Are Trump’s Nuclear Tests Raising the Stakes?

President Donald Trump has announced that the US will begin testing nuclear weapons in what could be a radical shift in his nation’s policy.

“Due to the testing programs of other countries, I have instructed the War Department to begin testing our nuclear weapons on an equal footing,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social as he prepared to meet the Chinese president on Thursday.

“This process will begin immediately.

The world’s nuclear-weapon states — those recognized as belonging to the so-called nuclear club and those whose status is more unclear — regularly test their nuclear weapons delivery systems, such as a missile that would carry a nuclear warhead.

Only North Korea has actually tested a nuclear weapon since the 1990s — and hasn’t since 2017.

The White House did not comment on the commander-in-chief’s announcement. So it remains unclear whether Trump is referring to testing nuclear delivery systems or the destructive weapons themselves. In a comment after his publication, he said the nuclear test sites would be determined later.

Six political experts told the BBC that testing nuclear weapons would raise the stakes at an already dangerous time when all signs point to the world heading for a nuclear arms race – even though it has not yet begun.

One in six disagreed that Trump’s comments would have much impact – and another did not think the US was provoking a race – but all said the world faces a growing nuclear threat.

“The concern here is that because nuclear-armed states haven’t conducted these nuclear tests in decades — North Korea aside — it could create a domino effect,” said Jamie Kwong, a fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“We are in a very troubling moment where the US, Russia and China are potentially entering this moment that could turn into an arms race.”

Darya Dolzikova, a senior fellow in proliferation and nuclear policy at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) – a London-based defense and security think tank – said Trump’s comments would change the situation significantly.

But, she added, “there are other global dynamics that have raised the risks of nuclear exchange and further proliferation to levels higher than they have been in recent decades.”

Trump’s message, she said, “is a drop in a much bigger bucket, and there are some valid concerns about overflowing that bucket.”

Experts pointed to escalating conflicts in which one or more of the warring countries are nuclear powers – the war in Ukraine, for example in which Russian President Vladimir Putin has sometimes threatened that it can use a nuclear weapon.

And then there were flare-ups — if not full-blown conflicts — like the one between Pakistan and India this year, or Israel — which has a policy of neither confirming nor denying that it has nuclear weapons — attacking Iran — a country the West accuses of trying to build nuclear weapons (a charge Tehran denies).

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula and China’s ambitions in Taiwan add to the overall picture.

The last existing nuclear treaty between the US and Russia, which limits the quantities of their deployed nuclear arsenals – ready-to-use warheads – is due to expire in February next year.

In his statement, Trump said the US has more nuclear weapons than any other country, a claim that is inconsistent with figures regularly updated by another think tank specializing in the field, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).

According to Sipri, Russia has 5,459 nuclear warheads, followed by the US with 5,177 and China in third place with 600.

Other think tanks report similar numbers.

Russia announced recently that it had tested new nuclear weapons delivery systems – including a missile that the Kremlin says can penetrate US defenses and another that can travel underwater to strike the US coast.

The latter claim may have prompted Trump’s statement, some experts suspected, despite Russia saying its tests were “not nuclear”.

Meanwhile, the US is watching China closely – with growing concern that it too will reach near-peer status and pose a “bilateral nuclear risk”, experts said.

So resuming US nuclear testing could prompt China and Russia to do the same.

A Kremlin spokesman said that “if anyone deviates from the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly.”

In its response, China said it hoped the US would live up to its obligations under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty – which both countries have signed but not ratified – and fulfill its commitment to end nuclear tests.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said resuming US nuclear weapons testing would be “a mistake of historic international security proportions.”

He said the risk of nuclear conflict has been “steadily rising” for several years and, unless the US and Russia “negotiate some form of new limits on their arsenals, we are likely to see an unrestricted, dangerous, three-way arms race between the US, Russia and then China in the coming years”.

Hans Christensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said the average person should be “very concerned” because there has been an increase in nuclear warheads in the past five years for the first time since the Cold War.

The last US nuclear test – underground in Nevada – was in 1992.

Kimball said it will take at least 36 months for the Nevada site to be ready for use again.

The US currently uses computer simulations and other non-explosive means to test its nuclear weapons and therefore has no practical justification for detonating them, multiple experts said.

Kwong said there are inherent risks even with underground testing because you have to make sure there’s no radioactive leakage above ground and it doesn’t affect groundwater.

While blaming Russia and China for ratcheting up the rhetoric, Robert Peters, senior fellow for strategic deterrence at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that while there is no scientific or technical reason to test a warhead, “the main reason is to send a political message to your opponents.”

“It may be necessary for a president, whether it’s Donald Trump or whoever, to test nuclear weapons as a demonstration of reliability,” he said, arguing that it was “not an unreasonable position” to be willing to test.

Although many others the BBC spoke to disagreed, they all offered a pretty dire assessment of the current situation.

“My sense is that if the new nuclear arms race hasn’t started yet, then we’re headed for the starting line right now,” said Rhys Crilly, who writes on the subject at the University of Glasgow.

“I worry every day about the risks of a nuclear arms race and the growing risk of nuclear war.

The US tested the first atomic bomb in July 1945 in the desert at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

It later became the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons in war after dropping two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year during World War II.