On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced plans to resume nuclear arms control negotiations with China and Russia, expressing optimism that all three nations could agree to scale back their extensive defense budgets.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump voiced concern over the vast sums being allocated to modernizing the country’s nuclear arsenal. He stressed his desire to reach agreements with geopolitical rivals to curb military expenditures.
“There’s no justification for us to keep producing new nuclear weapons when we already possess so many,” he remarked. “We have enough to destroy the world dozens—if not hundreds—of times over, yet we continue building more while they do the same.”
Trump highlighted the financial burden of such developments, suggesting that the resources could be put to better use elsewhere. While the US and Russia have long maintained enormous nuclear stockpiles since the Cold War, he warned that China is on track to achieve a comparable level of nuclear capability within the next five to six years.
He cautioned that if these weapons were ever deployed, the outcome would likely be catastrophic, saying, “That would probably mean total annihilation.”
