Trump's Doubts and Ignorance on Nuclear Treaty Worry Experts

[babylonsister]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/president-trumps-thoughts-key-nuclear-treaty-worries-experts


Trump's Doubts and Ignorance on Nuclear Treaty Worry Experts
On a call with the Russian president, Trump reportedly had to ask aides what the New START treaty was.

AJ Vicens
Feb. 9, 2017 4:57 PM


President Donald Trump's apparent ignorance and skepticism of a key nuclear arms reduction treaty between the US and Russia have nuclear arms experts concerned about the country's vulnerability on one of its most important national security issues.

According to a report Thursday from Reuters, when Russian President Vladimir Putin brought up the 2010 New START treaty on a recent call with Trump, the American president had to ask his aides what the treaty was. He then expressed doubts to Putin about extending the treaty, according to the report, and called it a bad deal.

"The Reuters report...suggests that he's extremely ill-informed about the most serious foreign policy, national security issues a president needs to know," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan organization focused on arms control policy. "His cluelessness is dangerous in the sense that if he doesn't understand the risks of nuclear weapons and commonsense measures to reduce the risks, he is, and the nation is, vulnerable to missteps."

snip//

Kimball says the Reuters report suggests that Trump is not prepared to handle the complexities of nuclear policy. "This is the guy who now has a military officer shadowing him everywhere he goes," he says, "carrying a 45-pound black briefcase that can be used by the president to transmit the launch codes to strategic command in Omaha to launch as many as 900 nuclear warheads in under 10 minutes, and no one has to agree with Mr. Trump about doing that. He has an incredibly awesome, almost sole authority to launch these weapons. He holds the fate of the planet in his hands, or in the briefcase that follows him everywhere, and this report today, it's incredibly disturbing because it suggests that he is clueless about this important nuclear risk reduction agreement and does not have a clear strategy for further reduce risks with Russia and other countries."

He also said that any attempts to brush this report off as just another odd statement out of the White House would be missing the bigger picture.

"This is not a 6 a.m. tweet in response to a cable news show," Kimball says. "This is a complex conversation with the president of Russia, and he's speaking about an extremely important treaty governing US and Russian nuclear forces. This is not your usual daily White House unusual statement. This one's a little different."

[mnmoderatedem]

1. everything trump says and does worries experts

and novices. and everyone in between. Or should.

[babylonsister]

2. Yea, but this is what's so damned scary...

"This is the guy who now has a military officer shadowing him everywhere he goes," he says, "carrying a 45-pound black briefcase that can be used by the president to transmit the launch codes to strategic command in Omaha to launch as many as 900 nuclear warheads in under 10 minutes, and no one has to agree with Mr. Trump about doing that. He has an incredibly awesome, almost sole authority to launch these weapons. He holds the fate of the planet in his hands