A dangerous world

OF all the strange utterances by Donald Trump, his tweet about expanding America’s nuclear arsenal is the most disturbing. 

On Thursday, the US President-elect used Twitter to say the US “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes”. Asked yesterday to clarify his remarks, Trump said: “Let it be an arms race,” adding that the United States would win it.

Almost as alarming was the response from Russian president Vladimir Putin during a press conference yesterday in which he saw “nothing unusual” in Trump’s comments. Putin said that any arms race was caused by the US pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missiles Treaty — under George W Bush in 2002 — and added: “If someone is stimulating a nuclear arms race it’s not us.”

It would appear that both men are justifying an increase in their respective stock of nuclear weapons, defying not just non-proliferation agreements but commonsense.

If so, the world has just become a more dangerous place.