WASHINGTON, March 6. /TASS/. The US should start building up its inventory of nuclear warheads to at least equal the combined total of Russia and China, John Bolton, a former national security adviser at the White House, said in an opinion piece published on the website of the Washington Post.
He was commenting on the Russian decision to suspend participation in the Russian-US New START. Bolton said the US could "face a nuclear confrontation with Russia." If Washington "emerged victorious," it will immediately face "a second nuclear confrontation with China," he said.
"Another potential crisis could have us confronting a China-Russia axis, menacing us and our European and Asian allies simultaneously," said the former official, who served under former US President Donald Trump.
Bolton expressed the view that Washington now "must decide fundamental issues of how large US nuclear assets must be to face two adversaries" rather than engage in further strategic-arms diplomacy". It would be suicidal to argue that the United States could make do with all three countries at equal warhead levels, a result typical of arms-control agreements. But how many more deliverable nuclear warheads would the United States need for self-defense and to establish deterrence? How many more weapons would be optimal, or even minimally sufficient? Equal to the combined Moscow-Beijing total, or more?" the retired diplomat said.
"And don’t forget that North Korea, Iran and other aspiring nuclear-weapons states almost certainly see Russia and China as friendly nations, and the United States and its nuclear-armed allies Britain and France as enemies," Bolton went on to say.
Moscow’s decision
Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 1 signed the law to suspend Russia’s participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Putin in a address to the Federal Assembly said that Russia would suspend its participation in the New START, but wouldn’t withdraw from it. The head of state said that before returning to the discussion of compliance with the treaty, Russia should understand how the arsenals of not only the United States, but also other NATO nuclear powers - the UK and France - will be accounted for by the treaty.
The treaty had been signed in Prague in 2010 to be valid for 10 years, with an option to extend it for another five years. Russia and the US extended it for 5 years in February 2021.