President Trump while addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday said that he wants to hold talks with Russia and China about reducing nuclear weapon stockpiles.
Trump during his first term failed to bring China into negotiations to extend a nuclear arms treaty with Russia, called New START, which places key limits on deployed nuclear weapons and expires February 2026.
U.S. and Russian participation in the treaty effectively froze during the Biden administration, as Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to impose costs on Washington for supporting Ukraine militarily.
Putin has also threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine to try to deter U.S. and European military support for Kyiv.
Addressing the global forum, Trump recounted talks with Putin ahead of the 2020 U.S. election about denuclearization talks and how “China would have come along.”
“We want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible,” Trump said.
“And I can tell you that President Putin wanted to do it, he and I wanted to do it. We had a good conversation with China, they would have been involved, and that would have been an unbelievable thing for the planet.”
Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a phone call on Jan. 17, before he was sworn into office, but it’s not clear if the two men discussed nuclear arms reduction.
China is estimated to have about 500 nuclear warheads, according to an analysis by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Federation of American Scientists.
But the Pentagon estimates China is working to expand its arsenal to 1,000 warheads by 2030.
The U.S. has slightly more nuclear warheads than Russia: 1,770 deployed nuclear warheads compared with Moscow’s 1,710.
China and Russia have only strengthened their ties since Putin launched his war on Ukraine three years ago. Beijing is a major financial backer of Russia’s war, and the two leaders have met on various occasions, promising a “new era” of relations.
Xi and Putin held a video call on Tuesday and discussed ways to “deepen strategic coordination, firmly support each other, and defend their legitimate interests.”