What will President-elect Trump do with America's nuclear arsenal?

Upon taking office, President-elect Trump will face a political challenge regarding the modernization of the US nuclear arsenal.

Unanswered questions

According to AP, Mr. Trump will have to deal with three extremely difficult questions: How much is enough to modernize the nuclear arsenal? Is the US safe if it reduces the number of nuclear weapons? Is now the time to modernize the nuclear arsenal? This is because modernizing the nuclear arsenal is likely to attract unnecessary attention from many other countries in the world.

How Donald Trump will handle the thorny questions surrounding America's nuclear arsenal remains a big question. Photo: AP

The Trump transition team website quoted the president-elect as emphasizing: “Mr. Trump is acutely aware of the catastrophic threat posed by nuclear weapons and cyberattacks.” The website also affirmed that Mr. Trump will modernize the nuclear arsenal “to ensure that these weapons remain an effective deterrent.”

Earlier, during his election campaign, Mr. Trump caused controversy when he declared that America’s allies in Asia would not be “protected under the American nuclear umbrella” if they did not pay more for America’s protection. In case these countries refused, Mr. Trump suggested that they should buy or build their own nuclear weapons.

The state of the US nuclear arsenal is rarely directly addressed, and so far, President-elect Trump is believed to be unaware of all the details related to the issue.

In debates with Republican rivals in the race for the White House, Mr. Trump appeared to not fully understand the importance of America's strategic triad of weapons including submarines, land-based missiles and strategic bombers in launching nuclear attacks.

Therefore, according to many experts, Mr. Trump needs to quickly grasp the key issues related to nuclear weapons, especially in the context that he is about to be the direct supervisor of the Pentagon - where it is said that there are internal competitions related to the need to spend a lot of money to modernize traditional weapons or nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons modernization - a mandatory task for Mr. Trump?

Michaela Dodge, a defense policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said the new Trump administration would have an opportunity to change President Obama's current nuclear policy, which she said was "completely rational" in trying to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US security strategy.

“The United States has neglected to modernize its nuclear arsenal since the end of the Cold War, and many of its nuclear weapons are now past their useful life. The United States needs to move quickly to modernize its nuclear weapons system, including building more nuclear plants and laboratories,” said Michaela Dodge.

However, retired Marine General James Mattis - the leading candidate for US Secretary of Defense, does not want to change the current status of the nuclear arsenal.

“You have to ask, is it time to reduce the strategic triad to a dual and eliminate land-based missiles?” Mr. Mattis declared to the US Senate Armed Services Committee in a hearing in January 2015.

Mattis suggested that US defense officials need to review key issues related to the nuclear arsenal “to clarify the role of US nuclear weapons. Are they just for deterrence? If so, it will be easier to determine how many nuclear weapons we need.”

Unforeseen dangers

Previously, President Obama agreed to modernize the entire US nuclear force after the US Senate approved the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia in 2010 when Mrs. Clinton was still US Secretary of State.

However, until now, this has been stalled because the cost of modernizing these weapons is up to hundreds of billions of USD - a number that, according to many experts, the US Government cannot afford.

Experts are currently assessing the need to modernize America's nuclear weapons as well as the risk of these weapons becoming targets for terrorists.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative, led by Sam Nunn, former chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, is also examining the possibility that terrorist organizations could carry out cyber attacks on the command and control systems of the aforementioned nuclear weapons.

“What if hackers could penetrate nuclear missile systems and order a preemptive strike that could kill millions?” asks the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

In addition to ensuring cyber security for its nuclear weapons, the US also faces another thorny question: should the US threaten to use nuclear weapons in response if its nuclear arsenal is attacked by cyber attacks?

Normally, every time a new US government takes power, it will set up a committee to carefully review the upcoming nuclear policy and quickly make decisions related to the "thorny" questions that Mr. Trump faces.

In 2010, President Obama also reviewed US nuclear policy and concluded that the US still needed to maintain a strategic nuclear triad. However, not everyone agreed with this conclusion.

Mr. William J. Perry, who served as US Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, has voiced skepticism about the need to maintain the above nuclear structure and called for the elimination of land-based missiles in the above-mentioned strategic nuclear weapons triad.

According to VOV