WASHINGTON, October 30. /TASS/. The US should start negotiations with Russia on strategic stability rather than threaten to resume nuclear testing, Professor Peter Kuznick, Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, told TASS.
According to the expert, US President Donald Trump's statements about resuming nuclear testing may indicate that he does not understand the difference between testing delivery systems and testing nuclear warheads. "The fact [is] that Trump doesn't even understand that tests of new delivery systems is not the same thing as a nuclear weapons test," the US expert said. He noted that North Korea is the only country to have conducted such tests in the current century. In his opinion, the fact that Trump "has the power to effectively end life on the planet is truly staggering and incomprehensible." "It is time for the US and Russia to hold strategic security talks as the world has been demanding," the expert emphasized.
"The timing and announcement of Russia's recent tests of the Burevestnik missile and Poseidon torpedo were partly in response to Trump's mockery of the Russian military as a ‘paper tiger’ and partly in response to his cancellation of the Budapest meeting with [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin, who has also proposed extending the New START treaty for another year while negotiations continue. They were also partly in response to Trump's Golden Dome [system]," Kuznick noted.
"As Putin emphasized, much like he did in his original announcement on March 1, 2018, these systems, like the Oreshnik, which Russia deployed last November, can all circumvent US missile defense," the expert recalled. "Former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster [previously] said the US wouldn't have a counter to the Oreshnik for at least 15 years. That is probably true for all these [promising Russian] systems," Kuznick concluded.