US President-elect Donald Trump, asked for clarification on his Twitter post about nuclear weapons, has said: "Let it be an arms race," MSNBC reports.
"We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all," Trump said in an interview with MSNBC, the network reported on Thursday, one day after the president-elect called for an expansion of US nuclear capabilities in a tweet that alarmed nonproliferation experts.
In his Twitter post, Trump said, "The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes," but gave no further details.
It was not clear what prompted his comment. However, earlier on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia needed to "strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces".
Asked about the tweet, Trump spokesman Jason Miller later said Trump was "referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it - particularly to and among terrorist organisations and unstable and rogue regimes."
Trump, who takes office on January 20, also has "emphasised the need to improve and modernise our deterrent capability as a vital way to pursue peace through strength," spokesman Jason Miller said.
Miller told Reuters that Trump was not advocating the use of nuclear weapons, and said Trump's comments were not meant to be read as a new policy proposal.
Experts wondered whether Trump's brief tweet meant he wanted to breach limits imposed on US strategic weapons and delivery systems by the 2011 New START treaty with Russia - or planned to expand the non-deployed stockpile.
"It is completely irresponsible for the president-elect or the president to make changes to US nuclear policy in 140 characters and without understanding the implications of statements like 'expand the capacity,'" said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a leading proponent of arms control based in Washington.
Putin, who has said that Trump has confirmed to him that he is willing to mend ties between the two countries, also spoke on Thursday of the need to enhance Russia's nuclear arsenal.
"We need to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defence systems," he said in a speech in Moscow.
If Trump and Putin both want to expand nuclear weapons, that would effectively end arms control efforts underway since the Nixon administration, said Joe Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, a foundation that works to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons.
"This is how arms races begin - with a battle of words," Cirincione said, urging Trump, a real estate mogul, to "make the biggest deal of his life" and negotiate cuts to the nuclear arsenal with Russia.
"Neither side needs to be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on nuclear weapons we don't need," Cirincione said.
The United States is one of five nuclear weapons states allowed to keep a nuclear arsenal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The others are Russia, Britain, France and China.
In Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the government was paying attention to the nuclear policy of the incoming US administration, adding that China upheld the abolition of nuclear weapons.
