Presented By: Department Colloquia
Department Colloquium | The Trump Administration Takes Office with a Downsized Cold War Nuclear Doomsday Machine Still on Hair Trigger
Frank von Hippel (Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University)
President-elect Trump has indicated that he does not necessarily think that nuclear arms races and nuclear proliferation are bad. This is likely to ignite a national policy debate. Physicists have played a major role in past U.S. national debates on nuclear-weapons policy. The purpose of this talk is to help provide some basic background to the new generation of physicists who have grown up during the past 25 years assuming that the Cold War Doomsday Machine was dismantled. It wasn’t. Indeed, it is still on hair trigger in a launch-on-warning posture. Furthermore, in order to get the New START Treaty ratified by the Senate, the Obama Administration committed to modernize all U.S. nuclear “delivery vehicles” and their warheads. And, despite the fact that the U.S. military budget is twice that of China, Russia and Iran combined, President Obama was unable to change U.S. nuclear policy to no first use. Finally, he approved a massive buildup in U.S. ballistic missile defenses that resulted in Russia losing interest in further cuts and China losing interest in capping its slow nuclear buildup. Sad!
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