Trump Orders Nuclear Tests – Is this a New Nuclear Age?

Are we witnessing a return to the crazed world of the Cold War — wasting untold billions of dollars to prove what we already know: that we can destroy each other many times over?

By Anil Madan

It was almost too good to be true. Except for North Korea’s occasional nuclear tests and the threat of Iran crossing the threshold and finally succeeding in producing a nuclear weapon, it seemed that the rest of the world might just have come upon a sense of sanity about nuclear weapons testing. This is not to say that disarmament was on the horizon. No, it was just a recognition that even the testing of nuclear weapons has unacceptable environmental and security risks so that nations seemed content to let them recede into oblivion.

Trump orders military to begin testing nuclear weapons for the first time  in decades. Pic – MeidasTouch News

At the end of October, while flying on a helicopter enroute to meeting President Xi Jinpin in South Korea, President Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, the surprise announcement that he had directed the Pentagon to test the US nuclear arsenal on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers. The White House promised a more detailed announcement would follow. We still await the details. What is not clear is whether President Trump was referring to the testing of nuclear bombs or just the missile and delivery systems. Since the 1990s, no nation other than North Korea has tested nuclear devices by explosion. Russia and China have tested missile and delivery systems. North Korea has tested missiles including what it claims are intercontinental ballistic missiles. The US, China, Russia, and India, have tested hypersonic missiles. Japan and France are reportedly working on such missiles.

To be sure, for the last several years, there was the ongoing buzz that China would increase the size of its nuclear arsenal if only to be in a better position to negotiate at future strategic arms limitation talks. This illogical reasoning failed to consider that China’s negotiating leverage could come as much from threats to build an arsenal as from building new warheads and then agreeing to eliminate them. North Korea has clearly gained leverage as a nuclear state as shown by how the US deals with it, and Iran had commanded the attention of the US, Europe, Britain, and Russia as curbing its nuclear ambitions became their mission.

There was always the ongoing threat that hostilities between India and Pakistan could escalate to nuclear conflict, but that is borne out of an irrational Pakistani fear that India has a long-range ambition to reunite the two countries. There seems to be no rational basis on which India would proceed along those lines, so Pakistan is secure in that sense.

However, there has been the threat that if China were to embark on a mission to vastly increase its nuclear warheads, this would upset the balance for India’s perception of its security and spark a nuclear arms race on the subcontinent as India tries to counter the Chinese threat. In turn, Pakistan would feel threatened by an ever-increasing Indian arsenal of warheads and feel the need to increase its nuclear arsenal.

This type of calculus should not surprise us. After all, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declared that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, his country would be compelled to follow suit. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan maintain strong ties so it takes little imagination to figure out how Saudi Arabia could go about fulfilling nuclear ambitions.

Recently, European countries have expressed grave concerns about Russia’s nuclear threats, and there is talk of France and Britain providing a nuclear umbrella to account for the possibility that President Trump will disengage the US from the obligation to defend NATO countries.

Russia’s war on Ukraine and the repeated threats and insinuations that nuclear weapons could and might be used against Ukraine or that intervention by NATO countries could lead to another world war — a veiled threat of nuclear conflict — changed the calculus. Never had the leader of a major nuclear armed state so openly threatened the use of such weapons.

In 2021, reports surfaced that China was constructing at least 250 new long-range missile silos. This rapid nuclear buildup confirmed that China would substantially expand its nuclear arsenal. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that a rapid buildout by China would mark a sharp deviation from Beijing’s “decades-old nuclear strategy based on minimum deterrence.”

The Arms Control Association reported that Admiral Charles Richard, commander of US Strategic Command, called the development a “strategic breakout” by China. “The explosive growth and modernization of its nuclear and conventional forces can only be what I describe as breathtaking, and frankly, the word ‘breathtaking’ may not be enough.”

As I have previously written, the US and Russia each have roughly equal nuclear stockpiles of approximately 4,000 warheads. China, in contrast, is expected to quintuple its warheads to 300 over the next decade.

Vipin Narang is a Professor of Nuclear Security and Political Science and Director of the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleague, Pranay Vaddi a Senior Fellow there have written in Foreign Affairs about how to survive a new nuclear age.

They write that the US now faces a Category 5 hurricane of nuclear threats, having to deter aggressors and protect itself and its allies from multiple nuclear-armed great power rivals at the same time.  The threat exists that just as Russia has done with the Ukraine conflict, both China and North Korea may integrate nuclear weapons into offensive planning, seeking a nuclear shield to enable conventional aggression. Just a few years ago, such conduct would have been unthinkable.

Worse yet is the specter of possible collaboration and synchronized military aggression by a combination of two or more of such nuclear powers. This would stretch the US nuclear deterrent beyond its means.

Meanwhile, they write that the United States’ antiquated nuclear arsenal has fallen into disrepair, with ongoing modernization efforts mired in delays and rampant cost overruns.

So, perhaps President Trump’s directive is meant to ensure that the delivery systems and missiles are in good working order, rather than to go off on a spree of nuclear detonations.

China and Russia may have no purpose other than to cause the US to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on its weapons systems rather than on upgrading domestic infrastructure and building the nation of the future with modern technologies.

A sensible approach by the US may well be to establish and maintain a level of nuclear capability to deter any aggressor nation from attacking. After all, this country has nothing to gain by initiating nuclear conflict with any other nation.

The alternative is a return to the crazed world of the Cold War and the waste of untold billions of dollars on proving what we already know: that we can destroy each other many times over.

Cheerz…
Bwana

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 14 November 2025