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23 December 2016

Donald Trump: “Let there be an arms race“

The President-Elect has said that the United States will "outpass and outlast" its rivals if there is a nuclear arms race. 

By Stephen Bush

Donald Trump has escalated his calls for a larger American nuclear arsenal, saying he is relaxed with an “arms race” in an off-air call with MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“Let it be an arms race,” the President-Elect said, “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

Confusion over Trump’s nuclear policy began with a tweet in which he said that “the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

The ambiguously-worded tweet left analysts and foreign states perplexed as to whether Trump was merely announcing the continuation of the Obama era policy of updating the capability of the existing nuclear arsenal or planning a large scale expansion of the United States’ nuclear capability.

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