A Dangerous Gambit: Trump Wants to Denuclearize The U.S. Military
It is unacceptable that anyone in Washington would contemplate cutting nuclear weapons when no one really knows how many China has.
Weakness is provocative. Strength deters. America’s nuclear arsenal is the basis of that strength. Undermine it, without a viable alternative or defense, and you undermine U.S. national security.
President Donald Trump wants to enter negotiations with both Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping about reducing the combined stockpiles of nuclear weapons of the three countries. This would be an historic move by a post-Cold War U.S. president. Interestingly, the usual suspects who would support denuclearization talks, notably on the American left, have been oddly muted about Trump’s rhetoric—and the pundits on the right, who would ordinarily decry such statements from a sitting American president, seem reluctant to mention them.
Nevertheless, these comments must be assessed. If Trump is serious about reducing America’s nuclear weapons stockpile, and somehow getting the Russians and Chinese to do so, then he is not making America safer. Indeed, such a move would drastically reduce America’s capability to threaten rival states with nuclear retaliation, if they ever tried to launch a first strike on the United States. And the only reason a nuclear first strike has not historically been attempted on America by the enemies of the United States was precisely because rivals feared America’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
Of course, America’s nuclear readiness has long been a matter of concern. Nuclear analysts such as Paul D. Bracken warned readers in 2012 about the declining state of readiness that America’s nuclear arsenal had experienced since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, in 2009, former President Barack Obama announced his desire to totally denuclearize the United States. Fortunately, those idealistic plans died quickly under the weight of the frightening reality that is modern geopolitics—and back in Obama’s day, the world order was nowhere near as volatile as it is today.
What would reducing the American nuclear stockpile actually entail?
How Denuclearization Goes
For starters, a commitment to denuclearization would mean mothballing a force that has already been ailing. During his first term in office, President Trump revitalized the nuclear force and changed some of the doctrine from when Obama was president. But the force aged considerably under former President Joe Biden’s care. Meanwhile, since 2010, the Russians have enjoyed a massive expansion of their nuclear weapons arsenal, both in terms of sophistication and number.
What’s more, the People’s Republic of China has grown their nuclear weapons arsenal from scratch. Whereas the Americans have a fairly good understanding of the size and scope of the Russian nuclear weapons arsenal—gleaned from decades of nuclear consultations with the Soviet Union, whose leaders (in spite of their intense opposition to Washington in other areas) well understood the danger of a nuclear miscommunication—it has virtually no insight into China’s true nuclear capabilities and intentions.
China Cannot Be Trusted
Put simply, it is unacceptable that anyone in Washington—or Moscow, for that matter—would contemplate cutting nuclear weapons in their respective arsenals when no one really knows how many nuclear weapons China has, or what its strategic doctrine is for using such weapons. Suppose the United States got the count of China’s nuclear weapons—commonly estimated at around 400 systems of various sizes—wrong. Unlike the Kremlin, China is purposely opaque about their nuclear weapons capacity. And with a severe lack of human intelligence (HUMINT) collection on the ground in China, the U.S. intelligence services cannot confirm that their own counts are correct.
Rumors have swirled for years that the Chinese have a nuclear weapons arsenal that is greater than the best estimates of either the Americans or even the Russians. If so, the United States would be unilaterally disarming itself with no viable alternative for defense.
Space-Based Missile Defenses Are Not Yet Ready
Since taking office, Trump has rightly called for the creation of a national missile defense system of the kind that former President Ronald Reagan had advocated for—a comprehensive, layered defense system that included space-based missile defense. This is a necessary step forward. And if the arsenals of opposing nations were reduced, a space-based missile defense becomes even more viable.
But space-based missile defenses remain fraught with political, diplomatic, technological, and economic challenges to its creation. Though the first steps must be undertaken now, these problems are unlikely to be overcome in the next few years. What’s more, the Russians and Chinese both don’t really need nuclear weapons as a deterrent as much as they did. That’s because both Eurasian states have advanced and growing hypersonic weapons, against which the Americans have no defense.
America Would Be Exposed
Worst of all, the United States lacks its own hypersonic weapons. This means that deterrence—especially if the U.S. abandoned its nuclear weapons arsenal on the altar of denuclearization—would not be a viable option for Washington. Instead, America would be alone, exposed, and disarmed in the face of two revisionist powers who do not have America’s best interests in mind.
Trump absolutely must meet with Putin and Xi, as we are in a tripolar world order. The American president must negotiate with Russia over the fate of Ukraine, too. But his willingness to engage in diplomacy must not dip into making unilateral concessions. Reducing American nuclear weapons at this moment is a very bad move.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest, and a contributor at Popular Mechanics, consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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