{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.merkley.senate.gov/news/in-the-news/trump-alarms-arms-control-community-with-nuke-tweet", "Trump alarms arms-control community with nuke tweet", "2016-12-22", "2016", "2016-12", "Democrat", "House", "OR", "Jeff Merkley", "M001176", "www.merkley.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Trump alarms arms-control community with nuke tweet \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThursday, December 22, 2016\r\n\r\n\t\n\r\n\r\n\r\n  \r\n    By:\u00a0\r\n    Rebecca Kheel \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe arms-control community is sounding the alarm on President-elect\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0calling for the United States to \u201cgreatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability.\u201d\r\n\u201cThis is a how arms races begin,\u201d warned Joe Cirincione, president of nuclear nonproliferation group the Ploughshares Fund.\r\nOn Thursday\u00a0afternoon, Trump tweeted that \u201cthe United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.\u201d\r\nA follow-up statement from spokesman Jason Miller said Trump \u201cwas referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it \u2014 particularly to and among terrorist organizations and unstable and rogue regimes.\r\n\u201cHe has also emphasized the need to improve and modernize our deterrent capability as a vital way to pursue peace through strength,\u201d Miller added.\r\nThe United States currently has about 7,000 nuclear warheads. The country is also in the midst of nuclear modernization efforts to replace the aging nuclear force, estimated to cost $1 trillion over 30 years.\r\nThe statement did not address what Trump meant by strengthen and expand.\r\nThe president-elect\u2019s message prompted a flurry of tweets from everyone from arms control advocates to Hollywood.\r\n\u201cTrump wants to expand our nuclear arsenal,\u201d tweeted actor George Takei. \u201cI think of my aunt and baby cousin, found burnt in a ditch in Hiroshima. These weapons must go.\u201d\u00a0\r\n\u201c.@realDonaldTrump\u00a0you are proposing a new nuclear arms race,\u201d the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation tweeted. \u201cThe consequences of \u2018expanding nuke capability\u2019 could be global disaster.\u201d\r\n\u00a0\u201c.@realDonaldTrump, Reagan & even your friend Nixon knew better,\u201c tweeted Sen.\u00a0Jeff Merkley\u00a0(D-Ore.). \u201cNuke arms race = dangerous, expensive & bad for America. True then, true now.\u201d\r\nArms-control groups said it was unclear what Trump meant by expanding and strengthening nuclear capability, but listed several possible scenarios: building more nuclear-capable systems than planned under the current modernization efforts, having nuclear-capable systems carry the maximum number of warheads possible, creating bombs with more kilotons of nuclear power and increasing the number of warheads in the nuclear arsenal, among other possibilities.\r\nThough it remains unclear what prompted the tweet from Trump, the timing raised eyebrows for two reasons.\r\nFirst, it came a day after Trump met with the chief executives of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, two of the country\u2019s biggest nuclear weapons contractors. They are in competition, along with Northrop Grumman, to build the next generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles for the Air Force, a project expected to cost at least $85 billion.\r\nSecond, it came hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin made his own statement about strengthening his country\u2019s nuclear arsenal.\r\n\"We need to strengthen the strategic nuclear forces, for that we should develop missiles capable of penetrating any current and prospective missile defense systems,\" Putin said at a Russian Defense Ministry meeting, according to Russian news agency TASS.\r\nNeither Putin nor Trump have indicated the statements were coordinated or in response to one another, but arms control groups were alarmed that they came so close together.\r\n\u201cThe U.S. and Russia have about 95 percent of all nukes in the world,\u201d Cirincione said. \u201cEverybody else pales in comparison. If two big guys start taking about growing, that\u2019s a signal for every else to start their engines.\u201d\r\nStill, the Ploughshares Fund president said he thinks there could be a \u201cflipside\u201d to the leaders making similar comments around the same time.\r\nBoth Putin and Trump have indicated a desire to improve U.S.-Russia relations, and any agreement between the two countries would \u201calmost certainly\u201d include a reduction in nuclear weapons, he said.\r\n\u201cIf Trump follows Reagan\u2019s example, this could be the deal of his life,\u201d Cirincione said, referring to President Reagan\u2019s negotiations with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev that led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement and laid the groundwork for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.\r\n\u201cThis could be a statement of intent or it could also be preparing positions in advanced of negotiations,\u201d Cirincione added. \u201cLike everything else with Donald Trump, there are more unknowns than knowns.\u201d\r\nDerek Johnson, executive director of Global Zero, was more skeptical of an eventual agreement between the United States and Russia.\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s easy to imagine it not playing out that way, just based on how we\u2019ve seen Trump conduct himself,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s deeply unpredictable, and this is not a space you want unpredictability.\r\n\"The No. 1 message here is this cause for serious alarm,\" he added.\r\nJohnson interpreted Trump\u2019s tweet as a \u201crapid response\u201d to Putin.\r\nHe added that it validates the concerns people raised during the campaign about giving Trump access to nuclear weapons.\r\n\u201cI\u2019m struck by the literally hundreds of national security leaders and experts, most of them Republican, who warned that this guy cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons,\u201d he said. \u201cThis tweet suggests they were right.\u201d\r\nKelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, said the United States\u2019 current modernization efforts are already \u201cunnecessary and unaffordable,\u201d and that expansion would make it worse.\r\n\u201cThis not a direction the United States needs to be going now,\u201d she said. \u201cThese comments coming from Putin are unsurprising based on Putin\u2019s actions over the last couple months. What is unfortunate is Donald Trump entering into this same vein.\u201d\r\nJohn Tierney, executive director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said it\u2019s hard to discern nuclear policy from 140 characters, but called the tweet coupled with Putin\u2019s comments \u201cvery, very troubling.\u201d\r\nTierney said his group will be pressing the incoming administration for more clarity, as well as pressuring Congress to ask questions about the administration\u2019s nuclear policies during confirmation hearings.\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s time for Putin and Trump to come to their senses,\u201d he said.\r\n\u201cBetween Russia and the United States, that\u2019s 93 percent of the world\u2019s nuclear weapons. That\u2019s more than enough to deter each other and more than enough to destroy all of humanity.\u201d\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n           \r\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tPrint\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tEmail\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t  \n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTweet", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.merkley.senate.gov/news/in-the-news/trump-alarms-arms-control-community-with-nuke-tweet"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4745951630175114, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}