President Donald Trump has said the United States is ready to bolster its nuclear arsenal after announcing it is ditching a Cold War-era nuclear weapons agreement with Russia.
Trump on Saturday said that he was planning to abandon the decades-old Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), over claims that Moscow violated it. The key arms control treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, in 1986.
Trump told reporters in Washington on Monday that Russia had “not adhered to the spirit of that agreement or to the agreement itself.”
“Until people come to their senses, we will build it up,” he said, referring to the US stockpile of nuclear weapons. “This should have been done years ago.”
“It’s a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China. And it includes Russia,” he continued. “And it includes anybody else who wants to play that game. You can’t do that. You can’t play that…