(05.08.2020)

QUESTION: So tomorrow and August 9th marks 75 years since the United States unleased the first atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So could you tell us your opinion on nuclear arms control, including the future of the New START Treaty between U.S. and Russia?

SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah. So President Trump, literally since I first met him, first in my role as CIA director and now as Secretary of State, has made clear one of his top priorities is ensuring that we don’t have a really bad day in the world as a result of a nuclear weapon being used, and so we have worked along multiple fronts. For example, we left the INF Treaty because the Russians weren’t complying with that and that was – that had the risk of being destabilizing, because when you have an arms control agreement and only one of the two parties is complying, you have created strategic risk.

But in the last handful of months, we’ve been working diligently to get the three nations that have the largest nuclear capabilities – the United States, Russia, and China – to have a strategic dialogue about how we move forward together to decrease the risk to the world that these massive weapons are used, and we’ve made progress with the Russians. We’ve had two good gatherings; I hope we’ll have one before too long. And we are hopeful that the Chinese will choose to participate. We think it’s in their best interest. We know it’s in the best interest of the world. And for nations that assert they want win-win solutions, that they want good outcomes, that they want to be a player on a global stage, they now have moved to a point where they need to, like the United States and Russia, be prepared to engage in conversations about how you create a strategic situation that reduces the risk that nuclear weapons will be used at any time or any place anywhere in the world.