The Duran Podcast - Arms control collapse. Three way nuclear race

Episode Date: November 9, 2025

Arms control collapse. Three way nuclear race

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the nuclear testing, the nuclear arms race that we now have. The United States, Russia, possibly China. We are in a nuclear arms race with the United States testing a Minuteman 3 missile and the Russian Security Council meeting to decide to, to explore nuclear testing. So I think that's pretty much the Russian Security Council saying that eventually they're also going to start nuclear testing. But the statement from Peskov and from Belusuf was to begin to prepare for nuclear testing. Anyway, what are your thoughts on where we are with a ramp up to nuclear testing in a nuclear arms race? I think the first thing to say straight away is that it looks to me as if we are now about to embark upon a nuclear arms race. China, the United States, Russia, they're all going to be moving forward rapidly to develop more and more nuclear weapons.

And at the moment, for the moment, and this is something which I think people in the United States need to be aware of. If there is a nuclear arms race, the Russians have a big head start. The Chinese have big industrial capacities. The United States is going to be struggling to keep up, and it's going to have to try to catch up with both the Chinese and the Russians at the same time because the other thing that happened last week is that there's increasingly further signs that the Chinese and the Russians are working very closely together with each other. It's gone completely unremarked that there were very, very strong Russian delegations in China last week.

They included the Prime Minister, Mishustin, the Minister in charge of the economy, a man called Mantorov. We don't know of any military officials involved. But I noticed that amongst the topics that were discussed between the Chinese and the Russians were nuclear energy cooperation. Therefore, you can draw your own conclusions. And there have been some very strong statements today, as we're making this program from China, about how China will not agree to any arms control negotiations with the United States, unless the United States significantly cuts its arsenal of nuclear weapons,

which we know that it is not going to do. So we are drifting into a nuclear arms race. And this meeting that took place in Moscow is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was tightly choreographed. It was a whole succession, a procession, of obviously carefully prepared statements by senior officials. Putin himself, the defense minister, the chief of the general staff, the heads of the intelligence agencies, and it results in a publicly stated decision by Putin that we should prepare for

nuclear testing. When a superpower says that it's preparing for the nuclear testing, when a superpower says that it's preparing for nuclear testing. It is almost definite that it is going to go ahead with nuclear testing. The Russians are saying that they're doing this because Trump made those comments about nuclear testing a few days ago, which he did, by the way, and very unwise they were. They, Russians say that they tried to obtain from the American's clarification of what Trump actually meant. The Americans refused to provide clarification. The chief of the general staff, Gerasimov said, given that the Americans are not denying, clearly denying, that they're going to resume nuclear testing. We have to assume that they are. We can't afford, we can't risk

being left behind. We must therefore move forward with nuclear testing. And that, it seems to me, what's going to happen. China is certain to follow. The United States probably is already on the way as well, because after Trump made his comments, US officials were talking in the same way. We have from the Russians further indications of more weapons, more advanced weapons that they are preparing, including a hypersonic nuclear-powered cruise missile. So, we have the Borevesnik, which can reach the United States from Russian territory because it's nuclear-powered. But the next cruise missile will apparently be either supersonic or even hypersonic.

The implications of that are astonishing. But that apparently is now coming. We already have the Poseidon submarine drone. The Russians have just launched its, the submarine. the first in the series of submarines that will carry it and apparently it is now in service. The Chinese are doing all the various things that they're doing. We are in a nuclear arms race, arms control has collapsed. We're back to the world of the 1950s and early 1960s.

the world where, you know, the Stanley Kubrick film Doctor Strange Love, that dates from that era and that gives you a sense of the tensions and fears that existed at that time. Only this is much, much more difficult to control today than it was then. And perhaps most immediately important of all, the entire tone and language of that Security Council meeting in Moscow made it absolutely clear that the Russians have lost all trust and confidence in Donald Trump. There was no hint there that they expect any kind of renewed dialogue with him on any topic, Ukraine, nuclear weapons, or anything, they now see the situation with the United States straightforwardly as one of direct confrontation.

Well, the nuclear treaties were torn up by Trump. Yeah. Right? Well, I mean, he's the one that did not and does not want to renew the nuclear treaties or negotiate the nuclear treaties. Just a couple of weeks ago, Putin even suggested at least for the New START Treaty, which is set to expire, to give a one-year extension so that they can negotiate that treaty. Why does Trump, who brands himself the peace president, right? Why would he not

want to negotiate these treaties? It is incomprehensible to me. The very first nuclear treaty that the United States scrapped was the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which is scrapped by the George W. Bush administration, and that was a key event because the anti-ballistic missile treaty, I mean, ended the treaty that limited the missiles, the missiles that could be used by the superpowers to try to shoot down each other's missiles. And the scrapping of that treaty was intended to open the way for the United States. to deploy anti-ballistic missile interceptors in Europe. The Americans in the early 2000s imagined that Russia and its economy was so enfeebled that they

would not be able to respond. This is George W. Bush's day. Of course, the Russians have responded and have moved faster and further in anti-ballistic missile technology than the United States itself has done. That was an inherently, massively destabilizing act. But what then happened, and you're absolutely right about this, over the course of Trump's first term, he also went ahead and started scrapping arms-controlled treaties. He started with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the INF Treaty, the treaty that prohibited

medium-range missiles, and this was the issue that was negotiated painstakingly in the 1980s because the Russians were worried about the United States deploying medium-range missiles in Europe, cruised and at Pershing ballistic missiles. The United States, some people in the Pentagon, clearly still hanker to do that. And they also want to deploy these types of systems against China as well. And I think that was exactly what then led to the development of the Borevesnik and Poseidon systems. These are counters to the American decisions to scrap the INF Treaty. And then the United States scrapped the Open Skies Treaty, which allowed both the Russians and the Americans to carry out surveillance of each other's missile, weapons arsenals, you know, aircraft flying overhead. So that has gone.

And as you rightly say, Trump shows absolutely no interest in moving forward with Putin's proposal that the last remaining. treaty which is left, the New START treaty negotiated by Medvedev and Obama, and which is due to expire in February, that that should be extended for one year so that new negotiations can begin. So absolutely, Trump has massive form here. He has played a critical role in destroying the whole system of nuclear arms control. And he shows no interest, no serious interest in trying to get it together again. He's not responded meaningfully to Putin's offer to extend the New START treaty. There's no sign of negotiations, serious negotiations about this beginning. One gets every impression once again that what Trump is drifting towards doing,

is once more involving the United States in another nuclear arms race. And again, why is he doing it? Because he's probably been pressed to do this by his donor friends, by the neocons that he's got all around him. The neocons have never liked arms control. They were campaigning against arms control, as I remember in the 1970s. They're constantly telling him a completely untrue. story that the United States is vastly more advanced and technologically capable than the Russians

and the Chinese are. He's all the time bragging about the fact that the U.S. is, you know, streets ahead of the Chinese and the Russians. I suspect and expect that before long they're going to sell him another space-based system, which is something that Reagan floated, all the way back in the 80s and which they've never really given up on and they're going to try and get him to think about launching something like that. So, you know, they want an uncontrolled, an unconstrained nuclear arms race because that is part of their ideological mindset, their confrontation mindset. But of course, going back to what you always say, it's also a massive grift. It's a massive grift. It's Vast amounts of money for the U.S. defense contractors who, of course, other people who provide the funding to the think tanks and all of those things, which employ these people and provide funding to the lobbying groups that have a lock hold over Congress.

So that's where it all comes back to. Yeah. Start building a dozen golden domes and God knows what else they can come up with. and the MIC makes a ton of money. Exactly. Right. But obviously this is extremely dangerous, and we are drifting towards some sort of a confrontation,

which, you know, if you don't have those treaties in place, could easily spiral out of control. Absolutely. I mean, the great breakthrough towards nuclear arms control was actually made by President Kennedy in the 1960s. After the Cuban Missile crisis, he absolutely understood that this is becoming an incredibly dangerous situation. And he basically initiated talks with the Soviets. And we had the first nuclear, the first limit on nuclear weapons development, which was the test ban treaty of 1960.

which didn't forbid nuclear tests entirely, but prevented them from happening in the atmosphere, you know, the public tests, the ones we all know, and we see in the film of, you know, the mushroom crowds and all of that. After that, they all happened in underground locations. But what President Kennedy did set the ball rolling. So then we had a meeting between the U.S. President and the Russian Premier Johnson and Kasegan in 1967 in Glasgow, in the United States, that led to Salt 1 and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. And then there was further arms controlled treaties that would develop right during the period of the Cold War. And they provided an enormous stabilisation of the situation. So tensions between the superpowers were always

there. But everybody knew that at least in the area of strategic weapons, things were sort of under control. And the Americans and the Russians had a dialogue with each other. And I forgot to mention that it was also President Kennedy, who initiated the hotline between the Pentagon and the Kremlin. As I said, all of that is falling apart. All that legacy that, as I said, goes back to President Kennedy is now being unraveled. And he, of course, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, had to deal with the fact that none of these structures existed then and realized the importance of creating them. Today that lesson has been lost and thrown away. And as I said, it is incredibly, incredibly disturbing and very, very alarming.

And what makes it even more alarming is that nobody, hardly anybody in the media in the West, which is now, of course, a totally neocon media, neocon-controlled media on foreign policy. It's talking about this. They seem to be completely unbothered. The fact that everything, this is all now happening, does. It doesn't worry them in the slightest. They're worrying much more about other things. And of course, they want unending confrontation with Russia, before long more confrontation with China. They continue to press for more conflict all the time. And the fact, as I said, that we are heading into this very dangerous situation, doesn't worry them at all. Well, the media has a lot of ties to the MIC and some of the media companies are owned by people. who have contracts with the three-letter agencies or the Defense Department or the Department

of War and stuff like this. So, yeah, obviously, they're not going to talk about this and they're going to want this because it needs more money for their companies. Yeah. Okay, there's a grift. There's a grift to all of this. And it's also very dangerous. It's extremely dangerous.

The most dangerous thing that could be happening is a nuclear arms race. But if you put those aside, could we be seeing the Trump administration believing that if they enter a nuclear arms race, then they will be able to break the Russian economy or the Chinese economy in much the same way that they believe Reagan did? I've asked you this question before, but I'll ask it again. And could we possibly be seeing Trump escalating in order to get leverage come January, February, where he may just denounce, you know what, okay, I'm ready to negotiate with Putin now. Could he be playing that type of negotiation game? Is that also possible? Because the statements that he makes about the nuclear testing and how others are doing,

it, so we're going to do it as well is stupid and a lie. It's a lie, first of all, it's a lie. No one else is doing it. And it also just sounds stupid. So anyone that believes that is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. They believe his statements. And then the statement about the United States having the most nuclear weapons with Russia number two in China four or five years behind is also a lie. Yeah. That's factually incorrect. So he's, He's making dumb statements. He's lying outright about the state of affairs when it comes to nuclear weapons and to nuclear testing. So is this some sort of negotiation game or is this some sort of geopolitical strategy grand chessboard game?

Well, I would like to believe the second. I would devoutly hope that it is the second, that there is some kind of complex poker game that President. Trump is playing and that suddenly in January he's going to announce that he accepts this extension of the START treaty and that negotiations begin and that he will agree with the Russians that the moratorium on nuclear testing continues and that there will be a sudden announcement of this and he will come out and say, you know, this proves that I am indeed the peace president and should be granted in a Nobel Prize and all of that. I would love to believe that. I would love to believe that. I have to say that as of this moment in time, one can't assume that. And that's, of course,

what the Russians are saying. That is what Geracimov is saying. He says, you know, we don't know exactly what Trump is thinking. And it may be that he's playing some kind of game. But he is the president of the United States. He's floating the idea on nuclear testing. We cannot afford to fall behind in this. If the Americans are talking about this, we must prepare as well. And when you stop preparing for this kind of thing, the momentum towards doing it is inevitably going to grow because the Russians at their nuclear test site in the Arctic island of Narvae, Zemlya, they're going to start refurbishing that, making it ready for nuclear tests.

the United States is going to pick up on this because this is impossible to conceal, that will then increase pressure within the United States from all the usual people for the United States to move forward with nuclear testing too. If this is that kind of poker game that Trump is playing, you know, 5D chess and all of that, that it's a very dangerous game indeed and one that he could very easily lose. control of. Anyway, let us hope, let us just hope that he does do that. I am much more of the view that Trump has indeed been told the first part of what you said, that President Reagan won the Cold War by forcing the Russians into concessions because the unlimited expansion

of the U.S. military that took place in the 1980s. 80s put such enormous stresses on the Soviet economy of that period that it caused it to buckle. Now, I'm not going to get into a long discussion about the history of this. I will simply say that that is wrong, that in fact, if you actually know the history of the Soviet economy, what you would find is that Soviet military spending peaked in the 1950s, early 1950s, And then for that moment on, this is real spending, was in continuous decline, which continued through the 1980s. So, I mean, anyway, I'm not going to get into this because I understand that many people do want to believe that version of history. And in order to rebut it, I mean, that would require a very long programme, which would probably take at least an hour.

The point is that the situation today is completely different because the United States is not a get up against one superpower, it's up against two. Those two superpowers, China and Russia, are working closely with each other. China has a bigger manufacturing base, a significantly bigger manufacturing base than the United States does. It has a technology base, which is at least equal in some respects to that of the US as well. And the Russians should not be discounted here. And together, these two powers are at least equal and probably superior to the United States. And if we're talking about fiscal burdens, it is the United States, which it seems to me. is more fiscally challenged, more challenged in terms of spending at this time than the Chinese

and the Russians are. So history never repeats itself. And even if you think and sincerely believe that what Reagan is supposed to have done in the 1980s work then, it doesn't follow that it would work now because today's conditions are completely different. Yeah, but, you know, the neocon thinking is stuck on, and then peace through strength and all of that. Absolutely, because this is the thing to always understand about the neocons. And, you know, I read their articles all the time, you know, the things that they were. They always assume that the United States has unlimited resources. They always assume that the United States can surpass and outmatch whatever the adversary does.

I mean, that is a hard-wired assumption that they always have and will never shake off. It would cause an enormous economic crisis in the US for them to be forced to rethink that view. And even then, I think they would struggle to do it. So they're not going to, I mean, they hardly ever talk about economics. I mean, that's one thing to say about neocons. They hardly ever, I mean, they never discuss industrial or technology issues. They always come and simply say, the United States needs to do this and needs to do that and needs to do something else in geo-strategic, in grand strategy.

terms, and they always assume that the resources are there. So, crush the Russians by outreducing them in nuclear weapons, impose on the Russians an enormous nuclear arms race. That will break them, as Reagan did in the 1980s. It worked then. It will work now. Mr. President, you must believe us on this because after all, we're talking about the United States, it's impossible that the United States, if it puts, has the will to do this, can fail. And I'm afraid Trump is very, very susceptible to this kind of argument. Yeah, I can see it. Keep them bogged down in Ukraine. Ukraine is going to become their Afghanistan, cut off their revenue with the Russian oil and extend them with the nuclear arms race.

All the pieces of what they believe Reagan put to use in order to tear down that wall and to break the Soviet Union. They're telling Trump you can do the same. Yes. And you'll break Russia. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. Okay. Anyway, I can see him buying into that. Absolutely. No doubt about it. Yeah. All right. We will end it there.

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