On Thursday, President Trump delivered a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and said he wanted to discuss the idea of “denuclearization” with Russia and China.
The president claimed that during his last term in office, he discussed the idea of denuclearization with Russian President Vladimir Putin, although the previous Trump administration withdrew from arms control treaties with Russia, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
“We were talking about denuclearization of our two countries, and China would have come along. China right now has a much smaller nuclear armament than us, or field, than us, but they’re going to be catching [up] at some point,” Trump said.
“I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of cutting back on nuclear, and I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow, and China would have come along too. China also liked it. Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about. It’s too depressing,” he added.
Today, only one nuclear arms control treaty remains between the US and Russia, the New START, which limits the number of nuclear warheads and launchers that each country can have deployed. Under President Biden, New START was suspended, but both the US and Russia have continued to comply with the limits set by the treaty, which expires in 2026.
In his address, Trump also called for an end to the war in Ukraine and said that efforts to secure a peace deal were now “hopefully” underway. “It’s so important to get that done. That is an absolute killing field. Millions of soldiers are being killed. Nobody has seen anything like it since World War II,” he said.
