BEIJING, Aug 29 (Reuters) - The United States is pushing China to break a longstanding resistance to nuclear arms talks, seeing a “limited opportunity” for early two-way conversations on the superpowers’ approach to the issue, a senior Biden administration official said.

The renewed U.S. push for nuclear talks comes as U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met top Chinese officials in Beijing to try and resolve gaping differences on a broad range of issues.

“We saw some limited opportunity to open, at least the beginnings of conversation on the subject in the last months, but it’s been fits and starts, and I think it will continue to be fits and starts,” said the official, who sought anonymity because the matter is a sensitive one.

“They’ve signalled some willingness to start nibbling around the margins of arms control, but then they’re not very forward-leaning about following through on that,” the official said.

“So, I would say in 2024 the conversation is slightly more ripe than it was in 2022. But there’s a long way to go for us to be in the type of rigorous dialogue that we should be in.”

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    MAD as in the nuclear event, should it come to pass. MAD just as a condition of geopolitics is much more debated over.

    • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      The nuclear event would just be D - destruction. MAD, mutually assured destruction, is a political status. We are in the political status of mutually assured destruction should the USA ever follow through on its psychotic ramblings about winning nuclear wars and reserving the right to a nuclear first strike.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        2 months ago

        Yeah, but if I said “nobody likes destruction” that would be ambiguous. MAD is just about the only snappy way of saying it that people understand - even “nuclear apocalypse” is bound to create arguments over the definition of apocalypse, because this is Lemmy.