US President Donald Trump on Thursday announced his decision to restart nuclear arms control talks with China and Russia, expressing hope that all three countries could agree to reduce their massive defence budgets.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on rebuilding the nation’s nuclear arsenal. He stated that he hopes to secure commitments from the US’s adversaries to cut their military spending.
“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons; we already have so many. You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are, building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons,” he said.
Trump emphasised that the US has been spending a significant amount of money that could have been used for more productive purposes. While the US and Russia have held massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons since the Cold War, he predicted that China would reach a similar level of destructive capability “within five or six years.”
He warned that if such weapons were ever used, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”
