Arms Control and the Trump Administration

By Jason Sibert

The Trump Administration has a hostility to the idea of arms control unknown in the history of our country.

The administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (an Obama Administration Treaty), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (Reagan Administration), and the Open Skies Treaty (George H.W. Bush Administration).
Last month, the president’s new envoy for arms control, Marshall Billingslea, threatened to let the New START Treaty (Obama Administration) expire and warned that the United States is prepared to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” in order to “win” a new nuclear arms race if they do not agree to a new nuclear deal on Trump’s (undefined) terms. Recently, the Senate Armed Services Committee authorized $10 million for a nuclear blast test.

Arms Control Association Executive Director Darryl Kimball voiced opposition and said nuclear weapons testing would not help bring China and Russia to the negotiating table and that testing would be a “starting gun to an unpresented nuclear arms race.” An enlightened view of security would embrace the idea of arms control, or the idea that our country is better with fewer arms, especially nuclear arms.
This view of security would realize today’s challenges cross national boundaries and will require the cooperation of various nation-states, even if states like China and Russia don’t share our values. Real security seeks to bring geo-political competitors together to limit the role of arms in the conflicts that make them geo-political competitors.
By helping to set rules, America can work on internal security issues like our crumbling infrastructure, public health for the Covid-19 pandemic, and expanding healthcare. In time, authoritarian states could wither away by the example our country sets for democratic societies.

Jason Sibert is the executive director of the Peace Economy Project