A top National Security Council official last week reaffirmed the Donald Trump administration’s commitment to nonproliferation.
Despite media reports to the contrary, Trump is committed to pursuing activities to prevent the spread of nuclear and other unconventional weapons, according to Christopher Ford, NSC special assistant to the president and senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation.
That includes “supporting international nonproliferation regimes, securing or eliminating vulnerable nuclear material worldwide, preventing the spread of dual-use and other enabling technologies and capabilities, ensuring effective safeguards on peaceful nuclear activities, and interdicting proliferation shipments and otherwise doing what we can to slow the development of threat programs,” Ford said at the Arms Control Association’s annual meeting in Washington D.C.
“Opportunistic anti-administration hype aside, I would argue that this at its core is a gobsmackingly simple and commonsensical point,” he said in defense of Trump’s approach, which many in the arms control community have characterized as cavalier.
Specifically, Ford cited Trump’s comments on the campaign trail that suggested he would support allies’ development of their own nuclear weapons, particularly Japan and South Korea. Ford clarified that those comments were in the context of U.S. military decline and an outdated U.S. nuclear arsenal, which “has had a detrimental effect upon our alliance relationships.”
“It is at that hypothetical point of future U.S. weakness and helplessness that the president suggested that it might conceivably make sense for those countries confronted by an existential threat [from North Korea] to acquire nuclear weapons in order to defend themselves,” Ford said, adding that Trump has otherwise made clear he considers nuclear proliferation a great threat to international security.
Ford said he would not address specific nuclear and arms control policy questions until the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review is complete, which is expected by the end of the year. The new document would set U.S. nuclear arms policy for up to a decade.
Asked about the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, he said the United States intends to meet the limits on deployment of long-range nuclear weapons and “we are on track to do so.” However, Ford said he could not speculate on the possibility of extending the accord past its 2021 expiration until the Nuclear Posture Review is completed.
Ford said the administration also continues to consider potential responses to Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty as it develops its Nuclear Posture Review. Despite the tensions in the bilateral relationship stemming from these compliance concerns, which center on a Russian ground-launched cruise missile believed to breach the prohibition on weapons with flight ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, “there is agreement in principle about some kind of strategic stability dialogue” between the two countries, he added.
Other issues currently under review include the U.S. moratorium on nuclear explosive testing and the potential to resume such activities. Ford, however, said he sees “no meaningful likelihood” of a change in that testing freeze enacted in 1992 by the first Bush administration.
“I certainly have not myself seen anything that would suggest any of the sorts of concerns with the integrity, reliability of our stockpile that might drive any kind of a near-term decision to do that, thank goodness,” he said.
The United States has not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and there is no indication it would do so under the Trump administration.
