"Deterrence has worked well for America, China and Russia. It is unwise to risk destabilizing it," Freeman, who also served as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said on Friday.
The corporate media outlet MSNBC reported earlier in the day that Trump said: "Let it be an arms race, because we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all." The network's "Morning Joe" host Mika Brzezinski said Trump made the statement in a phone call with her.
However, Freeman warned that if Trump carried out his threat, he would only succeed in destroying the stable balance of power that maintained world peace, not strengthen it, but creating a more dangerous and unpredictable world system.
"That is what attempts to neutralize other parties' deterrents by building capabilities to overwhelm or to neutralize them aim to accomplish. And it is what President-elect Trump now seems to be proposing with all the alarming vagueness that is inherent in foreign policy by tweet," he said.
"There is a lot of rather thoughtless, incautiously phrased discussion of nuclear weapons and deterrence at present, much but not all of it emanating from the United States. It comes on top of effort by both the United States and Russia to modernize our respective nuclear arsenals," he explained.
Freeman also advised that Trump, Obama and other leaders should consider what effect expanding the US nuclear arsenal would have on China.
"Some in China certainly seem to believe that the nuclear arms race is returning… [T]hey advocate greatly expanding China's ability to strike the United States with nuclear weapons in order to deter what they see as less risk-averse and more belligerent American policies toward them," he said.
Freeman cited Chinese worries at what they saw as more hostile US policies toward them that could include upgrading diplomatic relations with Taiwan as another cause of concern.
Chas Freeman is a lifetime director of the Atlantic Council and served as US Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’affaires at the US embassies in Beijing and Bangkok. Freeman also held several senior level positions at the US Department of Defense.
