WASHINGTON: The United States may have to deploy more strategic nuclear weapons in coming years to deter increasing threats from Russia, China and other adversaries, a senior White House aide disclosed on Friday.
Pranay Vaddi, the top National Security Council arms control official, made his remarks in a speech on “a more competitive approach” to arms control that outlined a policy shift aimed at pressing Russia and China to reverse rejections of Washington’s calls for arsenal limitation talks.
“Absent a change in adversary arsenals, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required. We need to be prepared to execute if the president makes that decision,” Pranay Vaddi told the Arms Control Association. He said that if that day comes, it will result in a determination that more nuclear weapons are required to deter their adversaries and protect the Americans and their allies and partners.
Washington currently observes a limit of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads set in the 2010 New START treaty with Moscow even though Russia “suspended” its participation last year over Washington’s support for Kyiv, a move the U.S. called “legally invalid.”
Vaddi spoke a year following National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the same group there was no need to expand U.S. strategic nuclear weapons deployments to counter the arsenals of Moscow and Beijing, to which he offered dialogue “without preconditions.”
Biden’s administration remains committed to global arms control and non-proliferation regimes designed to curb the spread of nuclear arsenals, Vaddi stated.
But, he claimed, Russia, China and North Korea “are all increasing and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck pace, expressing little or no interest in arms control.”
The three countries and Iran “are also increasingly cooperating and coordinating with each other in means that run counter to peace and stability, threaten the U.S., our allies and partners and exacerbate tensions in the region,” he remarked.
