President Donald Trump ordered the US military yesterday to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons after a gap of 33 years, in what appeared to be a message to rival nuclear powers China and Russia.
Trump made the surprise announcement on Truth Social while aboard his Marine One helicopter, flying to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping for a trade-negotiating session in Busan, South Korea.
He said he was instructing the Pentagon to test the US nuclear arsenal on an ‘equal basis’ with other nuclear powers.
“Because of other countries testing programmes, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately,” Trump posted.
“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within five years.”
Xi has more than doubled China’s nuclear warhead arsenal over the past five years, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has tested two new nuclear-powered weapons in recent days.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to nuclear-explosive testing, which would be carried out by the National Nuclear Security Administration, or flight testing of nuclear-capable missiles.
Russia – which tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile on October 21, held nuclear readiness drills on October 22 and tested a new nuclear-powered autonomous torpedo on October 28 – said it hoped Trump had been properly informed that Moscow had not tested an actual nuclear weapon itself.
“President Trump mentioned in his statement that other countries are engaged in testing nuclear weapons. Until now, we didn’t know that anyone was testing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Putin, who commands the world’s biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads, has repeatedly said that if any country tests a nuclear weapon then Russia will do so too.
No nuclear power – other than North Korea most recently in 2017 – has carried out explosive nuclear testing in more than 25 years. Post-Soviet Russia has never tested. The Soviet Union last tested in 1990, the US last tested in 1992 and China in 1996.
China’s foreign ministry called for the US to abide by its commitment to a moratorium on nuclear testing and uphold the global strategic balance and stability.
“Any explosive nuclear weapon test by any state would be harmful and destabilising for global non-proliferation efforts and for international peace and security,” said Robert Floyd, head of the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation.
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