The White House is preparing to push for new arms-control agreements with Russia and China at President Donald Trump’s order.
According to an update from the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, a senior administration official said that the goal of the effort is to “bring Russian nuclear weapons unregulated by treaties under new limits and persuade China to join an arms-control pact that would limit or verify its capabilities for the first time.”
“The president’s direction is that we need to look at more-ambitious arms control that will deal with more weapons, and more than just us and Russia,” a senior administration official said, according to the report. “What you’re going to see is more from the administration on how do we get to arms control that doesn’t just reflect a Cold War mentality.”
The CNS Morning Brief noted that a “trilateral nuclear arms-control agreement among the United States, Russia, and China would be a watershed diplomatic achievement.”
Typically, these types of agreements take years to work out and China has long resisted participation in any arms-control deals.
During a meeting with Chinese vice premier Liu He in the Oval Office earlier this year, President Trump said that he believes a deal between all three nations is possible.
“I think it’s much better if we all got together and we didn’t make these weapons,” Trump said, adding, “ I think [we] can come together and stop the spending and spend on things that maybe are more productive toward long-term peace.”
