White House blasts Trump’s 'catastrophic' nuclear policy
The administration of US President Barack Obama has denounced Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s nuclear policy as “catastrophic”.
Last week, Trump said, if elected, he would withdraw troops from South Korea and Japan and allow those two countries to build their own nuclear arsenals instead of depending on America’s “severely depleted” military.
The Republican frontrunner said in an interview with The New York Times on March 26 that the US military cannot protect Japan and South Korea for a long time, adding that the US cannot always “be the policeman of the world.”
White House Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes on Thursday offered a scathing rebuke to Trump, saying his plan would shatter doctrine held for decades, with "catastrophic" consequences.
"The entire premise of American foreign policy as it relates to nuclear weapons for the last 70 years has been focused on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons," said Rhodes.
"That has been the position of bipartisan administrations, of everybody who has occupied the Oval Office,” he added.
"It would be catastrophic for the United States to shift its position and indicate that we somehow support the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” he continued.
Rhodes, one of President Obama's closest aides, made the remarks during a high-level nuclear security summit in Washington.
In his New York Times interview, Trump also criticized America’s 1951 security agreement with Japan, officially known as the Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan.
“If we are attacked, they don’t have to do anything,” he said. “If they’re attacked, we have to go out with full force… That’s a pretty one-sided agreement, right there.”
In addition, the billionaire businessman said he would withdraw American forces from Japan and South Korea if these countries do not increase their own contributions significantly.
The United States still has 28,500 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines deployed to South Korea, more than six decades after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that Seoul and its ally, Washington, remain technically at war with Pyongyang.
Additionally, the United States has stationed about 50,000 troops in Japan as part of the security treaty between the US and Japan, which was first signed in 1952, and was later amended in January 1960.
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