But does that word (testing) mean what he thinks it means?

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Editor’s Note: The Department of Energy has since clarified that there will be no nuclear explosions of actual nuclear weapons and that it is “systems” not weapons that the US will be testing. Nevertheless, the original social media posting by Trump once more raised the specter of another insane nuclear arms race, arguably one we are already in.

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 — and exactly what kind of testing — remain opaque since none of the major nuclear weapon states have tested atomic weapons since the 1990s. However, both Russia and the United States have continued to test nuclear missile delivery systems. Russia also recently tested a nuclear-capable torpedo and cruise missile. However, none of these activities constitute actual nuclear weapons testing.

Nevertheless, Trump’s pronouncements prompted headlines around the world, raising concerns of further global destabilization. “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.

“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, said on National Public Radio.

Russia last tested nuclear weapons in 1990, China in 1996 and India and Pakistan in 1998. Britain halted in 1991 and France in 1996. Only North Korea has tested since then, in 2017.

“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.”

Tilman Ruff, a founder of ICAN, reminded readers in an article for The Conversation, that the US is a signatory to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signed by 187 states, “one of the most widely supported disarmament treaties in the world. The US signed the treaty decades ago, but has yet to ratify it. Nonetheless, it is actually legally bound not to violate the spirit and purpose of the treaty while it’s a signatory.”

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. 

“Historically so-called tests have been used both to advance the destructive capabilities of weapons designed to incinerate cities in a flash, and to signal to potential adversaries that the testing country is both willing and ready to cause massive indiscriminate harm to them,” said the ICAN statement.

“President Trump’s alarming announcement on social media is an indication of how risky the global nuclear situation currently stands, and how urgent it is to remove the threat of nuclear weapons.”

Longtime nuclear analyst, David Lowry, also quoted in the Morning Star article, said “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.”

Trump’s announcement can only spur a further ramping up of nuclear arsenals by the world’s major powers, something we are already seeing, Ruff warned. “Russia, in particular, has weapons we haven’t seen before, such as a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile that President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday his country has successfully tested,” he wrote. “China, too, is embarking on a rapid build-up of nuclear weapons.”Meanwhile, “the US has just completed assembling a new nuclear gravity bomb.”

Peace campaigners also sought to remind anyone who might support Trump’s testing intentions that “Nuclear tests are not merely a balancing of ledgers between nuclear armed nations,” as Kathleen Sullivan of the Nuclear Truth Project wrote in a letter to colleagues. “Nuclear tests are explicit acts of violence against all living beings. Testing nuclear weapons is using nuclear weapons.”

In the end, Trump’s announcement may simply be another in a long line of tactless bragging, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If he really meant the testing of nuclear powered weapons or delivery systems rather than actual nuclear weapons, then nothing has really changed, policy-wise, despite the bellicose rhetoric.

“I think the most important thing right now is that the White House has got to clarify what President Trump is talking about,” former Physicians for Social Responsibility president Ira Helfand, told Amy Goodman during an appearance on Democracy Now! “If we really are going to resume explosive nuclear testing, this is an extraordinarily destabilizing decision, and one which will increase even more the already great danger that we have of stumbling into a nuclear conflict.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is the founder of Beyond Nuclear and serves as its international specialist. Her book, No To Nuclear. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War, can be pre-ordered now from Pluto Press.

Headline photo from The Official CTBTO Photostream/Wikimedia Commons