[ad_1]
WASHINGTON: Bob Woodward’s explosive new book on President Donald Trump has made military analysts around the world squabble over a boast that Trump made to a veteran Washington journalist about a potentially nuclear weapons system that “no one has ever owned. never”.
Trump appeared to reveal top-secret defense information in one of 17 official interviews he gave for Woodward’s newly published book, “Rage,” about the American leader.
Trump says his administration has built a weapons system that no one else, not even the leaders of Russia and China, knows about, and he seems to say it is “nuclear.”
Such a revelation, if true, could shake up great-power politics and inflame the arms race.
But the 54-word audio clip from the December 5, 2019 interview that Woodward released with the book is as confusing as it exposes, primarily because when he says “nuclear,” Trump interrupts the word, as if correcting himself, and then it changes. to “a system of weapons”.
“But I have built a core, a weapon, I have built a weapons system, a weapons system, that no one has ever had in this country before,” Trump said.
“We have things that you haven’t even seen or heard. We have things that Putin and Xi have never heard of before. There is no one. What we have is incredible. “
Woodward said he had separately confirmed with sources that the United States did indeed have a new secret weapon, but did not say whether it was nuclear or not.
But weapons experts say they are not sure what Trump was talking about, or if it was one of the hollow boasts for which he is known.
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, says it could be a low-yield nuclear warhead, the W76-2, which was first deployed on a nuclear submarine in January, a month after Trump. . He mentioned it to Woodward.
Cheryl Rofer, another nuclear scientist, says it could refer to an entirely new warhead in development, the W93, first revealed by the Pentagon earlier this year.
Others think that Trump didn’t mean anything nuclear at all.
The boast came in the same period that Russia and China appeared to be leading the development of hypersonic gliding vehicles, missiles currently almost impossible to defend.
Three weeks after Trump granted the interview, Russia announced that its first hypersonic Avangard had been commissioned.
On January 8, Trump declared that the United States was also building hypersonics, calling it a “super difficult missile” in the months that followed.
“We have one 17 times (the speed of sound). And it just got the nod … The fastest in the world by a factor of almost three, ”he said on May 15.
Arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis said Trump’s language in Woodward’s interview “really reflects” his comments on the “super-difficult missile.”
But others aren’t sure that Trump wasn’t making it all up.
“It’s always risky to analyze just a few words from Trump,” Rofer said.
“He misunderstands a lot and lies a lot. “Nobody has ever had it” is one of his trademark boasts. “
When asked about Trump’s comment, the Pentagon objected.
“I will have to refer it to the White House to clarify what the president meant in his comments,” said a spokesman, Lt. Col. Robert Carver.
