President Donald Trump has announced that the United States will begin testing nuclear weapons, in what could be a radical shift in his country's policy.
“Because of other countries' testing programs, I have directed the War Department to begin testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account as he prepared to meet with the Chinese president on Thursday.
“This process will begin immediately.”
The world's nuclear-weapon states – those recognized as members of the so-called nuclear club and those whose status is more ambiguous – regularly test their nuclear weapons delivery systems, such as missiles carrying a nuclear warhead.
Only North Korea has actually tested nuclear weapons since the 1990s—and hasn't done so since 2017.
The White House did not provide any clarification on the commander in chief's statement. So it remains unclear whether Trump is referring to testing nuclear weapons delivery systems or the destructive weapons themselves. In comments following his post, he said that nuclear test sites would be determined later.
Many of the six political experts who spoke to the BBC said nuclear weapons testing could raise the stakes at an already dangerous moment when all signs point to the world heading towards a nuclear arms race even though it has not yet begun.
One in six disagreed that Trump's comments would have a major impact, and another did not think the US was provoking a race, but all said the world faced a growing nuclear threat.
“The concern here is that since nuclear-weapon states have not conducted these nuclear tests for decades (not counting North Korea), this 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 worrying moment where the United States, Russia and China are potentially entering this moment that could very well escalate into an arms race.”
Daria Dolzikova, a senior fellow on proliferation and nuclear policy at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), a London-based defense and security think tank, said she did not believe Trump's comments would radically change the situation.
But, she added, “there are other trends in the world that have raised the risks of a nuclear exchange and further nuclear proliferation to levels higher than they have been in recent decades.”
Trump's message, she said, “is a drop in a much larger bucket, and there are some legitimate concerns about overflowing that bucket.”
Experts have pointed to the escalation of conflicts in which one or more warring parties are nuclear powers – for example, the war in Ukraine in which Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened from time to time that he could use nuclear weapons.
And then there have been outbreaks – if not full-fledged conflicts – such as the conflict between Pakistan and India this year, or Israel – which has a policy of neither confirming nor denying that it has nuclear weapons – attacks on Iran, a country the West accuses of trying to develop nuclear weapons (Tehran denies the charge).
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula and Chinese ambitions in Taiwan add to the overall picture.
The last existing nuclear treaty between the United States and Russia, which limits the number of deployed nuclear arsenals (warheads ready for use), expires in February next year.
In his statement, Trump said the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country. This statement does not correspond to figures regularly updated by another think tank specializing in this area, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
Russia has 5,459 nuclear warheads, followed by the United States with 5,177 and China in third place with 600, Sipri said.
Other think tanks have reported similar figures.
Russia recently announced it had tested new nuclear weapons delivery systems, including a missile that the Kremlin says could penetrate US defenses and another that could sink underwater and strike the US coast.
The latter claim could have led to Trump's claim, as some experts suspected, although Russia said its tests “were not nuclear.”
Meanwhile, the US is watching China closely, with growing concerns that it too will achieve near-peer status and pose a “dual nuclear risk”, experts say.
Thus, the resumption of US nuclear testing may encourage China and Russia to do the same.
A Kremlin spokesman said that “if someone comes out of the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly.”
In its response, China said it hopes the US will 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 suspend nuclear testing.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said a US resumption of nuclear weapons testing would be a “mistake of historic international security proportions.”
He said the risk of nuclear conflict has been “growing steadily” for several years, and unless the U.S. and Russia “agree on some new limits on their arsenals, we are likely to see a runaway, dangerous three-way arms race between the U.S., 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” as the number of nuclear warheads has increased over the past five years for the first time since the Cold War.
The last US nuclear weapons test, underground in Nevada, took place in 1992.
Kimball said it will take at least 36 months to get the Nevada facility 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 have said.
Kwong said even with underground testing there are risks to ensure there is no leakage of radioactive material above ground and that it will not affect groundwater.
Blaming Russia and China for ramping up the rhetoric, Robert Peters, senior fellow for strategic deterrence at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that while there may be no scientific or technical reason for testing a warhead, “the main reason is to send a political signal to your opponents.”
“Some president, be it Donald Trump or someone else, may need to test a nuclear weapon as a show of confidence,” he said, arguing that it is an “unfounded position” to be willing to test.
While many of the BBC's other interviewees disagreed, they all gave a rather bleak assessment of the current situation.
“I believe that if a new nuclear arms race has not yet begun, then we are currently heading towards the starting line,” said Rhys Crilly, who writes on the topic at the University of Glasgow.
“I worry every day about the risks of the nuclear arms race and the growing risk of nuclear war.”
The United States tested the first atomic bomb in July 1945 in the Alamogordo Desert, 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.
