WILL US NUCLEAR TEST RESUME SOON?

Foreword

US President Donald Trump declared, sending shock waves across the globe,  that the United States will conduct nuclear tests because other countries are carrying out such testing. Trump may have wanted to project strength, but nuclear weapons testing could further isolate America and spark a new cold war. Nuclear tests would end a 33-year moratorium that began under president George H.W. Bush in 1992.                                                                                                            

Resuming nuclear testing seems to bolster the US deterrence posture vis-à-vis an emerging threat landscape. Though the US later clarified that it was not planning to conduct nuclear explosions, Trump administration has showcased a full spectrum, ranging from an inclusive proposal for arms reduction among the US, China and Russia to the latest resumption of nuclear testing.

With both Russia and China modernising their nuclear arsenals, the US today faces two-peer nuclear rivals. Alongside, North Korea since 2006 has also exploded six nuclear devices.

Current situation

Trump justified the nuclear testing call as a response to “other countries testing programs”, emphasising that the United States must maintain parity with China and Russia while evaluating that their combined nuclear warheads have already surpassed America’s (Russia 4,309; US 3,700; China 600) . Although US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has since clarified that there will be no nuclear explosions, the exact nature of the nuclear tests remains unclear.

Meanwhile, Beijing (which recently displayed its advanced nuclear-capable weapon systems during the military parade in September)  is modernising its strategic arsenal. The Pentagon has warned that China could possess more than 1,000 operational warheads by 2030.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the nation “is committed to peaceful development, follows a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons and a nuclear strategy that focuses on self-defence, and adheres to its nuclear testing moratorium.”

She added: “We stand ready to work with all parties to jointly uphold the authority of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and safeguard the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime.” Mao was thus responding to claims made by President Trump in late October that China was secretly testing nuclear weapons: “Russia tests and China does test, and we’re gonna test also.”

But neither China nor Russia has conducted a nuclear explosive test. The US has not conducted a nuclear weapons test with fissile material (plutonium or uranium) since 1992. America and China have signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) which prohibits all tests involving detonations of fissile material. 

Meanwhile Russia said to be waiting for a White House explanation about what President Trump meant when he said he had instructed the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing adding that if the US resumes nuclear testing, Russia will too.

The abrupt announcement from Trump came just months before the last remaining nuclear-arms-control treaty between the US and Russia, known as New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) and due to expire in February 2026.

Background  

The United States last tested a nuclear device on September 23, 1992. Operation Julin “Divider” was an underground test of a 5 kiloton (KT) device, the last of a series of tests that would mark the end of some 47 years of US nuclear testing. Shortly after this test, the United States would embrace a testing moratorium in preparation for negotiations to create and join the CTBT.

That treaty was signed on September 24, 1996, but has not entered into force because several key states (including the US, Russia, and China) have signed but not ratified it. Nevertheless, testing of nuclear devices has dropped dramatically since the signing of the CTBT, with only India, Pakistan, and North Korea conducting weapons tests.

Arguments against a resumption of testing are straightforward: nuclear tests unnecessarily damage delicate ecosystems while also ratcheting up international tensions.

Moreover, tests of new kinds of devices serve to legitimate the idea that nuclear warheads are “normal” weapons that can fit into broadly conventional war-planning. Arms control advocates (along with most of the diplomatic community) celebrated efforts to limit nuclear testing as a major achievement in reducing Cold War and post-Cold War tensions.

On the other hand, advocates of testing have argued that the credibility of the US nuclear deterrent is at stake if the US doesn’t test new and updated warheads. While individual components can be tested independently, and computer can simulate large-scale nuclear explosions, there is no substitute for a full-scale test. Also, advocates of resuming US testing have argued that, in addition to the Pakistani, Indian, and North Korean tests, Russia and China have engaged in low-yield testing of warheads and warhead components in violation of the normative structure established in the CTBT.

Consequences

Physical infrastructure and human capital of the legacy testing regime are gone; little survives after thirty years of the expertise needed to conduct tests. Building out the infrastructure would still require time and care. It’s not obvious what the United States would learn from tests: instead other countries would certainly learn that the US commitment to non-proliferation and eventually to denuclearization had waned into virtual non-existence. Moreover, a resumption of US testing would undoubtedly lead to reciprocal behaviour on the part of China and Russia.

Arguments about decades of precedent restraint seem to carry little weight in Trump administration.  Trump views himself as a transformational, high revolutionary President in both domestic and international policy, and the very idea that China and Russia might be gaining some advantage through otherwise inconsequential cheating may well incline him towards the restoration of a testing program.

Considerations

President Donald Trump’s announcement has sowed confusion among the world’s nuclear powers and revived echoes of the Cold War arms race. While Moscow was quick to call for proposals on restarting its own nuclear weapons testing program, Beijing has stayed largely silent. But in the remote deserts of western China, the People’s Liberation Army has long been bracing for just this kind of threat.

In far western Xinjiang, satellite imagery and expert analysis show that China is rapidly expanding a historic nuclear test site, where it conducted its first atomic bomb test in 1964. The country’s military has quietly carved new tunnels, hollowed out explosive chambers and built support facilities that researchers say suggest preparations for nuclear testing.

Though China’s nuclear program remains years behind those of Russia and the United States, analysts say it is precisely that disparity that may be driving the apparent expansion of its testing facilities.

Behind China’s drive to expand its nuclear arsenal - the world’s third largest - is a broader strategy under President Xi Jinping to modernize the country’s military by 2030 and achieve a world-class force by the middle of the century.

Nevertheless Beijing has repeatedly stated that it supports the eventual complete prohibition and “thorough destruction” of nuclear weapons and adheres to a no-first-use policy. China: “does not engage in any nuclear arms race with any other country and keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security.”

As for Russia, some believe that Trump is also reacting to recent tests of nuclear delivery systems by Russia, in particular the “Poseidon” undersea drone and the cruise missile Burevestnik, considered as “invincible”. Both these nuclear weapons seem to be designed for all-out nuclear war given their destructiveness: Burevestnik, particularly, as it is powered by a nuclear reactor. The missile has been dubbed a “flying Chernobyl”, given that even if armed with a conventional warhead its detonation would cause widespread radioactive contamination.

These high-profile tests captured headlines and seemed to suggest that Russia had weapons that the United States did not, even though the tests involved delivery systems rather than warheads.

Conclusion

For decades, the prohibitionists have carried the day, even resisting arguments to test during the George W. Bush administration. So what is spurring President Trump’s interest in testing?

Public discussion over the last weeks has suggested that Trump sees the possibility of Russian and Chinese low-yield testing as a significant problem, despite the fact that very few nuclear specialists believe that such tests give Moscow or Beijing any considerable advantage.

Others believe that Trump simply does not have a very solid idea of what testing nuclear weapons would entail, and is simply speaking off the cuff in a provocative manner, as is his wont.

But, whatever the President's intent, the talk of testing is a clear escalation in nuclear rhetoric from the person who controls the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The nuclear taboo that has prevented the use of nuclear weapons in conflict since 1945 and restrained the use of nuclear rhetoric is being weakened. It is all the more important for governments and civil society to push back against this increase in nuclear signalling and make it clear that any use, threat of use, or preparation to use nuclear weapons, at any time and by anyone is unacceptable.

There is now a global majority of nations that have joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) that outlaws all these nuclear activities. Instead of threatening the rest of the world, it’s time for the nuclear-armed states to get on the right side of history and join the treaty.

The atomic bomb’s first mushroom cloud revealed both scientific triumph and moral collapse. That same year, 1945, the UN Charter outlawed both the use and the threat of Nuclear Weapons. Yet the global peace that followed depended on precisely that: the constant of Nuclear Weapons threat of nuclear use.

The world again stands between force and law. Trump’s proposal exposed deterrence’s fatal paradox: every nuclear power claims its arsenal is defensive, yet each maintains it through the threat of annihilation.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which bans not only the use but also the threat of use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances offers a different imagination: security without fear. It remains aspirational, but both law and deterrence begin in the mind: in what humanity dares to imagine. Instead, Trump’s test rhetoric, echoing across deserts and courtrooms, is a reminder that peace sustained by fear is peace perpetually at risk.

Hopefully, a healthy impulse could drive him in the direction of a more robust arms control regime. Forcing a ratification of the CTBT in the US, Russia, and China might actually get Trump the Nobel Prize that he so openly desires. Unfortunately, it’s awfully difficult to see how to get from here to there.