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Trump told debate watchers that Hillary Clinton "talks tough against Russia. But our nuclear program has fallen way behind, and they've gone wild with their nuclear program. Not good. Our government shouldn't have allowed that to happen. Russia is new in terms of nuclear. We are old. We're tired. We're exhausted in terms of nuclear. A very bad thing."
Hillary Clinton didn't rebut him. The moderators didn't rebut him. The Clinton campaign's fact checkers didn't rebut him. Nor did those of the mainstream media — perhaps because more than a few reporters and editors assume Trump is right.
Comment: No one said anything because his comments go along with the anti-Russian rhetoric and the chronic American addiction to spending ever more on the military.
In recent months, Trump has repeatedly peddled the same myth of Russian nuclear (and conventional military) superiority. It's a familiar and politically potent lie dating back to 1950s, when militarists warned of alleged bomber and missile "gaps" favoring the Soviet Union.
At a rally in Atlanta last June, Trump complained that "Putin has built up their military again and again and again. Their military is much stronger. He's doing nuclear, we're not doing anything. Our nuclear is old and tired and his nuclear is tippy-top from what I hear." (President Trump would presumably order the Pentagon to come up with some kind of nuclear Viagra to make our forces young, virile, and "tippy top" again.)
Speaking to supporters in Ashburn, Virginia, in August, the Republican candidate said, "Look at Russia, how they've built up their military . . . How they've built up their military and how we're so far behind. And our equipment is obsolete in many cases. . . We're falling way behind."
And in the first presidential debate in September, again unrebutted by Clinton, Trump reiterated that Russia's nuclear forces "have a much newer capability than we do. . . . We are not keeping up with other countries."
After that first debate, a brief Associated Press fact check did note that "Russia has indeed been expanding its military and increasing spending on weapons and equipment. But the U.S. still has far more advanced military aircraft, weapons and capabilities than Russia. In addition, the Pentagon plans to spend $108 billion over the next five years to sustain and improve its nuclear force and is developing the next generation bomber."
But the U.S. nuclear modernization program is much bigger even than AP indicated. As reported here, "the Obama administration plans to commit the nation to spending at least $1trillion over the next three decades to improve our ability to fight a nuclear war." The Pentagon's blueprint calls for building 12 new nuclear-armed submarines, 100 long-range strategic bombers armed with a new class of bombs, at least 400 silo-based ballistic missiles, and 1,000 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.
The United States currently has more deployed nuclear missiles and heavy bombers than Russia: 741 versus 521. The United States also has almost as large an inventory of nuclear weapons as Russia: 7,000 versus an estimated 7,300. The difference is meaningless: detonation of even a fraction of that total would annihilate not only both countries, but kill a large portion of the world's population.
Washington can potentially also count on the United Kingdom and France for another 400 deployed nuclear warheads to make the rubble in Russia bounce higher in case of an all-out war.
The two countries' nuclear arsenals are nearly matched by design — the result of many rounds of nuclear arms negotiations and treaties. By contrast, the U.S. military far outpaces Russia's in most conventional categories.
US Spends Way More on Military
Washington spends 12 times more on "defense" than Russia, whose military budget ranks behind China, Saudi Arabia, and the UK. According to the website Global Fire Power, the United States has more than twice the population of Russia, 80 percent more active military personnel, and 285 percent more military aircraft. The U.S. Navy also outpaces Russia in aircraft carriers 10 to 1. (Russia has more tanks and artillery.) And that's before counting the contribution of all our NATO allies.
James Hasik, an analyst for the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, observes that "The good news . . . is that the Russian Army today is a small fraction of the size of the Red Army of the Cold War. Russia is also almost bereft of allies, as Belarus and that collection of frozen-conflict oblasts don't really add much. Thus, NATO's ground forces actually outnumber the Russians several times over."
Another prominent military analyst, Kyle Mizokami, notes that Russia's military modernization plans have been severely crimped by falling oil prices and Western economic sanctions, sending Moscow's defense budget "into a tailspin."
"Russian forces are also, generally speaking, not as well trained as NATO forces," he adds. "Russian forces performed badly in Chechnya . . . In its 2008 war with Georgia, Russian ground forces moved painfully slowly. . . Most NATO countries could have done a better job."
Despite these facts, numerous Pentagon officers and armchair warriors today warn about NATO's deficiencies in facing the growing Russian threat. But look closely and they all relate to scenarios of Russian forces moving en masse next door into the small and weakly defended Baltic States. That's a far cry from what NATO feared when the alliance formed in 1949 to prevent a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Now that the Baltic States are part of NATO, Moscow would be risking World War III by invading them — for what purpose no one ever spells out.
Fear-mongering about Russia's military and the Baltics reflects a classic imperial mentality — that the United States must be capable of prevailing militarily anywhere on the globe, no matter how far removed from our real security interests.
It's time to recognize that relentless calls for greater military spending, constant agitation for a new Cold War, and the staging of provocative military exercises so close to Russia's borders are creating the real threats to U.S. security and well-being.
Donald Trump's lies about Russia's military superiority are feeding those threats. It's long overdue for his opponent and the news media to call him out.
Comment: The reality is that Clinton and the media won't call Trump out because they agree with him.
However...
Trump may in fact have a point (though he may not have intended to make it).
US military-technological superiority IS facing a serious challenge, from both Russia and China.
We have a theory, one we can't really test unless the US and Russia go head-to-head (which they won't), so, for what it's worth, here it is:
The US may outdo Russia in terms of the quantity of its arsenal, but Russia now has better quality; specifically, Russia has weapons that can penetrate US defenses, but the US has nothing that can penetrate Russian defenses.
We're not sure of that, so don't quote us on it, but it would explain why the US is too chicken to physically 'put Russia back in its place', and must instead resort to incessant black propaganda.