WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s comments about the U. S. nuclear weapons arsenal have for months rattled arms-control advocates about how his administration might change half a century of policy and posture.
On Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists weighed in with its annual Doomsday Clock assessment. The metaphorical clock shows how close the world is to “midnight,” or a worldwide catastrophe.
The group, started by physicists who built the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project, took the “unprecedented” step of moving the clock ahead by 30 seconds, to just 2½ minutes before midnight. It’s the closest the clock has been to midnight since 1953, when the U. S. and Soviet Union were in the early days of above-ground hydrogen bomb testing.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said it made the decision based on the possible use of nuclear weapons, but includes climate change and technologies that could inflict irrevocable harm, whether by intention, miscalculation or accident in its calculation.
The clock held steady last year, after ticking down from 5 to 3 minutes to midnight in 2015, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, incursions into Ukraine.
Mr. Trump’s comments first raised concerns among experienced arms control advocates when he repeatedly referred to nuclear weapons as “the nuclear,” which indicated an unfamiliarity with the subject. It was further heightened when he said he was amenable to more nations, namely Japan and perhaps Saudi Arabia, developing their own nuclear weapons, and that it was inevitable.
After winning the presidential election, he told MSNBC: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
The same day he wrote on Twitter: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
Now Mr. Trump has taken over a government that is implementing an estimated $348 billion plan to modernize its nuclear forces. Begun under former President Barack Obama, the effort has taken on increased significance amid the emergence of a defiant Russia and a new generation of nuclear powers, including India and Pakistan. It has also has raised questions of a renewed arms race like the one that defined much of the Cold War.
