Donald Trump has long had a fixation with the horrors of nuclear war — and trying to prevent it. Since retaking office, the US president has said one of his priorities is to hold arms control talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. His administration has taken the positive step of trying to reach a new agreement to curb Iran’s advancing nuclear programme. Yet contradictions among his policies threaten not to reduce nuclear risk but to lead to a new arms race — on multiple fronts.

Axar.az informs, citing the Financial Times, the first danger is proliferation. The White House is justified in calling on European allies to shoulder more of their own defence burden — and has given no indication it would withdraw the US nuclear umbrella. But the chill in transatlantic relations and Trump’s embrace of Putin in efforts to end the war in Ukraine have shaken European leaders’ faith in the US commitment to extended deterrence. Germany and Poland are publicly talking of needing nuclear options for their defence, at least by sharing the French or UK nuclear deterrents — or, in Poland’s case, potentially hosting US bombs on its soil. Emmanuel Macron has invited discussion over whether and how France’s long-independent arsenal could be used as a broader deterrent.

Concerns over US reliability are shared by allies in east Asia, wary of the nuclear threat from China and North Korea — and both countries’ deepening ties to Russia. Support for acquiring nuclear weapons is growing in South Korea, and the long-taboo debate is surfacing even in Japan. In the Middle East, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have signalled they would match Iranian capabilities if Tehran obtained a bomb. Yet despite new US efforts to prevent that, the fact Iran is now so close to its goal is largely due to Trump’s ill-judged first-term withdrawal from the 2015 international nuclear deal with Tehran. Weapons experts warn that any US ally developing nuclear arms would start a rush by other countries to follow suit. The non-proliferation treaty, which for decades has helped to confine the number of nuclear weapons states to nine, could then be undermined.

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