President-elect Donald Trump signaled Thursday that he will look to "strengthen and expand" the US's nuclear capability hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to enhance his country's nuclear forces....Here's what Putin said:
Trump weighed in with a tweet just hours after Putin spoke following a meeting with his military advisers to review the activity of the past year.
"The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes," Trump wrote....
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called for the country to reinforce its military nuclear potential....Does Trump want to arm us in anticipation of possible war with Russia? Hard to believe, consider how fond Trump is of Putin. Putin, for his part, continues trying to sweet-talk Trump -- earlier today he was trolling the Democratic Party:
"We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defence systems," the Kremlin strongman said.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has a message for the White House and Democratic leaders who accuse him of stealing their victory: Don’t be sore losers.Trump won't nuke Russia. He loves that guy.
That was how Putin answered a question Friday about whether Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump at the Russian leader’s nationally televised annual press conference
“Democrats are losing on every front and looking for people to blame everywhere,” Putin said in answer to a Russian TV host, one of 1,400 journalists accredited to the marathon session. “They need to learn to lose with dignity.”
The Kremlin leader pointed out Republicans had won the House and Senate, remarking “Did we do that, too?”
“Trump understood the mood of the people and kept going until the end, when nobody believed in him,” Putin said, adding with a grin. “Except for you and me.”
Sarah Kendzior thinks Trump's vision, if we can call it that, is of the U.S. cooperating with Russia to prevent nuclear proliferation elsewhere (and possibly nuking some of those other countries). She notes that he's talked about this in interviews going back to the Soviet years. One of those interviews was published by Ron Rosenbaum in 1987 and republished by Slate earlier this year. Here's how Rosenbaum summed up what Trump told him:
So what is the deal Trump thinks can be done? What is the Trump Plan?I'm sure Putin loves Trump's deep, abiding faith in Russians' goodwill.
It’s a deal with the Soviets. We approach them on this basis: We both recognize the nonproliferation treaty’s not working, that half a dozen countries are on the brink of getting a bomb. Which can only cause trouble for the two of us. The deterrence of mutual assured destruction that prevents the United States and the USSR from nuking each other won’t work on the level of an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange. Or a madman dictator with a briefcase-bomb team. The only answer is for the Big Two to make a deal now to step in and prevent the next generation of nations about to go nuclear from doing so. By whatever means necessary.
The other issue here is that Trump is parroting a call from groups such as the Heritage Foundation for significantly renewed nuclear arms spending. I'm not sure that's about pushing us to the brink of Armageddon so much as it's about lining the pockets of arms contractors. Yes, we see Trump questioning the costs of certain weapons programs. But that raises a question:
so all the money Trump is gonna save on our fighter jets will be plowed back in to making nuclear weapons?
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) December 23, 2016
Well, for Trump it's win-win. Trump challenges the cost of military contracts and heartland America thinks he's draining the swamp. Trump gets us into an arms race and it's the classic right-wing move of distracting the public with fear of a foreign enemy while the government enriches the rich. Oh, and once he's driven up the debt with military spending, the only possible way to get our fiscal house in order will be cuts in social programs, right? That's the cycle we're entering, I think.
5 comments:
yep...deeply troubling...The Pentagon lost 125 billion dollars, with no explanation, and here is Paul Ryan and McConnell about to rape the poor and infirm for that money...sheesh...
I think (or fear?) that you give Trump too much credit for strategic planning. I'm still of the school that's convinced he believes whatever somebody whispered into his ear last, whether or not that agrees with something he heard and believed ten minutes earlier.
Various whisperers may have some strategies in mind, but these are often conflicting strategies which Trump bounces off like an erratic pinball, setting off lights, warning buzzers, and bells as he skitters erratically through the pinball machine of current events.
When he finally uses a bit too much body english reacting to whatever the ball has recently collided with, and the machine registers "Tilt," we're all dead.
Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank
I want to know how his plans differ from the 30 year, 1T nuke upgrade proposal from BHO awhile back.
Among innumerable great quotes of things said by now late basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, on being asked to comment on yet another scandal at the University of North Carolina men's basketball program, he said:
"This isn't exactly the first time for that program. But this time, I think, the NCAA is so made at everything that's gone on at UNC, they'll probably extend the Lady Tarheels soccer team's probation status another two years."
Over the next 4 years, I can see the anger of Republican base and Trump supporters at what coalescing into a unified determination to put a permanent end to partisan politics by anyone other than white male Republicans.
Relax! The nuke comments are just Trump's way of letting his owner Putin know that as soon as Russia wants to turn the Middle East into "radioactive green glass" 'Murica will be on board. It's not going to be the Trumpocalypse... Well, it will be but, only for those people.
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