7mo ago

Trump wants denuclearization talks with Russia and China, hopes for defense spending cuts

apnews.com Trump wants denuclearization talks with Russia and China, hopes for defense spending cuts

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.

World News @lemmy.ml

apnews.com /article/trump-china-russia-nuclear-bbc1c75920297f1e5ba5556d084da4de

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It's because they fired all the people in control of the US nukes and can't figure out how to contact them.

Why? Is he suddenly running scared and realizing just how badly he has crippled the US military and national security, not to mention any hope of counting on our allies to back us up when the threats start coming?
Then again, Trump is gullible enough to actually believe other countries were disarming and would shut down our entire program without a hint of assurances. And then he'd have to tell his MAGAts to be shocked when a few of our cities got nuked because how could anyone have predicted this could happen.
- Dude...
  As the expression goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
  Sure, he's a morally bankrupt wildly corrupt autocrat. But sometimes his enemies happen to be people I hate too.
  Why is he doing this? I can't say for certain, but my guess is that the military-industrial complex is on the wrong side of his kleptocracy. If they'd given the right bribes and flattery I'm sure he'd be saying that we gotta build more nukes, but apparently the CEOs of Raytheon et. al. didn't back the right horse. Plus, Trump likes the dictator club. He'd rather he, Putin, and Xi spent those dollars on presidential yaughts and focused on locking up dissidents than having an arms race among buddies.
  Even still... fundamentally he's fuckin right. It makes no sense for us to give billions and billions and billions to these companies so that we have the capacity to exterminate the human race a fifth time or something. Killing our whole species once is fuckin stupid to begin with, but planning on doing it multiple times is just advanced levels of stupid, and it's dangerous as hell to incentivize other countries to get into this red-queen race.
  Sure, his reasons are almost certainly evil as hell. But wherever they are... he's right that we should cut our military budget in half and negotiate disarmament.
  
  Plus, Trump likes the dictator club. He’d rather he, Putin, and Xi spent those dollars on presidential yaughts and focused on locking up dissidents than having an arms race among buddies.
  This is my read too.

Holy shit... I did not have that on my bingo card.
Fine. Who knows if it'll happen, but when he's right, he's right. I don't think he'll ever be able to make me like his fascist ass, but if he cuts the military budget and sets up a new arms control treaty I'll give him the credit for it.
We'll see.

Xi and Putin will probably just say “You first”. If trump can just pretend that is reasonable and unilaterally does the cut, that will be one good thing for humanity (albeit make some Americans uncomfortable).
- As an American, that idea makes me very uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong, I hate the fact that we have as many nukes as we do, and I hope to never live to see them used. But many of our national alliances exist only because we have as many nukes as we do; either to protect the ally, or to ensure they stay an ally. When you remove the threat of a military retaliation, the US doesn't really have a whole lot of true friends in this world. Should China or Russia fail to uphold their end of such a bargain, I doubt many would come to our aid if things went bad, and I'm just not built to live in a post-nuclear wasteland.
  
  Should China or Russia fail to uphold their end of such a bargain
  And they will, have no doubt about it.
  
  Now that you put it like that this whole thing is sounding a lot better. More isolated US? Sign me the fuck up, though unfortunately I don't think it's that simple.
  
  I appreciate your honesty. The fact you got many upvotes confirmed my previous guess that this type of insecurity, the fear of not being loved is quite popular among Americans. Been to many global south countries and Europe, I think that sentiment was very far from facts, so many people around the world just love the American culture, at least in Obama years, and even first year of Trump I.
  Now with Trump, who himself apparently has this insecurity personally and remaking America in his own image, this insecurity is being established nationally and internalized and getting reinforced.

I feel like there's a lot more context to this than is being reported
- Yes, he'll chop the US stockpile and let Putin carry on as usual. Because Putin suggested it to him as a way of saving money.
  Trump will spout it as one of his bigly clever plans, because he has common sense and is such a brilliant business man. Lot of people tell him. Very clever people.
  
  I hate that I read that in his voice

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