Trump’s U.S. could give up the fight to stop nuclear arms from spreading
Who’s next?
Throughout his campaign, Trump seemed unconcerned about the further spread of nuclear weapons. When asked about the prospect of Saudi Arabia going nuclear, he casually said that they would get a bomb anyway. This was a retrenchment to the alarmist predictions of the 1950s and 1960s, which deemed the widespread attainment of nuclear capability virtually inevitable.
At the same event, Trump supported the notion of Japan and South Korea gaining nuclear capability to defend themselves against China and North Korea, seemingly ignorant of both history, and the Japanese constitution’s prohibition of “the bomb.” This effectively abrogates U.S. support of the NPT.
Like much of his rhetoric, Trump’s statements on proliferation are often contradictory. Shortly after winning the election, he denied via Twitter that he had said that more countries should have nuclear weapons.
And a year ago, he declared nuclear proliferation “the single biggest problem our country faces right now.” However, that was in reference to “having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon.” To whom was Trump referring? Of course, “some madman” is not just anyone. For Trump, the madmen reside in Tehran.
Tearing it up
By any reasonable standard, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more commonly known as the “Iran nuclear deal,” is the most important nonproliferation agreement of the twenty-first century. It blocks Tehran’s routes to “the bomb” and allows the Islamic Republic to begin reintegration into the international mainstream.
Trump, on the other hand, considers it “one of the worst deals I’ve ever seen.” During the campaign, he incorrectly claimed that the deal only made it easier for Tehran eventually to gain nuclear capability, and alluded to abrogating or redefining the deal when he takes office.
He is not alone: many House and Senate Republicans lambasted Obama over the agreement when it was struck, and vowed to do all they could to make sure it would never come to fruition. This tendency on the right is now in control of Congress, and will be ready to work with Trump once he takes office.
These views could throw off the world’s nuclear balance. For decades, scholars, politicians, and intelligence analysts predicted a “nuclear tipping point,” a situation where if one more nation obtained the bomb, the dam would burst and the world would go nuclear. None of these prognostications came to pass – but if Trump gets what seems to be his way, a tipping point might not be needed.
The nonproliferation regime is flawed, sometimes unfair, but ultimately functional. Under the Trump administration, however, the one nation that has done more to restrain proliferation than any other might yet destroy the entire fragile edifice.
Malcolm M. Craig is Lecturer in History, Liverpool John Moores University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution / No derivative).
