It was an eerie spectacle. A B2 and four F35s, like a giant, foreboding, deltoid bat surrounded by a small flock of protective minions, flew over as Trump and Putin walked to the vehicle that took them to last Friday’s summit.
Aside from its intent to instill awe in the US’s military might, it also served as a stark reminder of the risks the Ukrainian crisis continues to pose. A B2 was used to deliver the ordnance directed at Iran’s nuclear facilities, but a B2 can also carry nukes.
Now is the time to consider when and how to negotiate with Russia about nuclear weapons.
The Russians have not helped matters with their repeated nuclear threats. Trump, in turn, replied to this saber-rattling by repositioning two submarines. There were some journalistic quibbles about whether they were nuclear powered, versus armed with nuclear weapons. And, whether repositioning is not already a standard part of the game. But in the context of modern warfare, such distinctions are semantic. The point was made.
In the immediate lead-up to Friday’s summit, Putin expressed interest in negotiating about nuclear weapons. In a post-summit interview of Rubio, Maria Bartoromo of Fox asked whether Putin broached a "potential nuclear deal with the United States as part of this [negotiation].” Rubio responded that "no, no the talks were almost exclusively and I would say 99 percent were just about the war and about how to bring it to an end in the Russian perspective."
This response is unsurprising. After all, negotiating about stopping the Ukraine war is already insanely complex without adding into the mix such a huge issue.
Putin’s posing of this question was nonetheless worth noting. The UK Independent published an article about this comment with the sub-header: “The move might dissuade Trump from imposing new sanctions on Russia.” According to the article, “progress on a new arms control treaty at the summit could allow Mr. Putin to present himself as actively engaged in broader peace efforts.”
No one knows if Putin merely regards nuclear weaponry as a convenient diplomatic ploy to invoke as needed. Surely he knows that Trump wants a Nobel Prize for his ongoing interventions in a variety of conflicts. He also knows about Trump's desire to broker a deal with Russia and China to drastically reduce expenditures on nuclear weapons.
The question at this juncture is when and how Trump and his negotiators should approach the nuclear issue with Russia. It needs broaching, and very soon. The New START treaty, which limits the number of nuclear weapons on each side, expires February 4. Trump’s repeated interest in cutting a deal with China and Russia to reduce nuclear expenditures is undoubtedly sincere and in line with his efforts to end conflicts in a variety of global venues.
It is not too early for public discussion about how to proceed. Two scenarios could unfold.
If the Ukrainian negotiations are successful, Trump’s negotiators should immediately pivot to negotiating with Russia about nuclear weapons. Success on the Ukraine front will undoubtedly energize discussions with Russia on the latter.
If negotiations are not successful, this will pose a significant hurdle to achieving Trump’s nuclear goal. But nuclear negotiations should immediately proceed, anyhow. This will involve a disciplined sequestering the nuclear issue from the Ukrainian situation, which in turn will require considerable diplomatic finesse.
We are entering a complex and dangerous geopolitical phase, which pundits are calling the "Third Nuclear Age." China is moving apace on its development of a nuclear arsenal. As argued earlier, use of tariffs can be part of the incentive structure to negotiate about nuclear weapons. With respect to China, this could include a rollback on tariffs.
Denuclearizing is a non-partisan issue that is in every country's interest, not just the US’s. It deserves attention from both parties. Democrats will need to suspend their reflexive dislike of initiatives that emanate from the current administration. Neither party has done anything truly substantive on the arms control or disarmament front since 1945.
Shifting from reliance on nuclear weapons to one that relies on a strong conventional defense that observes traditional just war doctrine—grounded, like the pro-life position, in the natural law—is the moral thing. That is, provided it can proceed soberly and stepwise with reciprocal verification.
Nuclear deterrence involves holding civilian populations hostage to all the risks that something can go wrong, in a way no one anticipated, despite the claimed safeguards.
Once a nuclear war starts, it will proceed quickly and mercilessly. No country, including the US, is ready to handle the consequences. What Patton described in his 1945 LA speech about what he saw flying over Europe, and what my father saw in Europe as a combat engineer in his army, will seem like a walk in the park.
Deterrence involves a de facto countercity posture, not a counterforce one. It turns on grotesquely disproportionate effects on civilians, and not just in countries that use the weapons. It is quite a stretch to claim that these effects are “unintended.”
In sum, success in resolving the Ukrainian war is crucial to achieve the larger aim of drawing down nuclear weapons and developing non-nuclear means of defense. A tall order, but a morally regulative ideal that imposes an obligation to strive to reach an extremely difficult moral imperative.