Trump and Putin: The worst case scenario

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: December 23, 2016 at 4:33:43 PM EST
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Trump and Putin: The worst case scenario
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Trump and Putin: The worst case scenario
> By Sarah Kendzior
> Dec 23 2016
> <http://qz.com/871436/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-putin-and-trump-release-statements-that-hint-at-increased-nuclear-armament/>
>
> On Dec. 22, president-elect Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin both announced that they intend to 
> increase their respective countries’ nuclear arsenals. Their use of language eerily paralleled each other. “The 
> United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its 
> senses regarding nukes,” Trump tweeted. “Russia should fortify its military nuclear potential and develop missiles 
> that can penetrate any missile-defense system,” Putin said at a defense ministry meeting.
>
> The joint statements set off speculation that the United States and Russia are planning an increase in nuclear 
> capacity that is in stark contrast to standard anti-proliferation policy.
>
> This is an erroneous interpretation. Trump and Putin aren’t heading to war with each other—they’re heading to war 
> together. Trump is a vociferous defender and admirer of Putin and is suspected by multiple intelligence experts of 
> being assisted and even co-opted by the Kremlin. Russian interference in the US election has been affirmed by 
> multiple US intelligence agencies and has led to calls for a congressional investigation. Rather than engaging in an 
> arms race against each other, Trump and Putin are possibly teaming up as nuclear partners against shared targets.
>
> Sound fantastical? It’s not: Trump has been obsessed with nuclear weapons for several decades, and has expressed his 
> desire to coordinate with Russia on nuclear policy since the 1980s. In 1984 Trump, backed by Roy Cohn, the political 
> operative who advised Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, proclaimed his goal of negotiating nuclear deals with the 
> Soviets: “It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles,” Trump said. “I 
> think I know most of it anyway. You’re talking about just getting updated on a situation… You know who really wants 
> me to do this? Roy… I’d do it in a second.”
>
> This rhetoric mirrors Trump’s current rejection of expert advice and conviction that his instinct is enough to guide 
> policy. (“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things,” he 
> said in March 2016 when asked whom he consults on foreign affairs.) During the 2016 US presidential campaign, Trump 
> refused to look at intelligence briefings or collaborate with anyone outside his inner circle. This advisory team is 
> comprised of corporate raiders, warmongers, and white supremacists, some of whom—like his nominee for secretary of 
> state, Rex Tillerson, or national security advisor, Michael Flynn—are personally tied to Putin as well.
>
> In 1987, Trump made his goal of Russian collaboration on nuclear power explicit: The Soviet Union and the US should 
> partner to form a nuclear superpower with the intention of intimidating other countries into dropping their own 
> nuclear plans.
>
> “Most of those [pre-nuclear] countries are in one form or another dominated by the US and the Soviet Union,” Trump 
> told journalist Roy Rosenbaum. “Between those two nations you have the power to dominate any of those countries. So 
> we should use our power of economic retaliation and they use their powers of retaliation, and between the two of us 
> we will prevent the problem from happening. It would have been better having done something five years ago. But I 
> believe even a country such as Pakistan would have to do something now. Five years from now they’ll laugh.”
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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