U.S. President Donald Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed on Friday the possibility of a new accord limiting nuclear arms that could eventually include China in what would be a major deal between the globe's top three atomic powers.
I suspect Putin would be thrilled to have America and China join Russia in reducing nuclear arsenals.
I say that because America and China can afford nukes while Russia is having problems with that. Given the poor state of Russia's military I don't know why amidst that wreckage we assume Russia's nuclear arsenal is an island of working technology and skilled maintenance.
At this point it is almost a matter of professional courtesy to the Russians based on their Cold War threat to not bring up that issue. Russia is simply not a superpower now.
Of course, even a low rate of availability would provide Russia with a devastating nuclear strike capability. So we can hardly assume availability is low.
But if Russia could safely reduce the number of nuclear missiles they could better afford to keep the remainder in a state of readiness, no? And with America and China reducing the number of presumably better maintained missiles, Russia gains ground on both.
And frees up money to improve their ability to defend their long land border--especially in the east facing China.
And if there is verification that is robust, I'm perfectly happy with smaller nuclear arsenals.
UPDATE: China is not interested:
China on Monday dismissed a suggestion that it would talk with the United States and Russia about a new accord limiting nuclear arms, saying it would not take part in any trilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations.
I'm not sure why China wouldn't want to have such an agreement if it balances the three arsenals through reductions in American and Russian nuclear forces, saving China money to expand their arsenal--which they are doing.
Perhaps China refuses because it does not want to set a precedent that might pressure China to agree to give up its advantage over America in land-based intermediate range missiles in a new INF treaty expanded to include Russia.
UPDATE: More on why China is not interested in limiting their theater-range missiles.
Which green lights our deployment of such missiles in INDOPACOM, of course. Hey, we tried, right?
