Trump threatens to restart nuclear testing

US President Donald Trump says the US will start testing nuclear weapons again, a statement that has raised alarm in the peace movement and in nations across the world. According to news reports, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that “We’ve halted many years ago, but with others doing testing I think it’s appropriate to do so.”

Which other countries he is referring to remains opaque since, with the exception of North Korea, none of the other nuclear weapon states have tested nuclear weapons since the 1990s. (North Korea conducted a test in 2017.) Both Russia and the United States have continued to test nuclear missile delivery systems. Trump’s remarks could have been prompted by Russia’s recent announcement that it has been testing nuclear-powered weapons, which are not the same as actual nuclear weapons.

“If the US restarts testing its nuclear weapons, this will accelerate a new nuclear arms race,” Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Sophie Bolt, told the Morning Star on the news of Trump’s threat.

“I think a decision to resume nuclear testing would be extremely dangerous and would do more to benefit our adversaries than the United States,” Corey Hinderstein, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for Nuclear Peace, told National Public Radio.

“Previous nuclear testing has left a catastrophic legacy of harm across the planet and caused devastating health impacts – cancer, birth defects, displacement, trauma – and poisoned land and water for generations,” said the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in a statement. ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. “The world has seen enough suffering caused by nuclear explosions and repeating those crimes would be indefensible.”

These concerns were supported by a warning from Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky, who said that a resumption of nuclear testing by the US would “start a chain response” and undermine strategic stability, according to Newsweek.

The Nevada National Security Site, formerly known as the Nevada Test Site, is the only location where the US could feasibly conduct nuclear weapons testing. That would engender immediate protest from the rightful owners of that land — the Western Shoshone — where 928 atomic tests were conducted during the Cold War, 24 of them by the United Kingdom. That is why the Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation, Ian Zabarte, has called their land “the most bombed nation on Earth.”

Bolt of CND also told the Morning Star that a resumption of nuclear tests would increase the risk of nuclear war. “We are already in the midst of nuclear expansion as nuclear weapons states modernize and expand their nuclear weapons. It is absolutely critical that we ratchet up the political pressure to make these world leaders — including the British government — step back from this nuclear escalation,” she urged. 

Longtime nuclear analyst, David Lowry, told the Morning Star that “there is no military reason to resume testing” and that “The Trump administration would have a difficult time telling India, Pakistan and even Iran not to test nuclear devices if they resume such testing. Having created the nuclear norm against nuclear warhead testing, to start again now would be a deeply retrograde step.”

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(Headline photo by Ken Lund/Wikimedia Commons)