\n<\/p>\n
Ahead of a meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Thursday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. will resume nuclear testing, ending a 33-year moratorium.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,\u201d Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social.<\/p>\n
The U.S. last tested a nuclear weapon in an underground experiment in the Nevada Test Site in 1992, a marker of the end of the cold war. That last test concluded a decades-long testing program that included more than 1,000 detonations conducted by the civilian Department of Energy, which oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile.<\/p>\n
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The Project 2025 report, now acknowledged by Trump as an indicator of his administration\u2019s policies, had called for resuming U.S. nuclear testing to ensure the performance of the nuclear stockpile. Trump\u2019s announcement follows recent Russian tests of a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-capable underwater drone, but there have not been any known nuclear detonations recently made by either Russia or China. Both of those nations are signatories to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the U.S. has signed yet never ratified. (China also hasn\u2019t ratified the treaty, and Russia revoked its ratification in 2023, however.) China last tested a bomb in 1996, and the Soviet Union last tested one in 1990. Both countries have expressed concern about Trump\u2019s announcement, and Russia has threatened to start its own tests.<\/p>\n
To ask what is at stake in Trump\u2019s call to resume U.S. nuclear tests, Scientific American spoke with Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on the geopolitics of nuclear weaponry at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.<\/p>\n
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]<\/p>\n
We haven\u2019t done a nuclear test since 1992. So what is the argument for doing this? Are there any technical benefits to resuming testing?<\/p>\n
The question is: What sort of testing are we talking about? The U.S can presently test nuclear weapons in every way, shape or form\u2014except for doing explosive tests that create yield. The U.S. now does so-called subcritical tests about 1,000 feet under the Nevada desert. And so it\u2019s very unclear what the president means.<\/p>\n
Are we talking about a full-yield test out in the desert? Or are we talking about small lab experiments that produce much less yield? It\u2019s very unclear. And all of those [tests] have different yields [that have] different purposes.<\/p>\n
But if I were to back up to issue one sweeping statement, it would be: No, [there aren\u2019t any benefits to resuming testing] because the U.S. already conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests. It has a vast trove of data that underlies the most sophisticated computer models imaginable. The U.S. knows more about its nuclear weapons today than it did in the period when it was testing them. The only countries that will really learn more if testing resumes are Russia and, to a much greater extent, China.<\/p>\n
Project 2025 called for resuming underground nuclear tests, though. Would Trump\u2019s announcement seem to point in that direction\u2014basically, to the U.S. once again blowing up such weapons underground?<\/p>\n
During the last [Trump] administration, [officials] spoke of being ready to resume nuclear testing. And they discovered that it would be a couple of years before they could do it. Then they started talking about doing uninstrumented tests\u2014which are literally pointless.<\/p>\n
You get no data from an uninstrumented test. It\u2019s just a demonstration. All you do is demonstrate that we have functional nukes. It\u2019s really unclear why you would do that.<\/p>\n
What would this do to the nonproliferation movement, with the whole idea of a testing moratorium going out the window?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible the test ban collapses. But it is also possible that the nonproliferation treaty [the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 1970] collapses because that requires the U.S., Russia and other nuclear-weapon states to make good-faith efforts to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
But non-nuclear-weapon states have made it clear that this test ban is literally the bare minimum. And most of those countries aren\u2019t very happy that the U.S hasn\u2019t ratified the [CTBT]. But the fact that there has at least been an end to nuclear testing has been really important to sustaining a sense around the world that nonproliferation is a common good rather than just an effort at a nuclear monopoly by a few countries.<\/p>\n
Normally I am not one of those people who believes in that kind of symbolic stuff. But so much of [the Trump administration\u2019s] foreign policy seems to be about being transgressive. Whatever effect a resumption in testing would have on our domestic politics, it also affects how people abroad see us. It becomes difficult to persuade people to do the things we want them to do when we seem reckless and selfish.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also this matter of modernizing the U.S nuclear program, a long-running effort that\u2019s over budget and delayed. How would new nuclear testing play into that?<\/p>\n
If there were a technical reason to resume testing, you could imagine that would reduce the need for modernization\u2014because successful testing would suggest that the existing systems are in excellent shape.<\/p>\n
That said, I don\u2019t think this is a sincere effort to get additional data to be more informed about the state of the U.S. arsenal. I think this is intended as a transgressive act that\u2019s supposed to bully the Russians and the Chinese and aggravate the president\u2019s domestic enemies.<\/p>\n
So why do it?<\/p>\n
Well, the real fundamental question here is: What the hell does [Trump] mean in that Truth Social post? Because Russia hasn\u2019t conducted a nuclear test; it\u2019s tested nuclear-capable or nuclear-powered assets.<\/p>\n
And the Russians and Chinese aren\u2019t accused of doing clandestine things at their test sites\u2014or, at least, they haven\u2019t been accused of that on an unclassified basis. And the Department of Defense doesn\u2019t have any role in this, really, because nuclear testing is handled by the Department of Energy. So you just kind of stare at Trump\u2019s statement, and you\u2019re like, \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
I just don\u2019t know what any of this means. I thought I was an expert, and I can\u2019t parse the words he\u2019s using.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also confusing because, in some ways, Trump has seemed worried about nuclear war. He makes statements along the lines of saying that we all have too many weapons and should work together to disarm, and then he comes out with something like this.<\/p>\n
I think what\u2019s happened is that he\u2019s been told that the Russians or the Chinese are doing bad things and that we\u2019re at a disadvantage because we can\u2019t do the same bad things. And he\u2019s feels we ought to be able to do the same things. I doubt it\u2019s any deeper than that.<\/p>\n
But let me say a positive thing: [Trump] has political power here, in that he could force Senate Republicans to ratify the … CTBT if he thinks this is so important. He could absolutely get a verification protocol to the CTBT just like the Reagan administration did with the Threshold Test Ban Treaty [the Treaty on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear Weapon Tests, which entered into force in 1990], which would address some of these concerns about what the Russians and the Chinese are doing\u2014if Republicans would accept it and ratify the treaty.<\/p>\n
And then, you know what, he really would get a Nobel Peace Prize. If Trump got a verification protocol to the CTBT and then brought that treaty into effect, I would write in support of him getting a Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n
All right, let\u2019s hope that, somehow, that idea gets whispered in his ear. Thanks for your thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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