U.S. general urges nuclear upgrade as Russia grows ‘more aggressive’

The general who oversees the United States’ atomic weapons arsenal has expressed concern over what he described as “much more aggressive” behavior by Russia in recent years, saying it justifies the need for a strengthened and modernized nuclear deterrent force in this country.

Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein of the Air Force made the remarks against the backdrop of a reassessment by the Trump administration of U.S. nuclear policy, including whether nuclear disarmament, as advocated in 2010 under President Barack Obama, is a realistic goal.

Weinstein, the deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, said in an interview Tuesday with editors at The New York Times he believed history had shown nuclear deterrence had basically kept the peace between the major powers since the end of World War II.

The general expressed confidence the United States’ nuclear arsenal remained effective, saying, “I sleep very well at night.” But like an aging vehicle, the general said, the arsenal is overdue for an overhaul.

“When you look at our deterrent, it was really built in the 1960s,” he said, and was last updated in the 1980s. “It should have happened in 2000 and 2001,” the general said, but “obviously our country was a little bit busy in 2001 based on another horrific act.”

Although the Obama administration spoke of its aspiration to eliminate nuclear weapons around the world, it did designate tens of billions of dollars to upgrade nuclear laboratories and prolong the lives of aging warheads. In 2014, the Pentagon acknowledged it would have to spend additional billions through 2019 to make emergency repairs on missile silos, bombers, submarines and other infrastructure that had been permitted to languish since the Cold War.

Weinstein, whose career spans four decades, attributed the increased tensions with Russia in large part to its actions under President Vladimir Putin, punctuated by Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014.