Trump Wants 'Denuclearization,' But Does Washington?

In the grim competition between environmental destruction and nuclear war over which one will cause the demise of civilization, the nuclear option gets considerably less media coverage than global warming. This is unfortunate, for nuclear weapons are no less of a threat. In fact, given how many close calls there have been since the 1950s, it’s miraculous that we’re still around to discuss the matter at all. In a global geopolitical environment that continues to see rising tensions between the West and both China and Russia, as well as between India and Pakistan and between a genocidal nuclear-armed Israel and much of the Middle East, few political agendas are more imperative than, to quote US President Donald Trump in early 2025, denuclearization.

The signs are not auspicious, however. For one thing, the last remaining missile treaty between Russia and the US, New START, expires in February 2026. New START limits both countries to 1,550 deployed warheads on no more than 700 long-range missiles and bombers. If Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin don’t come to an agreement before then, the end of this treaty could lead to a dangerous increase of deployed nuclear arsenals, and possibly a new arms race. On the other hand, if the two countries embrace the opportunity presented by the impending expiration of New START to forge a new and ambitious arms control regime, that could at least set the Doomsday Clock back a few seconds.

Russia wants a new treaty to limit arms, as it proposed that topic for discussion at the Alaska summit in August between Trump and Putin. Sadly, it is doubtful that Washington wants the same thing. On multiple occasions Trump has said he wants “denuclearization” talks with Russia and China, but the Washington establishment is much more ambivalent. In October 2023, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the US endorsed a very belligerent stance. Among other things, it recommended that the US fully modernize and expand its nuclear arsenal; mount on delivery vehicles “some or all” of the nuclear warheads it holds in reserve; increase the planned procurement of B-21 bombers, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missiles; “re-convert” SLBM launchers and B-52s that New START rendered incapable of launching a nuclear weapon; deploy nuclear delivery systems in Europe and the Asia-Pacific; and prepare for a two-theater war against China and Russia.

Similarly, in February 2024 the head of the US Strategic Command recommended a return to deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with multiple nuclear warheads. Incredibly, some officials even advocate resuming explosive nuclear testing, on which the US declared a moratorium in 1992. Such a resumption would doubtless encourage other nuclear states to do the same thing, which could trigger an arms race.

If there is a danger of a two-front war with Russia and China, as the Congressional Commission reported in 2023, the obvious way to avoid such a horror is through diplomacy. Not through a massive arms race that could precipitate this very war.

It is worth noting that Washington’s aggressive posture is nothing new. Since the start of the Cold War, the US has been by far the most globally imperialistic state and by far the most responsible for escalating arms races. Its military and Central Intelligence Agency interventions in countries around the world have been on a vastly larger scale than the Soviet Union’s or Russia’s, and it has typically rebuffed Russia’s frequently expressed desire for peace. In their magisterial book The Limits of Power (1972), the historians Joyce and Gabriel Kolko argued that as early as the 1940s, “Russia’s real threat [to Washington] was scarcely military, but [rather] its ability to communicate its desire for peace and thereby take the momentum out of Washington’s policies.” Because of the Soviet Union’s relative economic and military weakness, Joseph Stalin sponsored international peace conferences and made numerous peace overtures to the Truman administration, all of which were dismissed. Such overtures continued in the months and years after Stalin’s death, but in most cases they met with a chilly reception.

Decades later, Mikhail Gorbachev enraged American officials by pursuing “public diplomacy” around nuclear disarmament. In 1985 he unilaterally declared a moratorium on nuclear weapons tests, hoping the US would follow suit. It didn’t. The following year, he announced his hope of eliminating all nuclear weapons everywhere by the year 2000. The Reagan administration was flabbergasted and generally appalled by the idea, though Ronald Reagan himself was sympathetic. But at the summit later that year, Reagan followed his advisers’ recommendations and rejected Gorbachev’s pleas to eliminate nuclear weapons. At least something was salvaged the following year, when Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty.

In our own century, as NATO expanded ever farther east—blatantly threatening Russia—the Kremlin responded, yet again, with what amounted to peace initiatives. Putin floated the idea of joining NATO (as Boris Yeltsin and even Gorbachev had), but the US had no interest in that. A few years later, in 2008, Moscow proposed a pan-European security treaty, arguing that this was necessary in order to overcome all vestiges of the Cold War. That idea went nowhere, much like Moscow’s 2010 proposal of an EU-Russia free-trade zone to facilitate a Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, “which would provide mutual economic benefits and contribute to mitigating the zero-sum format of the European security architecture,” to quote the analyst Glenn Diesen. In the end, the US rebuffed all Russian attempts to thaw relations.

Evidently, for many decades the US has rarely had much interest in respectful coexistence with Russia. As outlined in a very revealing RAND Corporation report from 2019, its priority has been to “stress” Russia, to “overextend” it, for instance by provoking it to invade Ukraine. Because “some level of competition with Russia is inevitable,” Washington has to wage a “campaign to unbalance the adversary” and “caus[e] the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.” This campaign has been going on since the 1940s.

Indeed, in its report RAND even tentatively suggested that “US leaders could probably goad Russia into a costly arms race by breaking out of the nuclear arms control regime. Washington could abrogate New START and begin aggressively adding to its nuclear stockpile and to its air and missile delivery systems. Moscow would almost certainly follow suit, whatever the cost.” In 2023, as we have seen, the Commission on the US Strategic Posture endorsed these recommendations.

The only hope for peace, and particularly for a reduction of nuclear arsenals, is that American citizens will relentlessly pressure their elected representatives to stop marching toward Armageddon and act to ensure human survival. After all, if there is a danger of a two-front war with Russia and China, as the Congressional Commission reported in 2023, the obvious way to avoid such a horror is through diplomacy. Not through a massive arms race that could precipitate this very war.

From the anti-war left to the MAGA right, we all must demand that, for once, politicians choose the path of sanity.