Minutes after President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that John Bolton would leave his job as national security adviser, voices in the arms control community wondered if the White House now would be more likely to extend the New START nuclear-weapons treaty with Russia.
“Is there hope for the New START Treaty?” Madelyn Creedon, principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under President Barack Obama, asked on Twitter.
Is there hope for the New START Treaty?
“Trump fires John Bolton as national security adviser, saying he ‘disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions”
By Washington Post Staff
September 10 at 12:05 PM— madelyn creedon (@mrc5920) September 10, 2019
New START, signed during the Obama administration, caps deployed U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550: a limit with ramifications both for global foreign policy and for day-to-day stockpile modernization work at the NNSA. Bolton, who generally opposes any agreement that limits U.S. power in any way, had expressed skepticism that the United States would sign off on the authorized five-year extension of the treaty past its February 2021 expiration.
Trump himself has signaled he would prefer a new trilateral nuclear treaty that included China as well as Russia and the U.S. The White House has also said that any follow-on to New START should cover tactical nuclear weapons and new forms of nuclear weapons.
In press conferences Tuesday not long after Trump’s noontime announcement that Bolton would leave, neither a White House spokesperson nor Secretary of State Michael Pompeo suggested any change in the White House’s nuclear arms-control policies.
Bolton’s “priorities and policies just don’t line up with the president,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said.
Pompeo, too, said that he often disagreed with Bolton’s policy positions.
Bolton was widely credited with speeding the Trump administration’s withdrawal in August from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which forbade the U.S. and Russia from deploying ground-based missiles with ranges of 310 miles to 3,100 miles or so, and the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iran nuclear deal: a non-treaty agreement under which Iran agreed to limit its production of fissile material.
Bolton leaves his post after about a year and-a-half on the job. Just last month, he met with senior NNSA leadership in Washington, tweeting a picture of himself and NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty with a mockup of the B83 nuclear gravity bomb.
.@LGHNNSA, appreciate the update on our nuclear modernization program. Ensuring the health of our deterrent is vital. Thanks to all the fine employees at #NNSA pic.twitter.com/UWeNFi7CnI
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) August 22, 2019
