Both Philip Bump at The Washington Post and Sam Stein at The Huffington Post have taken note of the apparent conflict between Donald Trump and his staff over the meaning of his tweet Thursday morning about expanding America’s nuclear arsenal:
This came not very long after Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia must “strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems.”
Some of us immediately wondered when Trump and Putin might come to their senses. But that line of wishful thinking is obviously a dead end. The tweet did perk up some ears on Capitol Hill and in the media—and it also elicited some walk-back from Trump’s staff. For example, chief spokesman Jason Miller said:
President-elect Trump was referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it — particularly to and among terrorist organizations and unstable and rogue regimes. He has also emphasized the need to improve and modernize our deterrent capability as a vital way to pursue peace through strength.
Kellyanne Conway also weighed in on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show with a murky tempering of her boss’s tweet. Then Friday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski said she had had a conversation with Trump directly about nukes in which he had said: "Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass."
On NBC’s Today Show, in an interview with Sean Spicer(who will soon be the unpresidented-elect’s press secretary), Matt Lauer noted that we’ve had decades of bipartisan U.S. policy dedicated to reducing the world’s nuclear arsenal, something Trump’s tweet taken literally argues should be reversed. Lauer cited what Trump had told Brzezinski, and this interchange ensued:
SPICER: Other countries need to be put on notice that he's not going to sit back and allow them to undermine our safety, our sovereignty. He is going to match other countries and take action.
LAUER: Was this a knee-jerk reaction, a shoot-from-the-hip reaction to Vladimir Putin yesterday saying that he plans to fortify the Russian nuclear arsenal?
SPICER: There's been several countries, Russia among them, that have talked about expanding their nuclear capability. The point that he was making was very clear: Other countries that want to threaten U.S. safety, are not going to sit back and allow this country to not act.
LAUER: But if there's going to be an arms race ...
SPICER: There's not going to be! Because he's going to ensure that other countries get the message that he's not going to sit back and allow that. And what's going to happen is, they will come to their senses and we will all be just fine.
Bump hits the bullseye when he says:
It is hard to reconcile "he is going to match other countries and take action" with "there's not going to be [a nuclear arms race]." The hair is too thin to split. Promising to engage in a nuclear arms race is not rejecting the idea of a nuclear arms race. Arms races begin when countries promise to engage in them.
As the chart at the top of this commentary shows, both Russia and the United States still have enough of these weapons to bring on nuclear winter and a consequent slaughter of human beings totaling in the billions. That makes tough-guy tweets by the man who will soon occupy the White House more than a little disturbing. The fact his staff felt compelled to try to lower the heat about their boss’s pronouncements might normally be taken as a good thing. But it is not the least bit soothing. Indeed, it’s nigh on blood-curdling that there exists such incoherence on “the team” about policies that, without hyperbole, have apocalyptic potential.
A sensible approach to Putin’s saying that Russia will strengthen its nuclear arsenal would be for Trump to say the two sides should renew talks about reducing their collections of these weapons—not more chest pounding.
Consider Trump’s previous contradictory statements about nukes with his tweet and latest remarks about expanding the U.S. arsenal, as well as his view that the U.S. might be better off if Japan and South Korea have nuclear weapons. One has to wonder if the first task for retired Gen. John Kelly at the Department of Homeland Defense will be to haul out and distribute some copies of that 65-year-old “Duck and Cover” film to show at elementary schools.