Read the full piece in The Hill.
The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, which on Thursday expressed alarm at Trump’s tweet calling for the United States to strengthen and expand its nuclear arsenal, on Friday released a trio of statements calling on Trump to disavow his comments.
“Any nuclear escalation, let alone a new nuclear arms race, is dangerous, destabilizing and places the entire planet further at risk,” John Tierney, the center’s executive director, said in a statement.
Former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), a member of the Center’s national advisory board, said a nuclear arms race would put “everyone on this planet in greater danger.”
“The statements made by President-elect Trump undermine decades of work the United States and its allies have been involved in to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles and to prevent the additional proliferation of nuclear weapons,” he added in a statement.
Jim Walsh, an international security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Center contributor, added that Trump “clearly” does not understand the implications of his statements.
“He is not yet president, has no confirmed cabinet or security team in place and skips his intelligence briefings,” he said in a statement. “Using Twitter to blurt out ill-conceived changes to US nuclear weapons doctrine is unwise if not downright dangerous.”
