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Common sense is lost in the nuclear game

The nuke spat is intensifying as Russian and American leaders fire their salvos in speeches and on Twitter respectively

With barely a single working day left until Christmas, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump appeared to unexpectedly announce an intensified nuclear arms race. It was, perhaps, an early sign that relations between the US and Russian leaders may not be as positive as some had expected.
It is still not entirely clear exactly what Trump meant with his December 22 tweet that the United States "must strengthen and expand its nuclear arsenal until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." The tweet appeared to be a response to comments by Putin earlier in the day on strengthening Russia's atomic arsenal and bragging of his country's ability to defeat any potential adversary. What is clear is that Trump's words seem a significant departure from the approach of Barack Obama, who was trying to draw down Washington's nuclear weapons stocks. In truth, however, the outgoing administration was itself in many ways more visibly assertive than any of its post-Cold War predecessors in its own nuclear posturing.
Faced with an increasingly aggressive Russia and belligerent North Korea, in particular, the Obama administration has on several occasions made a point of sending nuclear capable B-2 and B-52 bombers to Asia and Europe to reassure allies and send a not-so-subtle message to potential nuclear-capable adversaries. Nuclear arms negotiations have traditionally been long, drawn out, and pointy-headed affairs. The fact that Washington's incoming president is using Twitter to signal his intentions is a new development, and not necessarily one that will make the world a more stable place. The US was already planning to update its Cold War era nuclear arsenal, much of which relies on outdated technology and which has suffered string of management and technical issues in recent years, some acutely embarrassing.
Simultaneously, however, the Obama administration had been signaling its intention to tweak the US nuclear stance, perhaps ruling out Washington's "first use" of nuclear weapons in any conflict. That adjustment now seems unlikely - not least because a new Trump administration might overturn it in less than a month. Trump has sent a range of mixed - and often unconventional - signals on nuclear policy. During the election campaign, he appeared to suggest that the Washington should roll back its historic position of pledging to respond in kind for a nuclear attack on close NATO or Asian allies, even appearing to suggest countries such as Japan and South Korea might do better to acquire their own atomic arsenals. Given widespread concerns in the US security establishment over Trump's potentially warmer approach to Putin, there will be many on both sides of the aisle who would welcome a tougher US line. The risk, though, is that it reintroduces the risk of a potentially cataclysmic confrontation between leaders who have yet to define their relationship.
A poll of national security experts concluded in 2015 that the risk of a major nuclear exchange had risen over the decade. On balance, they saw a 6.8 per cent chance of a major conflict in the next 25 years, killing more people than World War Two's roughly 80 million. It's hard not to conclude that the prospect has increased since that survey.
Such worries were not, perhaps, entirely reasonable. Even the boldest suggested expansion of US missile defenses would never have been able to shoot down more than a tiny proportion of Russia's warheads. But with stakes like that, common sense is a relative concept.
Trump may well be right about one thing. There seems little prospect of the world "coming to its senses" anytime soon. The risks of that are now coming back into plain sight in a way not seen in a generation - and it will be his job to manage them.
Peter Apps is Reuters global affairs columnist. The opinions expressed here are his own.