Trump Says Wants to Create World's Strongest Nuclear Force

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - In the absence of arms control treaties with Russia and China, the United States will be creating the world's strongest nuclear force, President Donald Trump said at a White House Business Session with governors on Monday.

"Now, at the same time, Russia and China both want to negotiate with us to stop this craziness of spending billions and billions of dollars on nuclear weapons", Trump said.

He added, however, that until an agreement is reached the only thing he can do is to "create, by far, the strongest nuclear force anywhere in the world".

According to the American president, the US has a vast amount of "super-fast missiles", and the country needs them because both Moscow and Beijing possess similar weapons.

"We have the super-fast missiles — tremendous number of the super-fast. We call them 'super-fast,' where they’re four, five, six, and even seven times faster than an ordinary missile", Trump noted.

Dec. 4, 1989 file photo shows the launch of a Trident II, D-5 missile from the submerged USS Tennessee submarine in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. As of mid-2010, 12 operational U.S. nuclear-missile submarines carry a total of 288 Trident missiles. A movement is growing worldwide to abolish nuclear weapons, encouraged by President Barack Obama's endorsement of that goal. But "realists" argue that more stability and peace must first be achieved in the world.

© AP Photo / Phil Sandlin

"We need that because, again, Russia has some. I won't tell you how they got it. They got it, supposedly, from plans from the Obama administration when we weren't doing it. And that’s too bad. That’s not good. But that's how it happened. And China, as you know, is doing it".

The statement by the president comes a year after Washington decided to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia and started testing new missiles operating at previously banned ranges. The US claimed that Moscow had been violating the accord by developing its 9M729 missile, which allegedly breaks the conditions of the treaty.

Russia denied the accusations and presented the missile for inspection, but the US ignored the move.