President-elect Joe Biden is eyeing cuts to the nation’s $1.2 trillion nuclear-modernization program and instead plans to place a greater emphasis on arms control, according to two transition officials and an outside adviser to the incoming administration, reports CNN.
The incoming administration is considering the changes, among other challenges, including extending the New START treaty with Russia, which is up for renewal on Feb. 5, 2021, just 16 days after Biden’s inauguration. The treaty caps the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads either country can possess.
Some experts say the nuclear-modernization program takes up a large chunk of the Pentagon’s budget, money that could be allocated to evolving conventional and asymmetric weaponry.
“We have to modernize our deterrent,” one former official told The Wall Street Journal last week. “But we cannot spend the amount of money that is currently being allocated.”
Biden, during the 2020 presidential campaign, pledged “to maintain a strong, credible deterrent while reducing our overreliance and excessive expenditure on nuclear weapons,” adding that the Trump Administration’s proposal to build new nuclear weapons is “unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible.”
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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