News Trump denounced an historic U.S.-Russia arms treaty in a call with Putin is extremely troubling

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

Today’s news that President Trump denounced an historic U.S.-Russia arms treaty in a January 28 call with Russian President Vladimir Putin is extremely troubling for several reasons. First, the prospect of a nuclear war remains one of the most serious issues a president must deal with. The New START Treaty has been widely recognized an important step toward reducing the risk of nuclear war between the world’s two largest nuclear-armed powers, the U.S. and Russia. As the Arms Control Association stated today:

"The 2010 New START agreement has advanced U.S. and global interests by lowering and capping the two nation’s excessive strategic deployed nuclear arsenals, both of which remained poised on launch-under-attack alert status, meaning that thousands of nuclear weapons could be launched by the U.S. and Russian leaders within minutes of the go order.”

This is why a group of former commanders of Strategic Air Command and U.S. Strategic Command wrote a letter to the Senate expressing their strong support for this treaty, and contradicting President Trump’s claim that it’s a bad deal. Indeed, his own Secretary of State voiced support for the treaty in his confirmation hearings.

Second, the fact that such details of this call were leaked is yet more evidence that officials in Trump’s own administration are deeply concerned over the direction in which he is taking the country, and his tenuous grasp of sensitive national security issues. This should concern us all, especially as it relates to the possible proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Exclusive: In call with Putin, Trump denounced Obama-era nuclear arms treaty - sources
In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads…
REUTERS.COM|BY JONATHAN LANDAY AND DAVID ROHDE

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