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Mattis promises Trump won’t burn the world if he gets more nukes

Increasing America's stockpile will "convince adversaries that they have nothing to gain and everything to lose."
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Donald Trump wants to increase America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons and lessen the constraints on their use, according to a draft of the Nuclear Posture Review leaked Thursday to HuffPost.

A non-final version of the document reveals Trump is seeking the development of so-called low-yield nuclear weapons, which have warheads with a lower explosive force.

Technically, the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be categorized as “low-yield” in modern terms.

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Within the 64-page draft, Secretary of Defense James Mattis reassures the Pentagon that Trump won’t start a war on a whim.

The justification for diversifying the U.S. nuclear arsenal is that Russia is also looking at “low-yield” weapons, so the U.S. must respond.

The document also references threats from China and North Korea, which requires more nuclear weapons.

The document argues that an increase in American missiles will “convince adversaries that they have nothing to gain and everything to lose from the use of nuclear weapons.”

With no reductions listed in the document, the White House would end a trend of cutting its nuclear arsenal that dates back to the first Bush White House, which killed 10,000 warheads.

The U.S. currently has more than 4,000 nuclear weapons, 1,000 of which are listed as “low yield.”

Stephen Schwartz, an expert on atomic weapons, said that the justifications for expanding the nuclear arsenal included in the NPR relied on “fear, distortion and outright lies.”