Donald Trump Calls For Expanding Nuclear Weapons

Maybe Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin aren’t such great buddies after all. After Putin said his country’s nuclear potential needs fortifying, Donald Trump tweeted: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

This is counter to the trend since the late 1980’s of reduction in nuclear weapons. Recent presidents from Reagan to Obama have supported reductions in nuclear weapons. with Ronald Reagan having spoken out in favor of eventual elimination. At his second inauguration in 1985 Reagan said, “We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.” Barack Obama called for “a world without nuclear weapons” while in Hiroshima last May.

As on many other issues, Trump has made many contradictory statement statements regarding nuclear weapons and it is difficult to predict what he will do based upon a single tweet. Among his controversial statements on nuclear weapons was his refusal to rule out the possibility of using nuclear weapons against ISIS. Although the Clinton camp was highly critical of him regarding this, his position was essentially the same as Hillary Clinton’s position in 2008 when she criticized Barack Obama for saying he would not use nuclear weapons against terrorist groups.