\u201cThe United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,\u201d<\/em> Trump tweeted on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes<\/p>\n \u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/center><\/div>\n Earlier in the day, the president-elect\u00a0blasted the UN<\/a> Security Council over an \u201cunfair\u201d<\/em> draft resolution regarding Israel and reiterated his commitment to \u201cdraining the swamp\u201d<\/em> in Washington. He offered no indication as to what might have prompted remarks about nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s tweet seems to diverge from Trump\u2019s public position on nuclear weapons that he expressed during the campaign. The billionaire businessman campaigned on a platform of rebuilding the US military while cutting taxes and reining in federal spending. He was critical of outgoing President Barack Obama\u2019s plan to modernize the US \u201cnuclear triad,\u201d<\/em> estimated to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t want more nuclear weapons,\u201d<\/em> Trump had\u00a0told CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper<\/a> during a town hall in March.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not keeping up with other countries,\u201d<\/em> Trump said during the first presidential debate in September. \u201cI would like everybody to end it, just get rid of it. But I would certainly not do first strike.\u201d \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Obama\u2019s modernization plan was criticized by some members of his own party. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Representative Adam Smith (D-Washington) called it \u201cneither affordable, executable, nor advisable in order to maintain an effective and reliable nuclear deterrent,\u201d<\/em> according to\u00a0 Tom Collina of the Ploughshares Fund<\/a>, a Washington-based anti-nuclear think tank.<\/p>\n According to Collina, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and retired head of US Strategic Command, General James Cartwright, even proposed that Trump could phase out intercontinental ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n \u201c[O]ur levels of nuclear forces should be determined by what we need, not by a misguided desire to match Moscow missile for missile,\u201d<\/em> Perry said.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Trump met with executives from Boeing and Lockheed Martin to discuss the new Air Force One and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter \u2013 projects entrusted to the two aerospace contractors which he had publicly criticized last week. They are also bidding on a contract for a new missile to replace the Minuteman III.<\/p>\n Earlier on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of the need to \u201cstrengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defense systems.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Russia \u201cmust carefully monitor any changes in the balance of power and in the political-military situation in the world, especially along Russian borders, and quickly adapt plans for neutralizing threats to our country,\u201d<\/em> he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President-elect Donald Trump has set Washington atwitter again with a cryptic and seemingly unprompted pronouncement about the necessity to expand the US’ nuclear capabilities. \u201cThe United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,\u201d Trump tweeted on Thursday afternoon. The United States […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":269762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-287211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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