Trump Threatens To Resume Nuclear Weapons Testing

Nuclear weapons are once again dominating the conversation, and this time, it’s Donald Trump, who announced that he has ordered the Pentagon to move ahead with restarting US nuclear tests. If America goes through with this plan, it would mark the country’s first nuclear test in over three decades. What made the moment even more striking was the timing. Trump issued the threat barely minutes before sitting down with China’s President Xi Jinping.

Officials say the move caught even Trump’s own team seemed blindsided by the order. It left people in the corridors of power scrambling for answers — no one quite sure when the testing would start, or if it ever really would. Posting on his Truth Social account, Trump claimed that since other nations were ramping up their nuclear tests, he’d told the “Department of War” to do the same. He went on to claim that America still holds the largest nuclear arsenal in the world but cautioned that China is fast closing the gap and could match America within five years.

China’s nuclear buildup has been accelerating at a steady pace. Estimates show its stockpile rose from about 350 warheads in 2022 to roughly 410 in 2023. But the US and Russia have been slowly cutting back. Even so, the difference is still huge, as America held close to 3,700 nuclear weapons in 2023, far outnumbering China’s growing arsenal.

Trump’s latest declaration came just as Russia revealed something of its own, the successful test of Poseidon, a nuclear-powered underwater drone capable of carrying nuclear warheads. It was back in 2018 when Putin showed off Poseidon, designed not just for defence but as a loud warning to the West. Ever since 1945, the world has witnessed more than two thousand nuclear test blasts. By the time the 1990s rolled around, nearly every nation decided enough was enough, all but North Korea, which kept defying that silence. The US, the Soviet Union, and China conducted their last respective nuclear weapons tests in 1992, 1990, and 1996. These nations also signed the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bars any nuclear explosion tests. However, the UN reports that North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, and twice in 2016 and again in 2017.

America signed the CTBT but never ratified it, which means it isn’t legally bound to follow it. Signing shows support in principle, but only ratification makes a treaty officially binding. For now, it’s unlikely the U.S. will restart nuclear testing — the hurdles are too big, both technically and politically. But Trump’s message seems to signal something bigger: the race for nuclear dominance among the US, Russia, and China is heating up again.