U.S. general urges nuclear upgrade

Cites concerns about ‘more aggressive’ Russian behavior

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 disar-

mament, 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 on Tuesday with editors at The New York Times that he believed that history had shown that nuclear deterrence had basically kept the peace between the major powers since the end of World War II.

The general expressed confidence that 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.

“If you look at the Russian behavior since 2010 to the way they are now, it’s much more aggressive — much more, I’ll say, bellicose,” he said. “I woke up one day, and the Russians had invaded a sovereign nation, which was not something that was on my scope.”

When he looks back at the actions of Russia over time and its dealings with the United States, the general said, “For me the most important thing we can really do is maintain a strong nuclear deterrent.”

The U.S. approach toward Russia, he said, “has got to be some behavior that gets them to the table.”

Weinstein is among those who have accused the Russians of violating the IntermediateRange Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987. That pact was the first time the superpowers agreed to reduce their arsenals.

Russia has denied it is in violation of the accord, but the dispute constituted an additional irritant in the deteriorating relations with the Kremlin under Obama.

President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about his stance toward Russia and nuclear weapons. While he has expressed admiration for Putin — and has been fighting accusations by critics that Russia meddled in the U.S. election to help him win — Trump has asserted that he wants to increase America’s nuclear might.

In December, Trump said in a Twitter post that the United States must “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

On Tuesday in Washington, Christopher Ford, the National Security Council’s senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation, offered some further insight into the views of the administration, saying it would re-examine the policy of nuclear disarmament.

“We’re reviewing policy across the board — we’re no exception in that respect — and that necessarily includes whether or not, among many other things, the goal of a world without nuclear weapons is in fact a realistic objective,” Ford said at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference. “I do not know where we’re going to come out on that.”

He also said “unrealistic expectations” of denuclearization had increased the appeal of a global treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons and eventually eliminate them.

A United Nations conference on such a treaty is to be held next week in New York. Ford said he believed that the conference was a “fundamentally misguided ban-treaty-talk process.”