US President Donald Trump has announced that he will begin testing nuclear weapons, which could lead to a drastic change in US policy.
“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have directed the Department of War to begin equally testing our own nuclear weapons,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social ahead of his meeting with the Chinese president.
“That process will begin immediately.”
The world’s nuclear powers (those recognized as members of the so-called nuclear club and those whose status is more ambiguous) regularly test nuclear weapons delivery systems, such as missiles carrying nuclear warheads.
Since the 1990s, only North Korea has actually tested nuclear weapons, and it has not conducted a single nuclear test since 2017.
The White House offered no explanation for the commander in chief’s announcement. It is therefore unclear whether Trump intends to test a nuclear delivery system or the destructive weapon itself. In a comment following the post, he said the location of the nuclear test would be decided later.
Many of the six policy experts interviewed by the BBC said testing nuclear weapons could raise the stakes at an already dangerous moment when all signs are that the world is heading in the direction of a nuclear arms race, even if it has not yet begun.
One of the six disagreed that Trump’s comments would have much impact, and another did not think the United States was inciting racism, but all said the world was facing a growing nuclear threat.
“The concern here is that nuclear-armed states, with the exception of North Korea, have not conducted nuclear tests in decades, so this could have a domino effect,” said Jamie Kwong, a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“We are at a very concerning moment where the United States, Russia and China are entering a moment that could potentially develop into an arms race.”
Darya Dolzikova, senior fellow on proliferation and nuclear policy at the Royal Allied Studies Institute (Rusi), a London-based defense and security think tank, said she did not believe Trump’s comments would significantly change the situation.
But she added, “There are other dynamics that raise the risk of nuclear exchange and proliferation globally to higher levels than in previous decades.”
She said Trump’s message is “a drop in a much larger bucket, and there are legitimate concerns about that bucket being overfilled.”
Experts have noted that conflicts escalate when one or more of the warring parties is a nuclear state. For example, the war in Ukraine, where Russian President Vladimir Putin has at times threatened to use nuclear weapons.
And this year, there have been explosions, if not full-blown conflicts, such as the dispute between Pakistan and India or Israel, which has a policy of neither confirming nor denying that it possesses nuclear weapons, attacking Iran, a country that the West accuses of seeking to build nuclear weapons (which Tehran denies).
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula and China’s ambitions toward Taiwan add to the overall picture.
The existing nuclear treaty between the United States and Russia, which limits the amount of deployed nuclear weapons (warheads ready for use), is set to expire next February.
In his announcement, President Trump said that the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country. This statement is inconsistent with figures regularly updated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), another think tank specializing in the field.
According to Sipri, Russia has 5,459 nuclear warheads, followed by the United States with 5,177 and China with 600.
Other think tanks reported similar figures.
Russia recently announced that it had tested new nuclear weapons delivery systems, including a missile that the Kremlin said could penetrate U.S. defenses and another that could go underwater to strike U.S. shores.
Some experts suspected that the latter claim may have led to President Trump’s announcement. This despite Russia saying its test “was not a nuclear test.”
Meanwhile, the United States has been watching China closely amid growing concerns that it could reach near-peer status, posing a “two-state nuclear risk,” experts said.
Therefore, if the United States resumes nuclear testing, China and Russia may also do the same.
“If someone lifts the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly,” a Kremlin spokesman said.
In response, China said it hoped the United States would fulfill its obligations under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which both countries have signed but not ratified, and fulfill its commitment to halt nuclear testing.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said it would be a “mistake of historic international security proportions” for the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing.
He said the risk of nuclear conflict has been steadily increasing over the past few years, and unless the United States and Russia negotiate some form of new restrictions on their arsenals, we are likely to see a continued and dangerous three-way arms race between the United States, Russia and China in the coming years.
Hans Christensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said the public “should be very concerned” because the number of nuclear warheads has increased in the past five years for the first time since the Cold War.
The last U.S. nuclear weapons test took place underground in Nevada in 1992.
Kimball said it will take at least 36 months to get the Nevada site ready for use again.
The United States currently uses computer simulations and other non-explosive means to test nuclear weapons, so there is no real justification for detonating them, several experts said.
Kwong said underground testing also had inherent risks. This is because we need to make sure there is no radioactivity leaking from the ground and that it does not affect groundwater.
Robert Peters, senior fellow for strategic deterrence at the conservative Heritage Foundation, criticized Russia and China for exaggerating their rhetoric, saying there may be no scientific or technical reason for testing warheads, but “the main reason is to send a political message to our adversaries.”
“It may be necessary for some president, whether Donald Trump or whoever, to conduct a nuclear test to prove his credibility,” he said, arguing that preparing for a nuclear test “is not an unreasonable position.”
Many other people interviewed by the BBC disagreed, but all gave a fairly harsh assessment of the situation.
“My view is that if a new nuclear arms race has not yet begun, we are now heading towards the starting line,” said Rhys Crilley, who writes on the topic at the University of Glasgow.
“I worry every day about the danger of a nuclear arms race and the growing danger of nuclear war.”
The United States tested its first atomic bomb in July 1945 in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico.
After dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August of the same year during World War II, the country became the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons in war.
