Why did Trump push the nuclear test button after 33 years?

Donald Trump's public announcement that he had asked the US War Department (until recently the Defence Ministry) to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons caused global concern, for the first time in 33 years, as the last time such happened in America was in 1992.

Because of other countries' testing programmes, I have instructed the Department of Defence to start testing our nuclear weapons under equal conditions”, wrote the American president in Social Truth, with the New York Times performing that the term “under equal conditions” can mean Trump will demonstrate the power of American missiles or nuclear weapons issued by submarines and will not continue with a nuclear test.

Anger for Russia

Although it is still unclear what prompted Trump to do so, while he was flying to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, it is considered quite possible, as NYT points out, that American President “became angry at the recent demonstrations of such weapons systems from Russia”.

Just 24 hours ago, Putin announced that Russia had successfully tested the Burvestnik nuclear missile, which according to Moscow was designed to travel over the Pacific and eastern Russia to hit the US West Coast. At the same time Wednesday, he declared that we conducted another test, of another very promising system, an underwater threat, Poseidon”.

The American president criticised Moscow's move, telling reporters that his Russian counterpart must work to end the war in Ukraine “instead of testing rocket”.

China's turn under Xi Jinping

At the same time, China constitutes a particularly difficult nuclear <x0rebus” for Trump, as the New York Times notes, since it has never signed a nuclear arms control treaty.

While during the Cold War, its “pre-emptor, which numbered only a few hundred nuclear weapons compared to the thousands owned by Russia and the United States, seemed too small to cause concern, under Xi Jinping, this policy has been abandoned.

First secretly and then open, China has built new missile silos in front of American satellites. The Pentagon estimates that Beijing will have about 1,000 weapons by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035, a number that would bring China to the same level as the current arsenals of the United States and Russia.

Until then, however, China does not seem to have any interest in participating in nuclear weapons control talks, with Trump declaring it possible to persuade Xi to participate in such negotiations.

The World's Nuclear Arsenal

According to the latest report by the International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm (SIPRI), the United States has 5,117 nuclear heads and Russia has 5,489.

In total, SIPRI estimates that nine countries have more than 12,200 nuclear heads: Russia, the United States, China, France, Britain, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea.

For years American nuclear weapons engineers have said that more nuclear tests were unnecessary, since they could simulate computer tests instead of risking explosions that once occurred in the Pacific or underground in Nevada. In recent years, however, as the United States began to modernise its aging arsenal, there have been calls for the resumption of such tests.

If Trump tests a nuclear weapon, possibly in the area outside Las Vegas, this will likely provoke similar moves by other armed nations with nuclear weapons, such as Britain, France and Israel, which has an undeclared arsenal of nearly 100 weapons. India, Pakistan and North Korea also have increased nuclear weapons reserves”, writes the New York Times.

Bilateral Agreements

Washington and Moscow remain bound by the new START disarmament treaty, which limits each country to 1,550 deployed nuclear heads and envisions a verification mechanism, but this has been suspended for two years.

With the treaty expected to expire in February, Putin proposed in early October to extend it for a year, but did not mention the possibility of restarting arsenal inspections.

In 2019, during Trump's first mandate, the US withdrew from another important treaty they had signed with Russia in 1987, on medium-range nuclear weapons action (INF).

In 2020, the American press reported on an alleged plan of Trump to resume nuclear testing as a warning to Russia and China.

From the first American nuclear test in July 1945 to the New Mexico Desert to the mortorium imposed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, the United States conducted 1,054 nuclear tests and bombed Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. /Protothema/