaser Neville Chamberlain.
2
This article mentions that President Reagan appreciated the dangers of nuclear war. That is something that our commander in chief must understand and take into account when dealing with this matter. I do not believe President Trump understands or appreciates such risks. President Trump likes to “outspend” someone or build a “beautiful” battleship or develop a “massive” weapon of some type. This is vanity driving President Trump’s decisions, not fact or reality. This is incredibly dangerous for America and emboldens our adversaries to push the envelope with him. And President Trump has no concerns about this thought process. Dangerous times indeed.
Treaties should be updated to limit the new technology Russia and China are developing such as hypersonic nuclear weapons. The Pentagon is still fighting the Cold War with expensive naval and air fleets while the next war is likely to be a asymmetrical, against a dispersed, small but deadly array of technologically advanced conventional and nuclear weapons. Does anyone in America’s, Russia’s, or China’s political and military elite believe Trump has the strategy to defend America in the next generation of warfare? The choice is simple—either a massive, bankrupting investment in weaponry, or political and diplomatic defusing of tension and treaties limiting new weaponry.
1
Does anyone remember that the reason the old Soviet Union collapsed was because they spent themselves into oblivion over the last arm race? And DT wants us to do the same? And does anyone remember that he bankrupted....a casino? The conscientious stupidity of this administration, enablers, and supporters is perverse.
3
Putin’s Puppet is going to kill us all. Only a matter of time. If anybody’s alive after Trump’s Armageddon, they’ll have the Republicans in Congress and The Deplorables to thank.
2
This is an utter failure of American and Russian foreign policy. It only enriches the twisted and greedy ghouls in the arms industry. Rather than perpetuate peaceful coexitance they'd rather threaten everyone on the planet by holding a nuclear gun at the world's head.
The civilized peoples of the world in all countries should reject this nonsense by bringing up how ludicrous this is in 2019 at the United Nations. It's totally daft, perhaps cynical too, a playing the world's people for fools.
4
Yes. Many of us have spent a long life under the shadow of this absurd rivalry. Even if Armageddon does not take place, the looming threat and endless belligerence contributes to stress neurosis and cynicism in the community. Rarely a day passes without some statement from the Dr Strangeloves surrounding Trump that make the stomach churn.
1
It’s quite a wild ride to follow leftist thought on Russia these days. One day, Putin is the evil puppet master who, shall we say, trumped the will of the American voters. The next day, we go back to bashing imperialist, war-mongering America, while whitewashing peace-loving, treaty-respecting Russia. It is highly reminiscent of the Cult of Trump: when the oracle (in this case the editorial board of NYT) gives the signal, the faithful take a 180 degree turn.
1
@Gimme A. Break Just where in this article do you find anything, anything at all, that whitewashes Russia? The article merely points out that going back to unrestricted nuclear weapons is a path to the destruction of humanity.
8
Poppycock and balderdash! So long as there is just one nuke out there,there’s danger. There’s no better way (short of completely disarming) then to have MAD. Indeed perhaps a good old fashion arms race would be a sure way of defeating Putin again. His weak economy would fail much like in the 80’s. Only this time I would hope we have learned something about our greatest adversaries.
First, kudos to @avrds. I am glad someone had the exact same reaction to Mr. Rattner's contribution. Eisenhower's warning gets more prescient all the time. Evidently, the Pentagon's blank check is never questioned. Interesting that the Times didn't open Rattner's column up to reader responses.
But more worrisome still is that Trump once said something to the effect that "What good are nuclear weapons if you can't use them?" Obviously little rich boys that dodged the draft because of sore feet (there was probably plenty of room for you in the rear with the gear) don't have any appreciation for the horrors of war.
He needs to be strapped to a chair Clockwork Orange style and made to watch an endless loop of documentaries on the use of nuclear weapons on Japan. Those bombs were firecrackers compared to the warheads we have now.
Why not renew the nuclear arms race. Should we really have expected anything else from this no nothing president?
1
What makes you think we won the last one...
https://www.nytimes.com/1961/01/01/archives/picking-up-the-pieces-on-thermonuclear-war-by-herman-kahn-651-pp.html
If any consolation to the space explorer and SETI set, EMP from thermonuclear atmospheric tests in the 50’s have reached almost 200 stars – and whatever planets they have – by now...
We should be hearing back any day, if there’s anyone out there listening...
.....
What is it that so obsesses some of our tribes with public lynchings – or public nukings – as a means of crowd control...
Once you stand up a public hanging square – you’ll appear weak if you don’t use it every once in a while...
Sort of like building a billion dollar stadium with municipal funding, and the team decides to move to Austin or Providence instead...
Worse, after several years, the trap-door hinges may rust, and the miscreants would be just standing there, after the button was pushed...
Kahn would likely offer a perfectly rational solution, along some line like this...
Any devices with less than a megaton blast – and that would detonate less than a hundred meters below dry land – prohibited...
Any program striving for any less would immediately be put out of commission by a UN military force...
Find me one permanent member of the Security Council that’d disagree with this approach...
2
Am I the only one puzzling why BMFs Trump and Putin are taking this very public stance of agression as military enemies? There’s never any question with DT about why he’s doing something - it’s always about him, ultimately. So how does he benefit? By looking tough? Or by covering up his collusion with Russia by taking an about face on relations? As always, the question of what is good for the US or world doesn’t even enter the equation. Why do I think he and Putin hatched this plan together in one of their secret little talks that the translator was not allowed to discuss...?
2
A foolish article by the Editorial Board that nowhere mentions the Russian cheating that precipitated our exit from this treaty. These pundits would've argued against US arms development in World War Two out of fear of provoking the Nazis.
Another silly assertion is that the accidental use of a nuke would cause mutually assured destruction. Where's your proof of this 'promise'?
Another dose of fear-mongering from Pravda!
@Polonius Yes, if a nuke is "accidentally" used, it would provoke mutually assured destruction. It's pretty simple: if Russia nukes a US city "by accident" the US MUST respond. At which point the Russians MUST respond. At which point "hey we better fire off all our weapons and decapitate the enemy before they really unload on us" happens.
@Polonius what evidence is there that Russia was “cheating on this treaty” aside from the gratuitous, self justifying and unsubstantiated accusations by the Boltons and Pampeos of this administration which acted like the Bush administration in 2002 when it unilaterally cancelled another nuclear treaty with Russia? The INF protected Russia from nuclear missiles on its doorstep. Cancelling INF heightens the nuclear vulnerability of Russia and NATO’s European states.
In an early episode of Star Trek, Kirk and the Enterprise visit a planet where war is conducted by computer and “casualties” are sent to disintegrator stations for a nice, clean death. It saves both sides from the horrors of real war. It also results in an endless escalation of simulated hostilities. There was no reason to end the conflict.
Are we such idiots that we haven’t learned anything from 20th century wars? Are we hellbent on utter self-destruction? Why do we continue to elect small minded leaders?
6
This is a seriously flawed article that intentionally ignores the need to include China or exit. By pretending there is no Chinese dimension, the times demeans itself and it's readers.
1
That is rich. NYT, which more than anyone has contributed to the grotesque propaganda campaign of dehumanisation and vilification of Russia, is acting all surprised that US-Russia relations have broken down putting the word on edge of a new arms race. Sure, blame everything on Russia – add the INF breakdown to that large pile. It was Russia, who surrounded US with its military bases. It was Russia who expanded its military alliances to US borders. It was Russia who attacked Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and is now gearing up to attack Venezuela. Destroying the INF treaty is just another example of the vile Russkies' inborn aggressive nature. Let's go and bomb Moscow now. For freedom and democracy, of course.
5
There are winners in this race. Bob Dylan wrote about them back in the sixties. Here are some of the lyrics from "Masters of War";
"Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks...
...Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain...
...You hide in your mansion'
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud..."
5
Trump's braggadoccio is stupid and dangerous, and expensive. But, playing the devil's advocate, with the chance of Trump being in Putin's pocket, perhaps Trump's withdrawal from the limitation of nuclear arms is intentional. Given Trump's love affair with Putin, and dismissal of his own 'intelligentsia', one cannot stop being suspicious of graft or fifth columnism. Didn't Reagan say "trust but verify"?
1
No winner? You are underestimating the ability of our "Genius-in-Chief" to direct graft into the coffers of the "Party of Mammon". Plus a tip in his pocket, of course.
Nuclear Holocaust? It's not a possibility, since that would be a form of man-made global warming, which doesn't exist.
Be happy - don't worry, he's got the whole world in his hands. Nancy will clap as you sing!
1
But he was wrong to assert in his State of the Union address that he had “no choice” other than to withdraw from the treaty, a move that takes effect in August.
The word "he" in this sentence is what angers and frightens me. The " game of chicken" is one djt finds great delight, and he gave no a moments thought that this game he plays with Putin, which resonates throughout the world is about Weapons of Mass Destruction. I believe what adds fuel to this 'war of lords' is "Mr. Putin’s vow of a “symmetrical” response. " I cite the following article ;
February 7, 2019, Reuters Andrew Osborn
For Putin, economic and political reality dampen appetite for arms race
MOSCOW (Reuters) - With his ratings down and state funds needed to hedge against new Western sanctions and raise living standards, Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot afford to get sucked into a costly nuclear arms race with the United States.
These words spoken by the president of Our United States are a far greater threat than " a foolish game of chicken, with no possible winners." It speaks to The Bulletin's January 24, 2019 announcement, "A new abnormal: It is still 2 minutes to midnight" Take a moment and read the statement. It is chilling.
The only glimmer of hope I held on to regarding the possibility of bringing our democracy back to the sanity of 'the middle' fades with each passing day. djt's term of office as got to end, now.
2
NS Sherlock.
The level of danger that this man has waded our country into from day one, is beyond the pale. Yet we have "moderates" voices calling for a "steady hand" to assure that we don't do anything rash in regards to stopping this man. We must "wait for the Mueller report" to assures that it appears like we are doing everything above board. Meanwhile, this man takes steps daily to destroy our institutions, our hard earned allies that tears down our security, brick by brick.
At some point, we need bold leadership to challenge and stop this instanity. I am sick of the press taking the bait that this President throws out to keep papers being sold and clicks happening while he works with Putin to destroy us. I will vote when the time comes. I am in hope that he is stopped by those with the power to do so ASAP so that we have something to vote for. I will not be voting for "moderate" leadership. They have failed us to date.
2
When two countries sign a deal about anything and then one of them decides to ignore it, the other country makes itself look foolish sticking with the deal.
Any Ameican President would break with such a deal - but with Pres. Trump, there is propaganda to be created and distrubuted, isn't there, NY Times?
You’re aware that we’re signatories to all sorts of deals on, oh, the right to apply for asylum in America, climate change, limiting Iran’s ability to build nukes, little things like that, yes?
Oh, well. I can’t even figure out the pretzel logic involved in accusing the Times of propagandizing on behalf of a KGB colonel and kleptocrat that Trump’s been kissing up to for years.
Wrong. Pentagon and fellows Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed et al. and shareholders.
1
Pakistan, India and North Korea are expanding their arsenals? Did you forget Israel? Do you think Israel is sitting quietly without expanding their nuclear arsenal? And surely Nato is upgrading its nuclear missile and so is USA, Russia and China.
1
Your tax dollars at work? Your future based on the push of a button?
Yet another race to the bottom instigated by our Distracter-In-Chief as directed by his comrade in arms. If there are any shreds of outrage, courage and decency left in the GOP (however doubtful), now's the time to display them before it's too late.
1
So Trump is talking about an arms race against his buddy Putin with whom nobody knows what they spoke about in Helsinki. I’m starting to think dirty. Is Trump starting an arms race to get a kickback from nuclear arms manufacturers?
Trump got played by Putin, and it is the American people who will suffer. Clearly, Trump gets his orders from Putin, as evidenced by his decision to pull out of the INF treaty. Putin knew that he would have world opinion on his side in reciprocating if the U.S. took the first step.
And Trump, because he is either too ignorant or too compromised by Putin has revived the nuclear arms race. I remember presidents back to Eisenhower. I remember those school drills, ridiculous as they were, getting under our desks. But the threat was real.
And it is real again because we have a deranged tyrant in the White House who gets his orders from a hostile power.
Years back I believed that our administrations had the upper hand in the arms race because of their knowledge, experience and integrity. Now, we have a president with none of these qualities. So we cannot simply expect the same result as we had some forty years ago.
This time Russia is in the ascendancy, and we will be the ones playing "catch up", responding to new Russian threats as they expand their nuclear arsenal. So we are actually in a worse position than in the 1950's, because our "president" is being outplayed by a leader orders of magnitude more intelligent than he is. And our "president" really does not care if he plunges this nation into a nuclear holocaust, just to salve his pitiful ego.
If there are any "responsible" adults left in this administration, now is the time to take away the keys.
Isn't this a matter of trying to figure out who has the biggest "hands"? T or P? We are all cows, we have no choice, we have no job except to consume to give T money to work his woe. Do we need a new cold war, except to pump money into the Militay Industrial Complex? no. We must get rid of T and let an adult face P. Russia has no strategic interest in actually owning or using nuclear weapons. N. Korea, China and oddly Venezuela are their friends. Sabre rattling will give them some leverage in keeping Crimea and allowing them to be the untouchable bad nation of Europe, sowing chaos. Dump Trump! It isn't funny and the TV show has gone on long enough.
Of course there are winners - the defense contractors that design and build the weapons.
And in cases that arise from time to time, all of us benefit from defense spending -
GPS
Cell phone technology
Satellite TV
Lifesaving medical technology including trauma treatment
But I agree that we should all fear an increase in nuclear weapons and one particular idiot who seems eager to push the button.
Since the 50's we've spent an estimated $5 trillion on nuclear weapons, think that's enough. Just imagine if we spent just half that on our nuclear arsenal and the other half on healthcare for our citizens. We would been so much better off, and the nuclear deterrent would still be more than sufficient to keep Russia and the like at bay.
President Trump is just foolish in his thinking. Diplomacy is much, much less expensive than a new arms race. I thought he was someone with great business acumen, apparently not though with the path he has chosen.
Trump got played by Putin, and it is the American people who will suffer. Clearly, Trump gets his orders from Putin, as evidenced by his decision to pull out of the INF treaty. Putin knew that he would have world opinion on his side in reciprocating if the U.S. took the first step.
And Trump, because he is either too ignorant or too compromised by Putin has revived the nuclear arms race. I remember presidents back to Eisenhower. I remember those school drills, ridiculous as they were, getting under our desks. But the threat was real.
And it is real again because we have a deranged tyrant in the White House who gets his orders from a hostile power. Years back I believed that our administrations had the upper hand in the arms race because of their knowledge, experience and integrity. Now, we have a president with none of these qualities. So we cannot simply expect the same result as we had some forty years ago. This time Russia is in the ascendancy, and we will be the ones playing "catch up", responding to new Russian threats as they expand their nuclear arsenal. So we are actually in a worse position than in the 1950's, because our "president" is being outplayed by a leader orders of magnitude more intelligent than he is.
And our "president" really does not care if he plunges this nation into a nuclear holocaust, just to salve his pitiful ego. If there are any "responsible" adults left in this administration, now is the time to take away the keys.
2
One is reminded of a movie called the Russia House with Sean Connery. Many a true word is often said in film!
There ARE winners! In the spirit of tonight's Grammy Awards - the winners are: Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, GenCorp Aerojet, Huntington Ingalls, and Lockheed Martin - and their oligarch owners and investors.
The losers are everyone else, particularly the people who voted for the man who ran his mighty generals out of office with his horrifically poor judgment, but still pretends to call himself commander in chief.
2
The New York Times’ editorials they are a-changin’: warnings on the risky consequences of “outspending Russia on a nuclear arms race” have pushed aside (for now?) the editorial line which raised the alarm about (Putin’s) “Russia war on the West” [The Editorial Board , Jan 10, 2018]. Since about three years ago, I ended a score of (mostly blocked) comments on the subject with the line: “I’m sure that at the very end the illustrious Editors will realize the folly of their incessant anti-Russia geopolitical and strategic transgressions while sending somebody to look for a typewriter among the radioactive rubble and write the “Maybe We Have Gone Too Far With The Russian Are Coming Alarmism” editorial – but it’ll be much better if they’ll come to their moral-historical senses right now.” Let’s hope it’s not too late by now.
The messianic anti-nuclear initiative of Gorbachev saved humanity from an almost certain “General Nuclear War”. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush followed by joining Gorbachev in striving and accomplishing first the INF treaty and then START, the astonishingly sweeping anti-nuclear agreement. Alas, since about the beginning of the second decade, we are witnessing an accelerating potentially catastrophic historical U-turn, amounting to the return of the global nuclear arms race.
1
"...legally binding, verifiable limits...." and "Russia" in the same sentence is patently silly. From the late Empire to Putin, Russia has never been accused of faithfully fulfilling treaty obligations except...for those agreed by Hitler and Stalin for the movement of commodities across Russian territory to Germany before the German invasion. Is there a lesson there?
1
I think I hear Dwight D. Eisenhower tossing and turning in his grave.
The Military-Industrial-Complex (es) win again.
The USA must face China. Democrats fail again.
@bruce Apparently you don't know your history very well. The GOP is the one out there working to support our enemies and undermine our allies and alliances. The GOP gave us two, pointless unwinnable wars that spawned a very predictable third one. Add in 6 trillion in wasted spending and make that debt because of foolish tax cuts while at war and you wonder why anyone gives a republican a sharp crayon let alone actual responsibility.
Read the comments of the lucid members of the ruling class during VWI, Loyd George and others. The current withdrawal comes from the same barrel of profound stupidity. Does history, recent and current, give you confidence that we, humans, are going to be able to avoid destroying ourselves?
One can hear Trump supporters at the next rally chanting " USA USA USA" as Trump announces we are building big beautiful nuclear warheads to beat the Russians before they blow us up while ignoring the climate change Armageddon, staring all of humanity in the face, coming within a very short period of time
Brian
the United States and the Soviet Union had amassed 63,000 nuclear weapons, with the promise of mutually assured destruction if even one were ever used, even accidentally.
http://www.siyasat.pk/royal-news-live.php
So, when do the American People ( nuke fodder) get a viable civil defense program?
1
"Outspending Russia on a nuclear arms race, as Mr. Trump has bragged he would do, or abandoning an arms control regime that has helped forestall nuclear war for decades, is a foolish game of chicken, with no possible winners."
Actually, there are at least two winners, and two losers.
Losers first - Europeans who don't want these missiles in their backyard and American taxpayers who are going to be handed a stunningly large bill for their development and procurement.
Winners - Defense contractors are about to make a killing (figuratively) with our hopes that we don't have to use them to literally make a killing, AND...
Vladimir Putin. Putin wins because Trump has given him an unbelievable gift, a way out of a treaty Russia has been violating for years. Even better, he can take the high road, "since the US has abandoned the treaty, what else can I do?"
As with so many other Trump decisions, Russia wins, the US loses. Is Trump a Russian asset? But, of course. The real question is whether he's being paid for his perfidious behavior or his picture is in the KGB operations manual under the topic useful idiots.
The male of the species is totally inane and destructive throughout human history. Today we are led by a narcissistic, incompetent bully, what could possibly go wrong?
RE: "Are the United States and Russia entering a dangerous new era of unchecked nuclear weapons development?"
Yes.
(Easy question.)
1
Putin wanted the agreement to end, so Trump did his bidding. Simple as that.
No, the planet would survive and would last longer with humans not on it, than on it, you just mean there aren't any human winners, but that's your fault for false framing.
Just for later, here’s a thought: things such as “the world,” and “Nature,” have no inherent meaning, no existence as concepts without human perception and thinking. Whatever they might be in themselves, they don’t come complete with labels.
Briefly out, if we end, what you call the world does indeed end. I also happen to think us apes have our good moments.
The idea that someone can "come out ahead" in a nuclear arms race is what drives this agenda.
The question is, why would anyone want to enter a race in which everyone dies at the end?
Then again, the human race has never been that smart has it?
I'm a bit surprised that some at the NYT, and DC for that matter, are falling for this. This is classic Russian sleight-of-hand to get the attention off of Ukraine and Crimea, and onto - what else? - nuke weapons! Has to be more frightening then some business, long ago, about who's borders are who's. Except the sanctions imposed on Russia are so great, they were willing to target the US elections - even while they were being watched and recorded - in order to seek relief from sanctions. So, while those serving Russian interests in the US would be seeking to diminish the significance of the Russian invasions in Ukraine, this recent effort on advance nuclear weaponry will change the focus of the Americans. For sure. Great job, Editorial Board, the Russians could not have done better!
1
John Denver co-wrote and sang a song with his Russian counterpart called “What are we making weapons for”. John performed this incredible song right before his untimely death in Snowmas, Colorado at a Urantia Conference.What a powerful song. Youtu.be/4GllrEC_Eim
If it doesn’t come up, just Google “What are we making weapons for” by John Denver.
Hopefully this will be a reminder of where we were heading not too long ago.
1
Look on the bright side. The defense-related sector of our economy will flourish. With the warm relations between Trump and Putin, perhaps our countries can work together on new and impoved nuclear bombs. We'll return to (if we ever dropped) the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) that discourages actual use of these weapons. We can even adopt the policy of using these weapons against countries that facilitate illegal immigration to our country.
Perhaps it's time for citizens of the world to step back from supporting nuclear military powers, these same countries are also doing little to stop fossil fuel support, and the destruction of the ozone protective layer.
If the USA, Russia, Israel, China, France and India can't stop being major polluters, why should we expect them to stop making war - and we know, the next war may be with 100 or more nuclear bombs going off across the northern hemisphere.
What are we waiting for, the end of the world...?
So have the arms race, or don't have the arms race. It simply does not matter anymore.
Nuclear exchange or no, the population explosion will make homo sapiens go extinct, along with a huge number of other species (already happening).
Population: 7.7 billion, increasing 80 million annually (equivalent to the population of Germany).
Planet has only until 2030 to stem catastrophic climate change, experts warn.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/07/world/climate-change-new-ipcc-report-wxc/index.html
Let's see how Trump's base feels about $500 billion of unpaid for nuclear junk when little Johnny and Julie come from school and tell the dinner table about their game of hiding under the desk. Does that spoil Mom's dinner in Iowa? And, about those tax refunds...
Given the likely valid assumption that Putin and Trump are orchestrating this together, or more accurately, Putin and his puppet, what is the end-game? What is the goal? Does Putin really see the use of Nuclear Weapons as a path to his geopolitical goals? Or is he banking on other Countries caving to the threat of Nuclear War?
The EB missed the point. Russia has already broken the treaty and if we don't keep up, we'll be toast (literally).
2
Well, we shall see what comes of this by late summer. But what if all this symmetrical posturing is just that: posturing to mask the true nature of the relationship between Trump and Putin? What? Cynical? Me?
Border wall shmorderwall. Trump’s regime continues to make this world a more dangerous place.
“Outspending Russia on a nuclear arms race, as Mr. Trump has bragged he would do, or abandoning an arms control regime that has helped forestall nuclear war for decades, is a foolish game of chicken, with no possible winners.”
Nothing wrong with an arms race. We are much richer than Russia. Their economy has tanked because of Trumps’ sanctions and because he has unleashed the full potential of American oil production. We are now a net oil exporter and Trump has devastated oil prices and thus Russia’s economy.
1
With our deficit approaching $1 trillion, this sounds like yet another frivolous way to increase our children's financial insecurity.
A nuclear arms race, nuclear war by accident or design, and the extinction of the human species (which could benefit the ecological balance of the planet), are the inescapable results and inevitable consequences of the hysterical demonisation of other nations by those who believe that overwhelming American power can now seal America’s hegemony of the world in perpetuity by rejecting all multilateral institutions and laws that constrain it. Unrestrained hubris grinds the dust of history.
"no possible winners."? If Vladimir Putin wins Donald Trump wins.The clear winner is Vladimir Putin and by association Donald Trump as well. Remember, this is always how the President is thinking. Not America First but Putin first.
Everyone admits that it would be insane for both sides to launch their nuclear arsenals against the other. Few, however, see the insanity in placing ourselves in a position where MAD is not only possible, but probably inevitable. If we are to pull away from the ridiculous posture we've now assumed, there will need to be a paradigm shift in human thought around the world, and particularly in the United States and Russia. If not, we are doomed.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds would see the survival of a belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand all this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
Putin has been a malevolent force in the world since he killed his own people in the 1999 Apartment Bombings as a pretext to wage war against the Chechnya and ascend to power.
He has become emboldened by stealing Russia’s wealth with impunity, spreading a campaign of lies to force Brexit, and ultimately place a Russian asset as US President.
Despite their small, undeveloped economy on frozen tundra, Putin dreams of being a world power again, instead of a global pariah. They want to be prosperous China, but instead they are closer to allies Syria and Venezuela.
The global powers of the world must understand the threat Putin presents to global stability, and neutralize that threat for the benefit of humanity.
It has always seemed to me beyond foolish that so many billions of dollars are spent to develop and deploy weapons whose use would ensure the annihilation of life on earth. What a sad testament to man's ignorance and folly that so much of our hard-won resources are sequestered into silos that, God-willing, will never, ever open. Think of all the rice and grain, all the roads and bridges, all the medicine, clothing, housing, etc., that could be afforded if we could stop the madness. Think of how we could shrink debt and deficit. Instead, for the most part, we shrug. This is real politic, we say. This is the way of the world.
Putin wants The Baltic states and more of Ukraine.
Putin doesn’t want war with the US. They just want more land, and access to bodies of water. The Russians are building tanks around the clock.
History has shown Russia hasn't the resources to match the US in a true arms race but they do have more than enough brains to figure out anything they can do to make Trump appear tough and patriotic compared to the Democrats could be just thing to get their puppet get reelected.
We need arms control even more than we need gun control.
1
Yes unchecked and dangerous
The place we didn’t want to be w trump and knew we would be .
I am afraid that there is a big winner: the military-industrial complex or "a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions," President Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1961
Donald J. Trump makes us LESS safe each and every day.
2
Let's see Trump wants a border wall and all kinds of additional stuff along the border. He want increased infrastructure spending, he wants big increases in military spending and he wants new nuclear weapons and missiles; increases for help for our enemies - Russia, China & North Korea. Not only does Trump not read, he apparently doesn't do math. His list of wants exceeds our total budget by a couple of times.
How does an illiterate, uneducated, habitual liar get elected president? Time to correct our mistake.
Surprising that this article did not mention China once. Suggests it misses the bigger picture entirely.
For the past two and a half years I have listened non stop from the pundits on MSNBC, CNN, the intelligence agencies, the Democratic Party and mostly Democrats in Congress say that Russia is our enemy. That they "attacked" us. That their meddling in our election was similar to Pearl Harbor (seriously, I'm not making that one up). That they attacked our power grid. That they might turn off our heat during a polar vortex - that was a good one Ms. Maddow. Why, they even have kompromat on our president which they are using to blackmail him and he is now their puppet doing their bidding. This garbage has been non-stop, but, hey, it is terrific for the ratings and it sells papers. So NOW is the time when they begin to rethink their Red Scare McCarthyism campaign? Well, it's a little too late. You got your Cold War people. Enjoy the next nuclear arms race.
“Outspending Russia on a nuclear arms race…is a foolish game of chicken, with no possible winners.”
Of course there are winners in the arms race - the people who own the companies that deal in war and weapons. Follow the money and you’ll find yet another example of the greed and corruption at the heart of this Trump/Republican regime. Money is behind all these schemes. Who is going to make money to build Trump’s wall? Who is making the money to build the detention centers at the border? Who is making the money in privatizing our schools and prisons? Reporters, please follow the money. Expose the corruption.
That "reset" button was always H. R. Clinton's peter principle moment.
I realize I’m preaching to the choir, but consider this: Not only is this an economic nightmare ($500 B just for the US to upgrade weapons that, by design, are never to be used) but it significantly increases the probability of someone, somewhere, making a huge blunder. Talk to anyone knowledgeable about the history of nuclear weapons and you’ll quickly realize how lucky we are to have made it this long—since 1945—without some major disaster, up to and including world annihilation:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls
Among all the willfully reckless policies this administration is pursuing, this is right at the top of the list—at least as important as the other existential threat we face today, climate change. A good analogy is that our man-child of a president, who has sole rights to the nuclear codes, isn’t just playing with fire; he’s holding a hand grenade with the pin pulled. What’s a concise word for “frighteningly stupid?”
Obama let Putin walk all over him. What did you expect would happen. The Ukraine debacle was a disaster for Western interests.
One of my great fears in this age is: the steady loss of reaction time. No sane government would use modern nukes, which are vastly more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Global destruction would likely result. Now, with the development of maneuverable hypersonic missiles, reaction time will be further greatly reduced. On Sept. 26, 1983, the nuclear early-warning system of the Soviet Union reported the launch of multiple Minuteman ballistic missiles from bases in the US. These attack warnings were correctly identified as a false alarm by Stanislav Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air Defense Forces. It was later shown their equipment had malfunctioned. What happens when the decision window is shrunk so small that cool heads no longer prevail? If the Soviets had retaliated to this perceived attack, my earthly presence, and millions of others, would have evaporated. And let’s not have interest in developing “low yield” options. What nonsense. If, say, Iran sent a “low yield” nuke our way, you can imagine what would return.
26
@Fearless Fuzzy The loss of reaction time is an important consideration. It’s one of the reasons the internet and twitter are so vicious. Hindu mythology had the idea of the world going through cycles composed of four eras, each era going faster than the previous one. At the end of the fourth era when time went exceedingly fast, the world would be destroyed. When he saw the first atomic bomb go off, Robert Oppenheimer recalled to mind a vision of God as He ushered in the final era. God appears in a horrifying form and proclaims: I Am Death. Welcome to the fourth era.
5
@Fearless Fuzzy
The Spring 2018 season finale of the show "Madame Secretary" addresses this exact issue in chilling and extremely realistic detail. Everyone should watch it.
There have been lots of 'near misses' and we have always been 'on the brink'. Which can easily lead to
an "On the Beach" outcome. And that's not factoring in the possibility of a Tunguska-like (June 30th, 1908) explosion over a populated and / or militarily sensitive area. It would be the ultimate irony for our civilization to respond to a space rock impact with an all out missile exchange. This is absolutely possible. How many people know that the very well documented Chelyabinsk Event (February, 2013) occurred very close to the Shagol Air Base, a large military base which borders the city of Chelyabinsk ? What if the impactor had been bigger, and directly hit Shagol ?
2
I hope Mr. Rattner is reading this editorial.
In his own op-ed, Rattner bemoans the fact that the nation can't possibly afford to provide healthcare and education and green jobs to a country that is already so deeply in debt. And yet here we learn that Obama spent billions to upgrade the nuclear arsenal and now Trump is threatening to spend billions more.
Isn't it time the nation got its priorities straight? Do we really need more weapons and tax cuts or could we, perhaps, afford to spend a little more on the health and well being of our fellow Americans. The choice should be ours to make.
7
Unfortunately, our president does not have the historical knowledge or enough self doubt (he has none, in fact) to realize that we need treaties to have a semblance or order in the world of nuclear weapons. We need a president who can effectively use the inputs from our allies and intelligence organization to create a web of effective treaties with our potential enemies. Only then can we monitor compliance.
3
When one considers the number of voters who believed that electing Trump would keep Neo-con Hillary from getting the country into even more military adventures, it is truly outrageous that we have the maniac John Bolton in the White House, our embassy in Jerusalem and thousands of soldiers lingering throughout the Muslim world while others wait in the wings for a new assault on Latin America. In effect, Trump has breathed new life into a Neo-con movement that had everywhere painted itself into any available corner. What we now seem to be living through is a newly energized campaign to achieve true military, political and economic hegemony. (With, of course, the darkly comic proposition that Putin and the Russians have been pulling the strings, just to keep us distracted and entertained.)
No part of science can be kept as a classified secret forever. That behind nuclear weapons development is now over 75 years old, and more countries and terrorist organizations will have the capability as the decades pass. Mankind must learn to live without unneeded aggression or the eventual use of nuclear weapons is inevitable. The world’s current nationalist thrust, however, does not provide great hope for a peaceful outcome.
2
Living in a Berlin surrounded by Soviet tanks and missiles during the height of the Cold War with the U.S., it was a given that everyday we might either be invaded or incinerated if it ever came down to a nuclear conflict between these two nations -- that's why it came as a great relief when the initial INF Treaty was signed, and a few years later the Wall came down.
The terror of living behind the so-called "Iron Curtain" with the knowledge that everyday could be the last was something we all had learned to live with, which is why every friendly gesture between the U.S. and the then-U.S.S.R. was seen as a step toward hope, if not peace.
Until now.
With old enmities revived and provocations from both sides on display, the world finds itself once again on the tipping point of nuclear conflict.
However this time it doesn't only involve Russia and America; but China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and possibly Iran, as well.
With the race toward ever stronger and even more weapons, and the lack of a binding treaty to hold it all in check, we find ourselves again on the brink of a situation that will ultimately yield no winners.
And even fewer survivors.
4
I wonder why we are discussing who is to blame in exiting out of INF treaty. Trump Administration has routinely dropped out of many agreements, promises, and the normal world order policies which our predecessors thought better and had joined them.
President Trump has not made the world safer be it the US or the Mid-East, Africa, or the Southern Hemisphere. DT was bad enough but the addition of people like Bolton and Pompeo didn't help.
Our unbridled support of countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt didn't help either.
Once we are able to do our in-house cleaning of DT et al, we can concentrate on reducing our conventional Military Materiel, which certainly is not needed in the quantum we possess. The funds so saved could easily be used in more productive ways to retrain our work force which would be idled by the advent of AI. We will need many millions of new jobs in the next decade and for sure we do not need the nuclear weapons both the old and the new.
There are no winners in any arms race as humanity gets the short end of the stick and the MIC sticks it to us.
2020 elections provides us an opportunity to either live in fear or get rid of the war hawks from the Congress and the White House and lead the world towards peaceful co-existence.
6
In Daniel Ellsberg's latest book he states that no matter which country, the U.S. or Russia, made the decision to launch first, the only hope for survival of any life on earth would be no retaliatory response and even then the probability of life surviving would be extremely low. Since WW II, the U.S. military plan for nuclear war was to initiate first strike and unleash our entire arsenal with nothing left in reserve from all sources (aircraft, submarines, land-based, ICBM’s from the U.S.). Moscow would be hit thirty times from all directions. Virtually all targets were cities having dense populations including China even if China played no part in the threat that led the U.S. military to launch. Nearly all of the eastern bloc countries would be hit by nuclear bombs dropped by our jets to clear a path for following jets to drop their nuclear ordinance on Russia. 300mm people would be killed in the first two hours and another 400mm would die within two weeks provided prevailing winds did not carry radiation over Western Europe. In that event, close to one billion people would be killed in total. Ten years later when climatology became more exact with modeling, the blasts would send so much smoke and debris from fires into the stratosphere, that it would circulate the earth for 10 years blocking all sunlight (nuclear winter) and destroying the entire food chain which would doom all remaining life to death by starvation.
Sorry, I think some indirection is happening in Russia. The US and NATO are not enemies of Russia, but important to its security. Lavrov expressed concern about possible instability. Russia's great vulnerability is its vast riches in Siberia. So it develops weapons that point in that direction and pretends they point somewhere else. Why would that be surprising? "Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer."
The discussion about who began with the new race is open. The Russians point to the US with its missile shield as the starting point.
The article also fails to mention that the US is already upgrading its nuclear arms in Europe - replacing them with a more version with more accurate targeting.
1
All an arms race does is spend us and Russia into bankruptcy while increasing the potential for conflict. It's a "lose-lose" situation that both Putin and Trump ignore. What is needed is a broader I.N.F. treaty that includes other nuclear powers, especially China, India and Pakistan. We need nuclear peace not nuclear proliferation, and we need Congress to speak up.
8
While this is not directly on point, it is useful to remember how many times Trump told us what a great leader Putin is. Putin leads a society with a socialist economy, where the state owns or directs ownership of the means of production. Now Trump has a new campaign theme. The US will never become a socialist country. Well, how can Putin be such a great leader then? Trump's opponent must quickly knock him down with his praise for the great socialist leader.
3
Dear James,
The Russians went from a socialist economy to a capitalist economy in 1993 during President Yeltsin's tenure. In fact, under American guidance or insistence, depending on who you ask, Yeltsin completely destroyed the old soviet economy. The ruble value dropped to near zero, millions were thrown out of work and life expectancy dropped a full five years, a figure unheard of in modern industrial states.
The result was the savaging of many state industries by what we now call the oligarchs. Under their new capitalist economy Russia has the third highest number of billionaires in the world, but a working class that lives at or near the poverty line.
One can say many things about Putin, but make no mistake, he is definitely not a socialist.
5
@Drspock I beg to differ. Putin is no Yeltsin. The oligarchs work for Putin. If they don't do what he wants he has them disappear or throws them in jail.
Just look at the editorials in today's NYT. "Your Grandchildren Are Already In Debt". "No Winner in a New Arms Race". If only there were one about climate change, the despair-triad would be complete. Who can even want grandchildren considering the world that is greeting them?!
My recent forays into local politics and activism have brought home the notion that good leadership is everything. We have poor leadership at every level and pretty much across the globe. Our leaders are self-serving narcissists who have sold us out to whatever local currency they (dys)function in. And we are just sheep being led to slaughter.
But in the end, I blame us the people for our predicament. We do not take the time to educate ourselves, to organize, to demand sanity. The most capable among us stay out of politics, leaving a vacuum for the crazies to fill. And then we nurse our nightmares with substance abuse, little screens and other "needful" junk we buy on Amazon.
11
Of course there are winners: the Military-Congressional-Industrial complex. The GOP’s favorite constituency.
13
@Rich
Why single out the GOP? The Democratic Party is at least as enthusiastic about militarism. The new Cold War is pretty much their project.
2
@Rich. We already have the Tomahawk cruise missle, which is a sea and air launched missile in this category, No great (or any) development needed to make these weapons into a land launched version.
2
@Rich And also some of the favorite paymasters of the corporate Democratic party.
1
The destruction from a nuclear bomb explosion is far reaching and long lasting. Some of us remember the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now our killing missiles are much stronger and more virulent. If used, that would be the last war and one less planet in the universe.
6
Trump knows that Russia will bankrupt itself in an arms race. Russia simply cannot match the economy of western countries.
Putin rules by fear. One day he will no longer rule.
Regardless of no winner, this has to happen. We need to be further ahead of our enemies than where we are.
The Obama era let China and Russia catch up much too much.
" . . . American and Soviet leaders stepped back from the brink and began a process of arms control diplomacy, accelerated by the fall of the Soviet Union, that shrank those arsenals by nearly 90 percent. For decades, that process and that diplomacy continued … until now."
What??
I would never have voted for "Saint" Ronald Reagan in a million years, and have no regrets about that, but for The Times to glide over WHY the Soviet Union collapsed is disappointing. While there were a variety of factors that caused the collapse, one key factor was that the Soviet Union couldn't keep up, financially, with the Reagan "Star Wars" arms race.
Putin is currently being kept from doing more damage around the world than might otherwise be the case because the price of oil is low around the world, and Russia's economy is dependent on oil revenues to keep itself afloat. Russia doesn't have the rubles to go tit-for-tat with the U.S. in the long run if the U.S. decides to dump big money into developing new nuclear weapons.
Given all the nations that now have nuclear weapons capabilities besides the U.S. and Russia, the statement that the INRF treaty is "managing the threat" of nuclear war is simplistic or naive. That threat is contained only by the countervailing threat of Mutually Assured Destruction. No matter the treaty, the U.S. and Russia can annihilate the world 10 times over.
Sadly, under Trump, our country has bigger worries than arms race with Russia.
1
A nuclear arms race puts civilization and human life at risk. In an arms race time is not on our side, Nuclear weapons were used 74 years ago at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and have not been used since. With the passage of every year there are fewer and fewer human beings living who were alive 1945 and still fewer who lived through 1945 as adults. The human memory of the horror of nuclear weapons is distant and soon will be erased. Then world leaders, Trumps and Putins, will become fascinated with the destructive power of nuclear weapons and able to rationalize the horror of nuclear war.
4
Say what you want about Trump, but he sure is revealing serious gaping holes in the U.S. Constitution. The Democrats need to obtain supermajorities in congress to amend the constitution to make the dissolving of treaties a congressional concern - as opposed to leaving to the whims of an unstable leader.
8
Trump abrogates and withdraws from international treaties as his preferred way of confronting the world. A statesman on the other hand would seek a new INF treaty adopted by Russia, China and North Korea. But that requires careful and prudent negotiation: something apparently not in Trump's modus operandi. We need to restore negotiation and diplomacy and stop this unilateral confrontation which is making the world a very unsafe place for us all.
9
@Harold r Berk
What would stop the Russians from cheating on the new treaty? Maybe the same thing that stopped them from cheating on this one, nothing. Heck even the Obama admin said they were cheating, they just didn't do anything about it.
Wasn't one of the reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union was their attempt to stay with the United States in an arms race at a cost they could not afford? They now threaten an ego driven US president with questionable, futuristic weapons he not only has to match them but surpass them with a greatly increased defense budget at a time when our budget issues are growing at unsustainable levels.
6
This article surprisingly misses a key point.
A primary problem with the current medium-range nuclear weapons treaty is that China is not a signatory.
The U.S. is withdrawing not only to counter new Russian missiles in Europe, but more importantly, Chinese missiles in Asia.
2
Not true. The US has no current need for intermediate range missies in Asia, because there is a) no foreseeable scenario in which they’d be used and b) no country that would accept them.
4
@Yeah
“b) no country that would accept them.”
Correct, for now, but irrelevant. Intermediate range missiles deployed in Guam can reach nearly all of China’s population. No other basing is required, though it could be possible in the future.
“a) no foreseeable scenario in which they’d be used”
Perhaps. But this same argument can be made for virtually all nuclear weapons, and yet nobody is suggesting scrapping them.
Moreover, these missiles can also be used with conventional warheads. I don’t know how plausible this is, but China has certainly mentioned this possibility with their new intermediate range missile.
The administration has cited China as one part of its justification for exiting the treaty. This alone warrants a discussion of the issue, pro and con, in the article.
1
@John. The US currently has the Tomahawk cruise missle in sea and air launched versions. Little or no conversion is needed to field a land based Tomahawk.
1
With a new craze for grater power projection on the part of the new crop of populist leaders there's nothing that stops them from triggering the race to mutiually assured destruction by breaking lose from the old arms control regime. Again, this provides a better chance to divert attention from the failures of governance as also to sustain the military-industrial compexes of their respective countries.
9
Unfortunately, for Mr. Trump, the size of the nuclear arsenal, the power of weapons, and the range and speed of missiles are all marks of his own power, importance, and might. This is a man who bragged about the size of his body parts during the presidential campaign. In his mind, anytime that he has that is bigger than someone else's "Trump wins." That is his ultimate goal in life. Weapons and the military are for him merely tools for his self-aggrandizement. The question is whether anyone can or will restrain him.
31
Of course there are winners--the military industrial complex, the lobbyists, and the politicians who take their blood money.
81
To the question in the heading of your article, the answer is YES. And Mr. Trump, our own commander in chief, the same man who created a non existent "bone spur" to get out of service in the war against Vietnam, has now torn up our Nuclear Arms agreement with Russia in order to do WHAT? This man, who has never been to war except with his wives, has now possibly put the rest of the world in danger of a war which no rational person wants, but Donald seems to be less rational with every passing day.
I'm an old man, almost 80, but I still have things I want to do. Watch my two daughters enjoy life, as I have been lucky enough to do. Be a grandpa for the first time (hopefully less than two months from now). And take my wonderful wife to Niagara Falls, which she has never seen. But Russia has more than 8000 Atomic bombs, and we have more than 7000. God Help our World.
23
Before we go wild with intermediate offensive weapons race we should try deploying our defensive weapon systems. Theatre High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) or even Upgraded Early Warning Radars (UEWR). Because these radars and related defensive missiles should mitigate a short range missile attach on Europe it may make Russia think twice about deploying missiles that could attack Europe. These radars will look well into Russia, they will complain about the fact that we are spying on them and we would be.
This may help drive a treaty forward.
3
I remember some 40 plus years ago, when the increasing environmental destruction, and the spiraling nuclear arms race, made serious students of our future question how long the human race would last. The consensus conclusion among many was that though it was uncertain if it was too late to halt our own self created destruction, when we realize that's it's too late, it will have been too late for a long time.
With unconscious extremely narcissistic world leaders like Trump and Putin at the pinnacle of controls of nuclear arms, it's hard not to be haunted by that forewarning from decades ago.
17
Trump equates leadership with toughness. Real leadership, on the other hand, is more complex and involves a commitment to integrity of important ideas and communication that will not give in, even when the other side appears to withdraw. Right now, we need real leadership and not the kind that Trump and Bolton exude.
18
Of course there is a winner in any arms race:
US Military Contractors, and, by extension, the Congressmen they own (give campaign contributions to) to make sure their contracts are ever increasing.
C'mon. That's why there IS a new arms race.
43
@Michael Yes, and this is why the U.S. can't afford national health insurance, something that every relatively civilized country has had for a long time.
6
@Michael Yup, the 'Military Industrial Complex' that Ike warned us about - back in 1961.
3
Next to Trump, US military leaders look like vegan pacifists but the reality is they're voracious carnivores -- whether Russian or American. Half of all unencumbered tax dollars and trillions in US debt sit in the petty cash box of "Defense".
Defense dollars support the military and its mission but also a massive sector of the economy: weapons makers, suppliers, mercenaries, civilian personnel, logistics, energy. War or the threat of war keeps this sector striving, with $100 million contracts for air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan, black box projects with $1 billion accounts, tons of pharmaceuticals, veteran and military health, etc.
Military spending is the exemplar of a socialist command and control economy.
A sub-component of military spending is nuclear weapons production, maintenance, infrastructure delegated to the Department of Energy (yes, Rick Perry, the dullest awl in Trump's toolbox). With nuclear power stalled, only nuclear weapons generate demand for fissile material and only new weapons keeps them in business.
Putin, like all dictators, needs to be on war footing to keep his grip on a long suffering population.
Trump wants out and Putin wants out. So both US and Russian war machines can crank up for another round of producing stuff that kills more and kills precisely.
Remember deterrence turns on a stand-off -- mutual assured destruction. The side with less has to launch first. Imbalance is doomsday. Stand-off is war industry bonanza.
20
The “Doomsday Clock” has now moved to two minutes to midnight i.e. the symbolic annihilation point for the planet and the closest it has been since since 1953, at the height of the Cold War. Due to the Trump administration’s denial of climate change and withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords and Trump’s tweets e.g. “fire and fury,” seemingly entertaining the idea that we could actually use nuclear weapons to resolve a conflict, the Atomic Scientists’ Security Board, which includes 14 Nobel Laureates, has advanced the clock twice since January 2117.
Trump’s occult financial dealings with the Russians and his dependency on fossil fuel donors mean that he is unlikely to either contain Putin or acknowledge the accelerating peril of global warming and the warnings of distinguished scientists will never move him. We may not be able to remove Putin, only the Russian people can do that, but at least we can remove our own dangerous and mentally unstable tyrant.
Go to- #RewindtheDoomsdayClock
10
No. The US and Russia are not entering a dangerous new era against each other. Putin and Trump agreed on ending the INF not because Russia broke it, but Russia’s fear of China. The first country China will attack will not be the US, but Russia.
2
Over the past decades, the US has fought virtually all their wars abroad and which has posed no direct threat to the homeland. We have seen thousands of US bombs and missiles landing in cities across the globe, killing men, women and children. On the other hand, no enemy bomb or missile has landed in US cities to remind the elites that war isn't the best option. This pattern of fighting abroad has encouraged the doctrine which has metamorphosed into the US having well over 800 military bases across the world.
Preserving treaties or even making new ones would mean nothing to the elites unless one country is smart enough to realize that they have to establish a military base close to the US and point their missiles towards the US as a reminder that the US homeland can also feel those bombs and missiles that have made children orphans all over the world, desicrated holy places, murdered men and women and stole away the natural resources of other nations who couldn't defend themselves.
It is a hard ball to swallow but it is the only way to treat their megalomania and bring the US back to theae treaties and prevent or at least postpone the Armageddon that will someday come upon this planet.
2
The United States Government does not have enough money to provide for adequate education or socialized medicine or infrastructure repairs and all of a sudden it has enough money to destroy the world with more nuclear weapons. What has America become?
50
@Robert Dole - What has America become? It has become more equal to other nations as they too have achieved the ability to do that which used to belong to the US alone, the use of nuclear weapons for blackmail. In this, the US has not changed at all.
I strongly recommend you read Daniel Ellsberg’s most recent book if you want the facts.
1
@Robert Dole belligerent?
1
We will need a nuclear deterrent for the foreseeable future. We can't trust Putin not to obliterate us if he could do so with impunity. Nor should the Russians trust the likes of John Bolton in a crisis if they don't have a counterstrike capability.
Putin is playing a long game. He has little to fear if the US has more nuclear weapons. We can already obliterate Russia with ease. And we'd only go nuclear in response to a WMD attack or if we faced a major battlefield loss at their hands. But I seriously doubt Russia would provoke us into a standup fight with conventional weapons.
Having elected and tolerated Trump already makes us an unreliable ally, even after he leaves. Short range and low yield nukes may lower the threshold for first use. They also increase the chances for use in response to a mistaken attack when mere minutes count.
A nuclear arms race, particularly one that threatens collateral damage to US allies, will further destabilize our alliances. Rather than have a dangerous partner, countries may prefer leaving the US nuclear umbrella under entities such as NATO. They might choose to develop their own arsenals or come to a new accommodation with Russia.
Russia can bring other tactics to bear. They can prop up right wing parties in response to expanded military budgets, threats of military conflict, and US 'provocations' and 'militarism.' Putin also gains at home by standing up to a dangerous foe who's out of control.
No good will come from an arms race.
4
Wait a minute. We know that global warming will turn the planet into an unliveable environment. We KNOW that there will be mass migration and wars as a side effect. People will starve by the millions, coastal cities will be flooded. This is fact and is the direct result too many people living carbon emitting lives.
Now we also can expect that the climate change driven wars will involve nuclear weapons. We also know that a thermonuclear war will produce massive fires and so-called nuclear winter. No global warming. So come on folks, embrace the lesser horror for the good of ecosystem.
Sarcasm aside, one way or another megadeath is coming. You cannot run from it, you cannot hide from it.
3
Only yesterday, Kay Bailey Hutchison, our ambassador to NATO, blamed the Russians for the potential demise of the INF treaty, while acknowledging that in the past the Russians have advocated for a global INF treaty. A universal INF treaty, if not a total pipe dream, would appear to be a most worthy goal. It would protect Russia from nearby enemies and potential enemies, its public explanation for conduct regarded as having violated the treaty. It would protect the entire Middle East, including Israel, from nuclear attack. It would put an end to the threat of nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. And it would do what its main purpose was at the outset: protect our NATO allies from nuclear blackmail by Russia. Which raises a question: since the INF treaty in its present form applies only to land based weapons, and doesn't apply to weapons deployed on surface ships or nuclear armed submarines, is the U.S. playing into Russian hands by terminating the treaty, thus making our NATO allies dependent on a U.S. nuclear umbrella at a time when Trump's rhetoric and policies have made the U.S. appear much less reliable as an ally, possibly, if not probably, much less inclined to risk an intercontinental nuclear war in defense of our allies threatened by intermediate range missiles?
2
Both the US and Russia are dominated by oligarchs whose power and wealth lie in the development and production of military weapons and oil. Therein lies the problem that seemingly defies solution.
8
EXACTLY!!!!
Thanks for this intelligent, reasonable review and reminder!
PEACE is Vital!
4
For several thousand years, people deliberately fought wars. Why not break away from that pattern and strive for a peaceful permanent solution? We gave War a chance – for several thousand years – and it continues to fail us. Why not give Peace a chance – for the next several thousand years?
If we say we care for our future, then let's act like we really do. We must stop supporting killings that are as old as history itself. In the name of defense and national security, military is really about killing. To kill for our own survival.
Ultimately as a person of conscience, what good is a life of unbearable guilt – of tolerating killings? Can you truly and honestly persuade your loved ones that it’s fine for the innocent people to cry in pain and die - in exchange for our own survival - as long as they don’t happen right in front of our own eyes?
Especially when our country praises our soldiers as a hero, but isn't serious at all about taking care of them after their services are done. Actions speak louder than the words.
True heroes are those who use nonviolence to change the world - like MLK. Until the military takes the vow of nonviolence, resist the flattery of a hero talk.
10
@BLOG joekimgroup.com
Offensive violence will not stop until it is met with defensive violence.
The real villain here is John Bolton. There is not one arms control treaty that he doesn't want to tear up. In a crisis situation he will be the first to call for a first strike. As long as he has Trump's ear the world is in great peril. I urge the Times and other journalists to expose the dangerous extremism of National Security Advisor John Bolton.
53
This is nonsense that will accomplish little except line the pockets of defense contractors. First, attacks from foreign powers are likely to take the form of cyber-attacks, or disinformation campaigns as we’ve seen with Russia’s election interference. These sorts of attacks are cheap, hard to attribute, and have minimal risk of escalation. They are ideal of damaging a open society like the United States.
Second, If there is a nuclear confrontation between superpowers, some technological differences is unlikely going to change the near-guaranteed outcome of mutual assured destruction. With a few thousand warheads flying, being off-target by an extra 5 miles is not going to matter. Plus, the weapons will be long-ranged ICBMs and sumarine-launched SLBMs, not the IRBMs of the treaty.
If you are a major shareholder at Raytheon or some similar company. Congratulations, your portfolio will probably do quite well in years to come. If you are an average American taxpayer, too bad. You’re about to waste a bunch of money making rich people even richer.
8
No actually there is a supreme winner: Planet Earth.
The sooner we eradicate ourselves, the better.
Sure, it'll cause some temporary environmental destruction, but the planet has millions of years to recover from this blight.
All traces of the cancer that is the human species will be virtually eradicated within a hundred years, at most. No-one and nothing will miss it, anywhere in the universe.
So, bring on the nukes! Faster! More, more, more!
We need to make sure we really do the job right, for once.
6
@Steven
No doubt Steven, reference Robinson Jeffers,my favorite poets works.
@Steven How emo and dramatic. But the earth is just a ball of mostly iron, oxygeon, magnesium, and silicon. It doesn’t win or lose or care.
We are rapidly moving towards a democratic nuclear world. A world in which every country will have easy access to nuclear weapons. It's the only logical outcome. And it's the only guarantee that a country wouldn't be overrun by a nuclear power in the near future.
1
That certainly worked with guns! Same result with nukes only faster destruction.
There is a winner in the arms race. The defense industry continues to absorb the largest share of the budget to our peril.
Our short sighted military planning denies American children educational opportunities and denies the entire population necessary medical care.
This short sighted spending for war material is the downfall of our modern American militaristic planning!
14
It is just dangerous for the world that nuclear powers compete for the development of modern nuclear weapons and missiles. It is the duty for the US, Russia, China and the other nuclear powers to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. Other countries, which mange to go without nuclear weapons, have always felt pressure of nuclear powers. If nuclear powers think they can dominate neighboring countries, it will lead to the spread of nuclear weapons to other contries. Hurry and abolish nuclear weapons before they destroy the earth.
4
It’s very tempting to blame Trump, as the unfit president that he is, for the break-down of arm treaties and likely arms race to follow.
Just remember that arms-reduction treaties like the INF are agreed upon, signed and if need be, renegotiated by countries who genuinely want to reduce rivalries and nuclear risks; that was the case of the USSR and USA in the late ‘80s.
Putin’s Russia is exactly the opposite - a regime that organically needs enemies and confrontation to stay afloat. Let’s be realistic and keep internal ideological quarrels out of US international politics. Stop viewing Russia and international treaties whichever way it’s convenient to score political points.
5
@Gimme A. Break -- "a regime that organically needs enemies and confrontation to stay afloat"
That is too near a description of our own military security state, and DC's ideas of our world position.
4
During the Cuban missile crisis the US and the Soviet Union came to the brink of a nuclear war. In its aftermath both sides decided to develop a series of protocols to prevent misconceptions about each other's intentions from escalating into a nuclear exchange. In this new era of tension between Russia and the US none of those safeguards are in place.
The United States is in a vastly superior military position with respect to Russian than we were with the Soviet Union. But this superiority has led to arrogance. We moved the NATO alliance to Russia's doorstep. The US also unilaterally abrogated the ABM treaty and the agreement that limited medium range misses.
Russia has pushed back by annexing the Crimea and supporting rebels in the Don Boss region of the Ukraine. If this escalation continues we may easily face a military exchange or an accident on either side that could lead to a catastrophe.
We have been in such a dominant position for so long that we act as if Russia's interests simply don't count. On the other hand Russia is no longer a world power, but neither are they a minor nation that can be ignored and some of these actions are simply a reminder of that.
This combination of US dominance and Russian weakness is a dangerous situation for both countries. The only way forward for both nations is through diplomacy. Let's hope that hope that happens very soon before we step back into a very dangerous past.
7
“We moved NATO to Russia’s doorstep”. Did it ever occur to you that the countries who entered NATO actually desperately wanted to be in ? Or you think that only what Russia and the US want matters ? How did Russia suffer when NATO moved to its doorstep ? Did they have to be worried that the perfidious Baltic States planning to use American back-up to invade Russia ?
4
@Gimme A. Break -- Did it ever occur to you that this is not about what those little countries wanted?
It is about what is good for keeping the peace, for us.
It is avoiding nuclear brinkmanship like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Remember that Cuba wanted those Russian missiles, and that was not reason enough to do it.
4
Agreed
If keeping nuclear weapons enough to destroy other countries a few times is not a crazy strategy I have an alternative proposal to the US and Russia, which is much cheaper and harmless (to to other countries) and which was proven to work in the history of Japan. Hostage exchanges! Spouses, children, and even parents of the presidents, aides, cabinet members, and congressional leaders are mutually required to reside in the capital of the enemy country, half of the year. Usually those hostages were treated very well, maybe even spoiled.
5
@Aki -- That has been tried in our more distant past. It didn't work. The sort of monsters who lead nations into wars killing vast numbers of people will also risk the lives few hostages.
3
My cohorts hid under the desks at school.
We knew the futility and took it as a side lesson in absurdity. We knew about M.A.D. We also learned about the space programs , Mercury, Gemini, and finally Apollo, which took us to the moon.
It was only a public grammar school education, yet a good one. A quality education can be of critical importance in a time of pressing existential risk.
8
A new arms race would be very expensive. Large expenditures of funds will be transferred from taxpayer to government workers. The opportunity for mischief is endless. It's not a straightforward nuclear arms race I worry about. It's the grifting, two sets of books, arms race that can make two soulless men richer then one of them is. The graft, the bribes, the vigs. The sheer boldness of this scheme means Trump's done. Putin's in charge. He runs the show. He walks into the room and Trump melts. The oligarchs win and, unfortunately for us, Trump is one of those oligarchs.
7
I would like to recommend a book on the subject of nuclear treaties. My Journey At The Nuclear Brink by William Perry should be required reading for anyone in government or outside who wishes to be informed about the history of ou arms treaties. The proliferation of these weapons is the greatest threat to our species,
5
@Slow fuse
Another highly recommended book, which gives a detailed history of the nuclear arms race from Hiroshima through Star Wars, from a number of perspectives, is
"By the Bomb's Early Light" by eminent historian Paul Boyer. In the Foreward, he eloquently describes how he felt as a college student during the Cuban Missile Crisis, watching the classroom clock creep towards the 'zero hour', and wondering if there would be any hours after that . . . His book is affordably available through used book services.
Those of us who were young at that time have memories that we should be sharing with the wider world, does anybody have a good idea for a hashtag ?
4
"If Mr. Trump continues to push for an expanded nuclear arsenal and abandons the strategic arms accord, Congress should freeze the nuclear modernization budget and block funding for new weapons."
Amen to that. As if the world didn't have enough problems, it now has two reckless, aggressive, and impatient post-WWII enemies hell bent on destroying treaties and threatening a new arms race
Both men are huge risk takers because they really don't care about their people. Both are also financially corrupt, never missing a chance to line their pockets when it comes to their friends and cronies, including defense manufacturers.
It's shocking to read of dollar amounts of $494 billion to be spent on "modernizing" our nukes, a number that's probably a bare-bones estimate given how fast defense contracts can skyrocket.
As old leaders die, new ones seem eager to repeat the same stupidities. Trump and Putin--belligerent and trigger-happy-- what could go wrong?
33
Until we have a president that is not working for the interests of the Kremlin, we will continue making strategic errors, in Putin’s favor.
The longer Trump remains in office the more irreversible these “ mistakes” become.
As in real estate law, time is of the essence.
17
By the end of the year, Washington may be ready to field a low-yield nuclear weapon that could make it easier to use nuclear weapons without courting Armageddon....
[ This is a chillingly absurd passage. Be assured that use of nuclear weapons whether high- or low-yield would be answered in ways too terrifying for a rational person to consider. The point is never ever to use nuclear weapons and work every single day for reducing the stores of such weapons. ]
44
@Nancy -- Anyway, we've already got nuclear weapons whose yield can be dialed down quite low.
The first ones were nuclear depth charges, back at the beginning, when it was discovered that dropping them on an enemy submarine could have some nasty practical problems.
For entirely low yield weapons, we had our backpack nukes and the Davy Crockett nuclear recoilless rifle with a yield of 10-20 tons, not kilotons but just tons. That too was in the 1950's and was deployed but then withdrawn.
None of this is new, or even hard to do. It is just a really bad idea, which is why we stopped doing it.
6
As some of us fear, the unraveling of the I.N.F. has open the door to the undoing of the other nuclear treaties. This is one of the most ominous developments in world affairs as if we did not have enough with global warming, environmental degradation, overpopulation, and others. The problem is more serious now because there other players in the game, in particular, China which should be part of any future agreements. We need to build a worldwide grass root movement to stop nuclear developments now.
11
Trump won't pass up any opportunity to line the pockets of his big business defence contractors. We don't need any increase in our nuclear arsenal. In fact, the kinds of weapons that Trump wants us to build are already obsolete.
The article briefly mentions hypersonic weapons. These are the future and other nations are well underway in developing them. These missiles fly so fast and with such maneuverability, that they are essentially indefensible. There are also hypersonic projectile weapons in the works. These would make our aircraft carriers sitting ducks.
The world is changing and the types of weapons that we used to have a monopoly in are becoming more commonplace. As technology spreads around the globe, many nations will have the ability to develop these new weapons. Aircraft carrier vulnerability is a serious threat as these platforms are our primary method of projecting force.
The solutions is for nations to get along. We can no longer be the one big dog in the yard, especially, if hypersonic weapons can punch holes in our carriers at will.
Instead, we should we should be pursuing trade and cultural exchange. We should be trying to knit the world together instead of building walls and dividing up the globe into little bilateral pieces. Unfortunately, international cooperation doesn't poll well these days. America first is America alone and isolated. That is never a good defence strategy.
30
@Bruce Rozenblit-Thank you. A third rail of weaponry is cybersecurity penetration and manipulation--as seen in our voting system vulnerabilities. This is a cheaper way to mitigate threats and one that the Chinese are pursuing. Yet as diplomacy and cooperation show much yet untapped potential to reduce the arms race and associated threats--makes more sense to invest money and resources there. Especially as all countries face a common enemy: environmental degradation and climate change.
6
@Bruce Rozenblit - It's not just Spanky. Congress Critters always overwhelmingly vote to approve our War Budgets.
4
"If Mr. Trump continues to push for an expanded nuclear arsenal and abandons the strategic arms accord, Congress should freeze the nuclear modernization budget and block funding for new weapons."
That may well be the correct and logical decision.
It will also be a great 2020 Republican campaign ploy: looks who's now supporting the Russians? No danger that the Russians will freeze whatever budget they have or plan to have for this.
4
One time in school, after the alarm bell of a nuclear drill, we got under our little desks. The teacher had a look on his face as if this was a ridiculous joke. Years later, I learned that this wouldn't have protected us from nuclear radiation.
It might be in the interest of almost all people to avoid nuclear war, or any type of war, but it can be in the interests of the rulers to engage in wars, and as Hiroshima and Nagasaki suggest, even nuclear war. To fight nuclear wars, the rulers have had bunkers built for them. Shouldn't we all have the same chance to get in these bunkers? While the D of I might have us believe that everyone is equal, I agree with George Carlin's take on this.
The cost of wars' destruction, including nuclear wars, and the war weapons and programs, and the danger we are constantly living under, are costs the rulers impose on humanity.
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Don’t be naive. Of course there are winners in an arms race, and they’re on both sides.
The conservatives who push belligerence over diplomacy win.
Militaries on both sides win.
Arms makers and their employees and dealers win.
Politicians who receive large donations and support from conservatives, employees, arms makers, dealers and militaries win.
For all of them it’s a Win/Win. Just not for the rest of us.
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George Bush began withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in December 2001 and from there the United States has continually increased military pressures with Russia expressly in focus. I consider the actions of Bush to have been self-defeatingly foolish and we are being so now, but just as Bush was being pushed by the likes of Cheney so too Trump is being pushed by the wild advisers about him.
Yes, this is a worrisome matter indeed.
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@Nancy -- Yes. But the aggressive targeting of Russia started before that. It also characterized the Clinton Admin, and not because Bill was a hawk so much as because he was unable or unwilling to control the hawks who ran things since WW2.
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@Mark Thomason
"But the aggressive targeting of Russia started before that. It also characterized the Clinton Admin..."
An important comment indeed. I am grateful
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@Nancy
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/opinion/tearing-up-the-abm-treaty.html
December 13, 2001
Tearing Up the ABM Treaty
With his decision to junk the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, President Bush is rolling the diplomatic dice. If he is lucky, the Russians will live with the decision and relations with Moscow will continue to improve while Washington freely experiments with new missile defense systems. If he is not, Mr. Bush may alienate the Kremlin and give rise to a dangerous new arms race with Russia and possibly China as well....
The 'winner' in a new arms race is Trumjp. He scores big campaign donations from the super-wealthy arms manufacturing lobby.
Which is also the reason there won't be enough Congressional votes to ban spending on new arms.
It's long past time to connect the dots and take lobby money completely out of government. If we wait on this we may end up having to learn our lesson from an actual nuclear war.
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The INF Treaty, the ABM Treaty, and the original START (1991) were all conceived within a strategic conventional environment that exhibited a definite semblance of balance. With the expansion of NATO into the territories of the old Warsaw Pact, the appearance of this balance was lost. Hence, Russia has had to rely on an increasing theater-nuclear posture to override its weakened position. This situation was exacerbated by Western manipulation of events in Georgia (2008) and the Ukraine (2014). Only a new security architecture for all of Europe -- from the Irish Sea to the Urals -- can ameliorate the very dangerous situation of conventional-nuclear miscalculation, increasing and modernized strategic warheads, and defensive weapon systems, which are inherently destabilizing. There is also the very real possibility that because of this new nuclear arms scenario, more and more countries outside of Europe will choose the nuclear option. This is especially true when there is a superpower strategic vacuum and the regional balance of forces appears to shift in an alternative direction. The Middle East is a prime example. The Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is already in deep trouble. The debacle of the INF has only made its shaky existence worse.
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@Chaim Shalom
Another tiring retread of poor Russia’s abuse at the hands of the ugly Americans.
I’m no hawk but the Russia panderers play a one note samba, and play from the same playbook, very much like our Republican friends here do.
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Either Mr. Trump doesn’t understand the bleak outcome of a nuclear exchange or he does and thinks it gives him winning leverage. This move is the type of diversion he has used all along. Since he can’t raise the stakes from here he is threatening the end of humanity to avoid possible prosecution.
He is not mentally fit to continue and must be removed from office, now I believe the Constitution demands it.
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American leadership in the past 74 years has been successful in preventing nuclear war. When at high risk with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy ensured his aides read that year's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Guns of August" as a history lesson to avoid stumbling into a widespread armed conflict, which happened with World War I.
Recent production of "low-yield nuclear weapons" could unleash wider use causing unimaginable loss of life and devastation to our planet. The 2 countries that possess 90% of nuclear weapons should talk, just as the same Americans and Russians did in 1962.
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@Jeffrey Freedman
If Trump had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis, none of us would be here today.
But Trump IS president how. I hope we survive the next 23 months.
3
I was happy that neither my child nor my grandchild grew up in a world where they were taught the flimsy defense of hiding under one's school desk to survive nuclear war as my generation was.The president's attempts to turn back the social clock to his childhood apparently extends to this issue as well.
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@runaway
My cohorts hid under the desks as well.
We knew the futility and took it as a side lesson in absurdity. We knew about M.A.D. We also learned about the space programs , Mercury, Gemini, and finally Apollo, which took us to the moon.
It was only a public grammar school education, yet a good one. Quality education can be of critical importance in a time of existential risk.
5
The Trump plan is to synchronize taking the country to war at the same time the Mueller indictments are breaking so as to distract everyone from all his violations of federal laws. This is just part of the setup.
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@Kip Leitner It could also be that Putin calculates that a new nuclear arms race will bankrupt the USA, just as it did the Soviet Union. The one strategy doesn't preclude the other.
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Since the US has totally mischaracterized the illegal right wing nationalist Ukrainian coup in 2014 the danger of nuclear war has been raised. Ukrainian nationalists after the coup bragged that the Russians in Ukraine were going to be treated like 2nd class citizens. Putin annexed Crimea, an area of great national security importance to Russia that is largely populated by Russians. Now the neo cons have what they think as a provocation to escalate the Ukrainian v. Russian violence. The nuclear tensions are directly related to the break down by the US of any meaningful contact with Russia. Pelosi and Schumer have already called it treason to meet with Russians. Rachel Maddow has charged that the Russians could turn off the electricity in the US during the polar vortex. The anti Russia hysteria in this country could have dire consequences.
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@c harris -- "Since the US has totally mischaracterized" almost all of the revolutions and counter-revolutions we've seen. It is all seen through the kaleidoscope lenses of US security hawks. That applies to most of the color revolutions, the Arab Spring, the autocratic backlashes, and the overthrow of autocracy that we'd help impose in so many places as part of keeping them away from the Soviets at any cost.
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@Mark Thomason - Agree completely, however let's call them what they are - "war" hawks, not "security" hawks. While we're at it, let's change the name of the DOD back to Department of War.
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The era of arms race between only Russia and the USA is over. Don't lose sight of China and North Korea. Until the Korean peninsula is denuclearized, a 4 way arms race is real and while the 3 major nuclear powers have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world 10 times over the country that can defend itself against a nuclear attack has an advantage because it makes their nuclear weapons obsolete.
?Yes there is no winner in an unforeseen and foolish nuclear attack but the current equilibrium that has been established for almost 75 years since the only nuclear attack on our planet by the USA on Hiroshima and Nagasaki cities of Japan exists because of the nuclear arms race. The USA is not the only major nuclear power anymore and if any country tries a dangerous attempt to nuke another country then it will be self destructive as it should be.
There is therefore no choice unless there is a trust worthy verifiable peace treaty among all the nuclear nation that they will never ever be the first to use a nuclear weapon no matter what. Peaceful nuclear non proliferation has its price and being complacent is not it. There is US leader post world war II who has developed result orientated working relations with other nuclear countries than the Trump administration and one can only hope that he can ensure peaceful use of nuclear/atomic energy in the world forever.
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@Girish Kotwal -- The China race is dominated by the India Pakistani race, and the Pakistani behavior driven by India is also a part of a wider pattern involving Israel vs the Islamic bomb that in reality is owned as much by the Saudis who paid for it as by Pakistan that did it.
It is all interconnected. China-India complicates India's position in India-Pakistan, while Pakistan's fear of India is further complicated by the Israel-Islamic bomb position and funding.
If China fears North Korea, it also fears Japan sitting on the edge of nuclear capability, and it certainly fears Russia with which fought on China's current border repeatedly in 1932-39 many times (two very big ones) and 1969 (twice in 7 months).
Dear Editors,
Thank you for this thoughtful piece about a new "nuclear arms race".
No matter what Mr. Trump might do, Congress should not only freeze the nuclear modernization budget and block funding for new weapons, it should seek to reduce the overall tax burden that supports our outsized military/"defense" presence around the world.
In a country which can't afford to adequately fund public schools, can't help its neediest citizens, where we have the worst income inequality of any "wealthy" nation, where our infrastructure is crumbling, we continue down this path at our peril.
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@Ellen - No hope for sanity from Congress. Congress Critters - (D) or (R) - never met MIC spending they didn't like and MIC budgets are overwhelmingly approved. Congress is officially and blatantly a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Bigs, including the Big MIC, thanks to John (R)oberts anti-democratic Citizens United ruling.
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@Miss Anne Thrope
Eight Democratic senators voted against last year's military/"defense" budget increase, including Senators Sanders, Warren, Markey, and Merkley. And fewer than forty Congressmen/women.
7
"If Mr. Trump continues to push for an expanded nuclear arsenal sand abandons the strategic arms accord, Congress should freeze the nuclear modernization budget and block funding for new weapons."
And if Russia moves ahead with development and deployment of its own advanced weapons systems while American weapons, delivery systems as well as anti-missile development is halted then what?
How much risk and exposure should the 311 million Americans be subjected to? Should America stand strong or defenseless against powers that would, if the opportunity arose, actually use their weapons?
Remember how Franklin Roosevelt had to prepare American industry for World War II as the great majority of Americans, fed up with war in Europe, believed that disarmament and pacifism was a rational choice? America and its allies suffered heavy losses as our Industry and our technology took 2 years to achieve industrial supremacy. Our ships didn't even have radar. American tanks were inferior to everything on the battlefield. Men drilled with wooden rifles because there wasn't enough production.
If the Russians, Chinese or North Koreans and Iran achieve any strategic advantage how much lead time will we have to nullify or defeat it? How many millions will die in America as we regret failing to build and maintain our nuclear and other strategic deterrents?
If there must be an arms race then America must be the winner. Unchecked nuclear development by our opponents is American suicide.
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@Jay Reality check Jay. Our nuclear weapons and their delivery systems can wipe out the planet ten times over. So relax, take a deep breath and get a hold of yourself. Russia's military budget is $69 billion per year. China $228 billion. Ours? Try $700 billion. You are falling for the oldest trick in the book by the military-industrial complex: Scare the living bejeezus out of them and they will listen to anything.
Yes there are big winners in the new arms race. They are all the huge military corporations; the thousands of ancillary companies that support them, the share holders and the workers.
How about a couple of new aircraft carriers, new missles, submarines, next generational aircraft, electronics, surface ships, tanks, and on and on.
Sadly, our and the other countries which are the de facto "enemies" are really our biggest economic partners. We cooperate to make Cold Wars happen to keep our hyped up technological, steroid-like nonsense going at the great expense of and to Humanity.
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Humans seem to have a built-in suicide gene. Whether it is the environment or nuclear weapons, we are determined to make our planet unlivable for humans. I am glad I will have no descendants to suffer through the coming time when life becomes impossible for us.
13
The NYT editorial staff lives in a fantasy world. Putin and his cronies have one mission in mind; Surpass the United States in nuclear weapons development and delivery systems. Also, be able to strategically challenge the U.S. on the battle field with superior conventional weapons or at least non-nuclear advanced hypersonic weapons and other technology. China seeks the same advantage and may already be able to check our carrier battle groups. Iran and North Korea also seek the ability to win or counter American forces with nuclear or advanced non-nuclear weapons.
Mr. Trump is not the threat. Nor is his threat to leave the treaty a misguided strategy. It may well be a warning shot across the bow to Putin. And the rest of the world terrorist nations as well.
Russia will not stand down through words alone. If unchallenged without real backup there are no words of reason that will convince Putin that the U.S. is serious about maintaining real deterrence.
Does anyone seriously believe that words will compel any action by Russia? Economic sanctions will not work either. The communist party of Russia.will demand and receive the sacrifice of the people who believe the U.S. is unfairly imposing economic hardship.
No one in their right mind wants an arms race. No one in America seriously wants America under the threat of Russian or Chinese military supremacy and perhaps even collaborating to nullify American power.
Pax Americana is the only real security against nuclear war.
4
@Jay -- "Putin and his cronies have one mission in mind"
Their tiny economy can't do it. They can't do it even if we don't spend trillions on this preposterous expansion of our own.
Russia baiting of the Cold War has merged with Russia baiting of the excuse for Hillary variety. Both were and are nonsense, to avoid admitting truths closer to home.
3
@Mark Thomason - from Wikipedia:
Global Military Spending = $1,739 Billion
US Military Spending = $712 Billion
Russian Military Spending = $66.3 Billion
Our direct MIC spending is 11 times more than Russia, representing 41% of total global spending. We spend as much as the next 13 nations combined and 11 of those are our military pals (however, Spanky's not yet done insulting them, so who knows?). We spend $25 Billion/yr maintaining our nukes - nearly 40% of Russia's total military budget. Of course, our $712 Billion is just direct costs. Including indirect costs, US military spending is in the $1.3 Trillion/yr range - about 1/3 of our total budget.
2