If there is one thing to recognize, whether you agree with him or not, it is that Trump is willing to leave no puppet with a head, that is, to touch and retouch everything, to try to redefine the world, to break with the taboos and status quo in force until now. The proof? As if there were not already enough, now it is the turn of the nuclear arsenal.
Taking advantage of the fact that on February 5 the New START treaty, in force since 2010, expired, which imposed the last restrictions on the two most important nuclear powers (between the US and Russia they have 87% of the existing ones), after decades of agreements after the end of the Cold War, Trump has described it as “poorly negotiated” and“grossly violated” and he has let it die out, proposing the opening of negotiations for a new one starting from scratch; to show that he is serious, he announced months ago that the US would once again carry out nuclear tests. In this way, with the latter, and now with having let the treaty expire, Trump opens a new Pandora’s box waiting for the reaction of his nuclear counterpart, Russia, but even more so from China, his real target.
Trump seems to be interested in taking his general flight forward also to the nuclear issue to regain the monopoly and primacy of such power, since he considers that the United States has also lost it in this field, if not totally, partially, because of the agreement now expired, but above all because China’s technological development surpasses and seriously threatens the American in practically all the most important areas such as, and above all, the military, which makes him suspect that the same thing could happen or is already happening in the nuclear issue.
Thus, once again Trump acts under the Chinese syndrome rather than the Russian one, taking another step to neutralize who he really considers his main rival, hence the “ordering” of his American patio to expel China from it, hence his mismatches with his European “patio” to free himself from this labyrinth. and hence its attempts to reach agreements with Russia to prevent Moscow from looking too much towards Beijing, which it does largely driven by blind European viscerality.
Russia, anticipating the possible unilateral termination by the US of the New START, had been offering to extend it for at least a year to give time to prepare possible modifications. Trump’s fait accompli has left Moscow without the agreement at a time when, absorbed by the war in Ukraine, it does not have many possibilities, and certainly no interest, in turning efforts into an always very costly nuclear escalation, so Moscow will have to assess its next step very carefully since the extinction of the New START leaves the US free to start a new arms race for which Washington does have resources.
China, which did not want to know about New START at all, has already declared that it is not interested in negotiating a treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons either, aware of its technological development that can lead to great advances in this field as well, but also because, extremely jealous of its sovereignty and independence, and ambitious to expand into the world that until not long ago was foreign to it or was forbidden to it, It does not want to tie its hands in an issue such as nuclear weapons, which it knows is essential to exercise in the future as the power that wants to demonstrate that it is in its own right.
Europeans, with the always fractious France at the head, hallucinated by the American turn on the war in Ukraine, and even more so by the stubborn obsession with taking over, in one way or another, Greenland, are beginning to doubt Washington’s loyalty, which has led Paris to come out by proposing that its nuclear arsenal protect European countries. either because the U.S. gets for ceasing to do so, because it significantly reduces its protection, or, as some fear, because it stops doing so altogether. The French proposal has, of course, hegemonic intentions taking advantage of the situation, since there is nothing better to flatter and satisfy the always sick French chauvinism than to become the European nuclear shield. For the moment he has obtained a first success because his proposal has not been rejected outright and it is even considered to study it.
The United Kingdom, cunning as always, remains silent, neither denying nor affirming, waiting for an issue as thorny as it is transcendental to be defined and specified, both by Trump, Russia, and also by its French rival.
But as usual, and in any case, London will always end up aligning itself in one way or another with its American cousin; for proof, its acceptance of the proposal for funding by the Pentagon to store tactical nuclear weapons in the United Kingdom after the renovation of Lakenheath Air Base, a project that will cost 264 million dollars and will be completed by 2031, so that the United Kingdom will receive 12 F-35A aircraft by the end of this decade, being the first time it has had a tactical nuclear weapon launched from the air since 1998; while the planes will be British property, the United States will retain the ownership of any nuclear weapons they may carry.
As for the rest of the countries with nuclear capabilities (North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel), they are absolutely silent, since their nuclear potential, in no way comparable to those of the countries already mentioned, is due to and is aimed at deterring (or being used only in cases of extreme necessity) in relation to their own and local conflicts. without major ambitions, so they do not feel affected, nor do they want to be, or seem so.
In view of what has been said, the question is obligatory: can we be on the verge of a new nuclear arms race? Very probably not, because in reality no one is interested, since if there is one thing that these weapons have demonstrated, it is their effective deterrent capacity, since their use would be as disastrous for some as for others, so that they would face the immense expenses that such an escalation would entail when the weapons that each one possesses are sufficient for that mutual deterrence.
It does not justify insisting on manufacturing more. Another thing is the always unpredictable human factor, the one that sometimes history has shown us that in its delirium it can prevail over common sense, but even in the extreme case of characters and regimes such as the North Korean we continue to trust that this is not the case given the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons; also with regard to tactical nuclear weapons, never used so far.
Thus, we will witness, always within the normal diplomatic theater, the negotiation and signing of a novel treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons at least between the US and Russia; China is another thing, which, if it does not, as is likely, would not mean that Beijing would launch an arms race on its own in this sector having others much more productive and beneficial in the short and medium term in which to use its resources.
PS.- Of course, we rule out the always dreaded nuclear Third World War because, as a good friend of ours says, the “fourth war would be stoned because Humanity would have returned to the caves… those who survived.”
