President Donald Trump plans to propose “a bold new trilateral arms control initiative with Russia and China,” according to a letter signed by Trump and shared on Twitter this week through the National Security Council’s account.
In the letter, written on White House stationary, the president said China plans to double the size of its nuclear arsenal, while Russia works on novel nuclear-weapon delivery systems such as a nuclear-powered cruise missile, a prototype of which reportedly killed some Russian personnel last year.
The claims are similar to the administration’s previous rhetoric about arms control, which boils down to a preference to replace the current U.S.-Russian New START treaty with an accord that ropes in China and is not limited to the Kremlin’s strategic nuclear weapons.
The White House released its letter, apparently an open missive to the general public observing the 50th anniversary of entry into force of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a day after The Guardian reported that Trump has picked Marshall Billingslea, the current Treasury assistant seecretary for terrorist financing, to be the next U.S. nuclear negotiator. The administration has twice nominated Billingslea to an undersecretary spot at the Department of State, but both nominations were eventually returned to the White House. Billingslea was a controversial nominee for Congress, owing to his ties to George W. Bush era torture-interrogation programs of terrorist detainees imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
Last week, Trump said he is willing to discuss nuclear arms control with the four other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom. No such meeting was scheduled at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
Russia is keen to have France and the U.K. at the table for nuclear arms control negotiations, but the western European nations have intimated no appetite to constrain their native arsenals.
Critics of the Trump administration’s approach say a trilateral treaty, which China has said multiple times it will not join, is only a White House phantom devised to give arms control opponents now in political power an excuse to ditch the New START treaty.
New START, which went into effect in 2011 under the Barack Obama administration, limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. The treaty will expire on Feb. 5, 2021, unless the two nations’ presidents agree to extend it for another five years, to Feb. 5, 2026.
Russia has said it broadly favors renewal.
New START covers larger weapon systems, or strategic systems, intended to assure destruction of key military and industrial capabilities, including the people who operate and support them. Tactical weapon systems, smaller-yield weapons intended for use on a battlefield, are not part of the deal.
Arms control boosters say Trump should extend New START while seeking a follow-on deal.
