United States President Donald Trump has proposed talks with China and Russia to discuss reducing all three countries’ nuclear stockpiles and slashing their defence budgets in half.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, Trump said he hoped to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin “when things calm down”.
“When we straighten it all out, then I want one of the first meetings I have [to be] with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, let’s cut our military budget in half,” Trump said ahead of a summit meeting with Indian President Narendra Modi.
“We’re going to have them spend a lot less money,” Trump added. “We’re going to spend a lot less money. And I know they’re going to do it.”
Trump said that there was “no reason” to build new nuclear weapons when Washington’s existing arsenal could destroy the world “100 times over” and public funds could be spent on “other things that are actually hopefully much more productive”.
Speaking a day after discussing negotiations to end the war in Ukraine in a phone call with Putin, Trump said he and the Russian leader had agreed to pursue arms reduction “in a very big way”.
“And here we are, building new nuclear weapons and they’re building nuclear weapons and China is building nuclear weapons and China is trying to catch up because you know, they’re very substantially behind, but within five or six years, they’ll be even,” Trump said.
Trump said that it would be a “sad day” if the US ever needed to use its nuclear weapons.
“That’s going to be probably oblivion,” he said.
Global nuclear stockpile
The US and Russia account for the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons stockpile, possessing an estimated 10,805 warheads between them, according to the Arms Control Association, a US-based nonprofit.
China is estimated to possess 600 warheads, according to the nonprofit, while France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are believed to have about 1,000 between them.
The US spends more on the military than any other country by far, though estimates of other countries’ military budgets often understate their size due to their weaker purchasing power.
The US Congress allocated $895bn in defence spending for the fiscal year 2025.
China’s expected military spending is expected to reach $185bn this year, according to an estimate by the RAND Corporation.
Russia’s military spending last year totalled $145.9bn, according to an estimate by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
On Monday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that the circumstances for renewing the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which places limits on the deployment of strategic nuclear warheads, did “not look very promising” ahead of its scheduled expiry in February next year.
The pact is the last remaining arms control agreement between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers after the first Trump administration withdrew Washington from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) over alleged violations by Moscow.
Trump later unsuccessfully sought to seal a three-way arms control deal with Putin and Xi.
While Moscow expressed interest in the idea, Beijing rejected the proposal, citing, among other reasons, Washington’s decision to exit the INF.
