Donald Trump Wants to Cut Nuclear Weapons. Bad Idea.
Trump’s suggestion of a trilateral arms agreement between the United States, Russia, and China is strategically interesting—but doomed to failure.
President Donald J. Trump made a statement about the prospects of denuclearization that should have many of his critics, and even some of his supporters, confused. After all, Trump is often portrayed as a braggadocious and bombastic individual. By all accounts, the forty-seventh president likes this image of himself, and promotes it in the media. While speaking to the much-maligned World Economic Forum (WEF), though, Trump indicated his desire to engage in trilateral denuclearization talks with both the Russian and Chinese leadership.
If so, this would be a major reversal in U.S. nuclear policy. After all, as awful as these weapons are, the fact remains that America’s nuclear arsenal—and fear of its second-strike capability—is likely one of the few things that has consistently deterred America’s adversaries over the decades. Removing this capability, or even downsizing the arsenal, is the kind of thing that would have made right-wingers scream and leftists cheer ten years ago. But Trump’s arrival has twisted the old lines of politics into an unrecognizable mess.
According to Trump, the idea for denuclearization talks is not a new move. In fact, it is merely an extension of a concept he first brought to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attention during the closing year of his first term. Naturally, Putin was enthusiastic about the concept. Trump reasoned that if he and Putin could craft a deal, then they could each put pressure on Chinese leader Xi Jinping to agree as well.
It’s a Tripolar World Now
Setting aside the dangers of effectively deterring oneself by neutering one’s greatest deterrent for war, the country’s nuclear arsenal, Trump’s suggestion is interesting. That’s because, unlike so much of professional Washington, Trump and his team have consistently demonstrated a keen understanding that the world is no longer a unipolar system. It is a multipolar one.
Specifically, the world order is a tripolar configuration. As the works of international relations scholars, such as Randall Schweller, Jr., and Richard Rosecrance have shown, tripolar systems are inherently unstable and almost always eventuate in great power conflict because of the power disparities that naturally exist between the three players. However ill-fated, Trump’s proposal is a logical way of addressing a real strategic concern: that our unstable tripolar world order is about to implode in a world war that will go nuclear.
Alas, for any nuclear disarmament treaties to be discussed in earnest among the three great powers today, there must be a degree of trust among the interested parties. Unfortunately, no such trust exists. And both Russia and China believe they are doing better than the United States. There is a virtually nonexistent relationship between the United States and Russia today. Besides, the Russians since the heady Cold War days have always been proficient in manipulating arms control talks to favor their interests and ensure that the gullible Americans tie themselves down with legalese. Why assume that they would act differently today?
The Ukraine Context
Another element that goes unnoticed in discussions of Trump’s proposal is the outside context. The new president has vowed to try his hardest to end the conflict in Ukraine in his first 100 days in office. This promise has shaped his messaging strategy: he has begun to publicly castigate the Russians for having a possibly endless war on its hands, and highlight the casualty estimates of Russia and the platforms lost in combat as proof that Putin needs a deal. Trump continues saying that Russia’s economy is about to collapse unless a deal is had. While this is almost certainly not true—Russia has spent years sanctions-proofing its economy and building up internal self-reliance—it plays well in the media, which remains staunchly pro-Ukraine.
Furthermore, Trump knows how bad of a hand he’s been dealt in Ukraine. He’s trying to gain leverage on Putin. In this context, then, talk of a new round of nuclear arms control treaties among the great powers might be just the carrot that Trump needs to dangle in front of Putin in order to bring the Russian leader to the table.
After all, the Russians have always had a strong prioritization of interests among their elites. Getting the United States to willingly restrain and reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal is, in the minds of most Russian policymakers, a necessity that is orders of magnitude greater than fighting another 18 months in Ukraine, just to walk away with the same territories that Russian forces have held since 2014.
At the end of the day, however, the Russians (and perhaps the Chinese, if they come along) will expect Trump to follow through on his promises to reduce U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles. And if Trump doesn’t comply, then there will be bigger problems facing the U.S.-Russian-Chinese relationship in the long run.
Russia Will Cut Corners
Besides, in the long history of arms control treaties signed with Moscow throughout the Cold War, there is little evidence to suggest that Moscow ever truly respected the treaty.
Remember the anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons ban that President Jimmy Carter hashed out with the Soviets? Well, it didn’t work. The Americans restrained their own development of ASAT weapons whereas the Soviets paid lip-service to the ASAT treaty while secretly building their arsenal up.
Don’t forget the Obama era New START Treaty with Russia, either. The Americans artlessly restrained themselves—remember that Obama, too, believed nuclear weapons were so last century—while allowing the Russians to modernize their non-strategic nuclear forces.
Today, those intermediate-range nuclear weapons threaten the West. Meanwhile, the Americans and their partners have allowed their respective nuclear weapons arsenals to effectively wither on the vine. Some nuclear weapons experts have opined that they are dubious of the functionality of large portions of America’s nuclear weapons arsenal due to mismanagement and political inattention since the end of the Cold War.
The Real Reason Trump Abrogated the INF Treaty
And let’s not even get started about the People’s Republic of China. Everyone piles on Trump for having abrogated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. Certainly, the Russians were very unhappy with the end of that Cold War-era agreement. What no one seemed to acknowledge, though, was the fact that China’s military was never a party to that arms control agreement from the 1980s, and was never bound by its limitations. For decades, China was allowed to grow and modernize their arsenals as they saw fit—and they did just that. By revoking the INF Treaty, Trump may have offended the Russians, but it allowed for the Americans to at least theoretically begin modernizing their intermediate nuclear forces to counter China’s growth as a major nuclear weapons power.
Which leads inevitably to another key point about looping China into these talks. Unlike the Russian and American nuclear forces, which are relatively transparent with each other in order to avoid catastrophic accidents, China’s nuclear forces are shrouded in secrecy. The reasons for this are complicated. But all this talk about a tripolar nuclear arms reduction treaty is unlikely to sway Xi to either be honest about his nuclear capabilities and intentions, or to ensure that China does not continue its alarming growth as a nuclear weapons state.
Focus on Space-Based Missile Defense
All this is to say that the new president should not waste his limited time in office pursuing nuclear arms reduction deals that will not be worth the paper they’re printed on. Instead, as the father of America’s Space Force, Trump should be directing the Space Force to finally build a comprehensive, space-based national missile defense system. Forget about squandering precious time and diplomatic capital on meaningless nuclear arms reduction talks. Just get serious about space-based missile defense. Tick-tock.
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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