Nuclear arms race intensified during Trump’s presidency

Donald Trump's presidency saw the destruction of key nuclear arms control agreements, the beginning of a new nuclear arms race, and a threat of nuclear war against North Korea, all of which have contributed to the increasing likelihood of nuclear war.

Over the last decade and more, nuclear war has grown increasingly likely. 

Most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been discarded by the nuclear powers or will expire soon. Moreover, there are no nuclear arms control negotiations underway. Instead, all nine nuclear nations (Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) have begun a new nuclear arms race, qualitatively improving the 12,121 nuclear weapons in existence or building new, much faster, and deadlier ones. 

Furthermore, the cautious, diplomatic statements about international relations that characterized an earlier era have given way to public threats of nuclear war, issued by top officials in Russia, the United States and North Korea. 

This June, UN Secretary General António Guterres warned that, given the heightened risk of nuclear annihilation, “humanity is on a knife’s edge.”

This menacing situation owes a great deal to Donald Trump.

As president of the United States, Trump sabotaged key nuclear arms control agreements of the past and the future. He single-handedly destroyed the INF Treaty, the Iran nuclear agreement and the Open Skies Treaty by withdrawing the United States from them. 

In addition, as the expiration date for the New START Treaty approached in February 2021, he refused to accept a simple extension of the agreement — action quickly countermanded by the incoming Biden administration. Not surprisingly, Trump was horrified by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons ― a UN-negotiated agreement that banned nuclear weapons, thereby providing the framework for a nuclear-free world. 

In 2017, when this vanguard nuclear disarmament treaty was passed by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, the Trump administration proclaimed that the United States would never sign it.

In fact, Trump was far less interested in arms control and disarmament than in entering ― and winning ― a new nuclear arms race with other nations. “Let it be an arms race,” he declared in December 2016, shortly after his election victory.  “We will outmatch them at every pass.” In February 2018, he boasted that his administration was “creating a brand-new nuclear force. We’re gonna be so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before.” 

And, indeed, Trump’s U.S. nuclear “modernization” program ― involving the replacement of every Cold War era submarine, bomber, missile and warhead with an entirely new generation of the deadliest weapons ever invented ― acquired enormous momentum during his presidency, with cost estimates running as high as $2 trillion.

Eager to facilitate this nuclear buildup, the Trump administration began to explore a return to U.S. nuclear weapons testing. Consequently, it announced in 2018 that, although the U.S. government had ended its nuclear tests in 1992 and President Bill Clinton had negotiated and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, Trump would oppose U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty. 

The administration also dramatically reduced the time necessary to prepare for nuclear weapons test explosions. In 2020, senior Trump administration officials reportedly conducted a serious discussion of U.S. government resumption of nuclear testing, leading the House of Representatives, then under Democratic control, to block funding for it.

Though many Americans assumed that a powerful U.S. nuclear arsenal would prevent an outbreak of nuclear war, Trump undermined this wishful thinking by revealing himself perfectly ready to launch a nuclear attack. During his 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican nominee reportedly asked a foreign policy advisor three times why, if the U.S. government possessed nuclear weapons, it should be reluctant to use them. The following year, Trump told the governor of Puerto Rico that, “if nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.”

Indeed, Trump appeared remarkably close to launching a nuclear war against North Korea. In August 2017, responding to provocative comments by Kim Jong Un, Trump warned that further North Korean threats would “be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” 

Trump’s threat of a nuclear attack triggered a rapid escalation of tensions between the two nations. In a speech before the UN General Assembly that September, Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if Kim, whom he derisively labeled “Rocket Man,” continued his provocative rhetoric. Meanwhile, the White House chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, was appalled by indications that Trump really wanted war and, especially, by the president’s suggestion of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and, then, blaming the action on someone else. 

According to Kelly, the military’s objection that the war would ― in the words of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis “incinerate a couple million people” ― had no impact on Trump. In early 2018, the U.S. president merely upped the ante by publicly boasting that he had a “Nuclear Button” that was “much bigger & more powerful” than Kim’s.

What finally headed off a nuclear war, Kelly recalled, was his appeal to Trump’s “narcissism.” If Trump could forge a friendly diplomatic relationship with North Korea, the general suggested, the U.S. president would emerge as the “greatest salesman in the world.” And, indeed, Trump did reverse course and embark on a flamboyant campaign to pacify and denuclearize North Korea, remarking that May that “everyone” thought he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Eventually, however, the U.S.-North Korean negotiations, including a much-heralded “summit” between Trump and Kim, resulted in little more than handshakes, North Korea’s continued development of nuclear weapons, and Trump’s return to public threats of nuclear war ― this time against Iran.

Given this record, as well as Trump’s all-too-evident mental instability, we have been fortunate that the world survived his four years in office.

But our good fortune might not last much longer, for Trump’s return to power in 2025 or the recklessness of some other leader of a nuclear-armed nation could unleash unprecedented catastrophe upon the world. 

Ultimately, the only long-term security for humanity lies in the global abolition of nuclear weapons and the development of a united world community.

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of "Confronting the Bomb" (Stanford University Press).