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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump seems of 2 minds on nuclear weapons. He muses about eliminating them but also has called for a U.S. buildup and bragged near his nuclear "button."

In March, while forecasting a face-to-face coming together on this topic with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump said in the same jiff that an arms race was "getting out of control" and that he would never allow any state to accept weapons "even close to what nosotros have," although Russia already does.

How these seemingly competing instincts will play out in his talks Monday with Putin in Helsinki could profoundly affect the direction of U.S. defence policy.

Before leaving a NATO top in Brussels on Thursday, Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would raise long-standing U.S. allegations that Russian federation is violating a Cold War-era nuclear artillery treaty, and whether he favors extending a carve up treaty that he has criticized in the past as disadvantaging the U.S.

His one-give-and-take reply to the two-part question was "yeah" — the outset public indication that he wants to extend the New Offset treaty, which expires in iii years. Then on Friday, he vaguely spoke about how "information technology would exist a tremendous achievement if nosotros could practise something near nuclear proliferation."

Withal Trump's administration has shown footling interest in negotiating further reductions in American and Russian strategic nuclear weapons. It has been more than focused on formulating its own nuclear policy and on combating the nuclear threat posed by Northward Korea.

U.S.-Russian strategic nuclear weapons — those capable of striking each other'southward territory — are governed by New Outset, which was negotiated past the Obama assistants in 2010. Information technology limits each country to 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads. President Barack Obama favored further cuts, only U.S.-Russian relations soured later on Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The New Start deal is prepare to expire in February 2021 unless both sides agree to extend it. The Trump administration has been reviewing its position, so information technology'due south unclear whether Trump and Putin will do more than concord that their staffs should study the possibility of an extension. Private U.Southward. arms command advocates are urging an extension, in part because they see value in a treaty provision allowing each side to monitor what the other is doing on strategic weapons.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, says Trump and Putin could instruct their aides to begin formal work on a five-year extension of the treaty, which would not crave a renegotiation of its terms or ratification past the legislative branch of either regime.

"If they don't extend New Commencement, in that location is a worrisome possibility that past 2021 there will exist no legally bounden limits on the world's two largest arsenals, and as a result, all of the difficult security challenges we have with the Russians will become even more difficult to manage," Kimball said.

Analysts take puzzled over Trump's probable approach to an arms control discussion with Putin. The Russian leader said in May that his armed forces would presently begin fielding a new generation of nuclear weapons, including a globe-circling ballistic missile that he previously said could fly over either the N or the South Pole to strike targets anywhere in the world with more powerful and more than numerous warheads. Putin claimed it could evade any missile defence force system.

Putin likewise has promoted Russia's development of a nuclear-armed hypersonic vehicle that he said is more advanced than anything in the U.South. arsenal. Hypersonic flight equates to going Mach 5, or five times the speed of audio. The U.Southward. is working on hypersonic missile technology but has said it fears falling behind Russia and China.

Trump and Putin seem unlikely to become into this sort of detail, given that arms command would be merely one of several topics raised, including the Syrian civil war.

Even Jon Huntsman, the U.Southward. ambassador to Moscow, seemed uncertain how Trump would address artillery command issues in Helsinki, but he predicted they would discuss U.Southward. accusations that Russia is violating the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty.

That was the commencement superpower agreement to ban an entire class of weapons: basis-launched and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers, or about 310 miles and 3,400 miles. Washington says Moscow is violating the treaty by testing and deploying a prohibited cruise missile. Russian federation strongly denies whatever violation and has in turn charged that some elements of Washington'due south missile defense force system violate the treaty.

Stephan Sestanovich, a senior boyfriend for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, sees room for a Trump-Putin agreement on resolving these violation charges.

"Y'all could have verification visits by the two sides to accost that," he said, suggesting concrete inspections of perchance the Russian missile's fuel tank. That could help resolve the question of how far the missile tin can fly, while as well protecting against disclosure of sensitive missile technology information.

The listing of U.Due south. complaints near Russian behavior in the nuclear realm has grown longer in recent years. This tension is captured in the Trump assistants'southward updated nuclear policy, which points to Russian reliance on nuclear weapons equally justification for deploying new types of U.Southward. nuclear weapons.

Information technology warned that Russian strategy on the potential coercive and military uses of nuclear weapons, "increment the prospect for unsafe miscalculation and escalation."