Allies of Donald J. Trump are proposing that the United States resume testing nuclear weapons in underground detonations if the former president is re-elected in November. Some nuclear experts dismiss such a resumption as unnecessary, saying it would end a testing moratorium that the world’s major nuclear powers have observed for decades.
In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Robert C. O’Brien, a former national security adviser to Trump, urges him to conduct nuclear tests if he wins another term. Washington, He wrote“must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in real-world conditions for the first time since 1992.” By doing so, he added, the United States “could maintain its technical and numerical superiority over the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles.”
At the end of the Cold War, in 1992, gave up the explosive testing of nuclear weapons and eventually convinced other nuclear powers to do the same. The United States instead turned to experts and machines in the nation’s weapons labs to verify the lethality of the nation’s arsenal. Today, the machines include room-sized supercomputers, the world’s most powerful x-ray machine and a system of lasers the size of a sports stadium.
In his article, Mr. O’Brien described this work as “just using computer models.” Republican members of Congress and some nuclear experts have failed The non-explosive tests were insufficient to convince the US military that its arsenal works, and so actual testing was called for.
But the Biden administration and other Democrats warn that a U.S. test could trigger a chain reaction of tests by other countries. Over time, they add, a resumption could result in a nuclear arms race that would destabilize the global balance of terror and increase the risk of war.
“It’s a terrible idea,” said Ernst J. Monizwho oversaw the U.S. nuclear arsenal as energy secretary in the Obama administration. “New testing would make us less safe. You can’t separate it from the global implications.”
Siegfried S. Heckera former director of the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico, where J. Robert Oppenheimer oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb, called new testing a risky trade-off between domestic gains and global losses. “We stand to lose more” than America’s nuclear rivals, he said.
It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will act on the test proposals. In a statement, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump’s co-campaign managers, did not directly comment on the candidate’s position on nuclear testing. They said Mr. O’Brien and other outside groups and individuals “were misled, spoke prematurely, and may have been completely wrong” about the plans of a second Trump administration.
Yet the history of Trump’s nuclear bluster, threats and hardline policy suggests he might be open to such guidance from his national security advisers. In 2018, he boasted that his “Nuclear Button” was “much bigger and more powerful” than the force controller of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader.
An American detonation would be a violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treatylong considered one of the most successful arms control measures. Signed by the world’s nuclear powers in 1996, it attempted to stem a costly arms race that had spiraled out of control.
During the Cold War, China departure 45 test explosions, 210 in France, 715 in Russia and 1,030 in the United States, with the aim of discovering flaws in weapons designs and verifying their reliability.
Nuclear experts consultation that the differences in the tests give Washington a military advantage by preventing other powers from making their arsenals more diverse and lethal.
In 2017, Trump’s presidential inauguration revived the possibility of new testing. In addition discussing a rebootofficials in his administration called for shortening the preparation time for a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing. The federal agency responsible for the nation’s nuclear test site ordered the required preparation time dropped from years to just six months.
Nuclear experts saw the goal as unrealistic because the test equipment at the sprawling site in the Nevada desert had not yet been tested. fallen into disrepair or disappeared.
Last year, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, recommended that the United States eliminate the preparation period. policy guide for conservative presidential candidates who were summoned to Washington “to move to immediate test readiness.”
In his Foreign Affairs article, Mr. O’Brien argued that the Biden administration had responded weakly to the Chinese and Russian buildup of nuclear weapons. The explosive tests of American weapons, he said, would strengthen the American arsenal and help deter America’s enemies. His article focused on the safety and reliability of new designs, not those tested during the Cold War.
“It would be negligent to deploy nuclear weapons of new designs that we have never tested in the real world,” he said. Christian Whitonwho served as an adviser to the State Department during the George W. Bush and Trump administrations and did background research for Mr. O’Brien’s article.
Asked for examples, Mr. Whiton cited two new U.S. weapons that he said should be explosively tested. Both are thermonuclear weapons, also known as hydrogen bombs. And both have a destructive power many times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
But the Biden administration work plan because the W93 says otherwise. The warhead, it notes, will rely on “currently deployed and previously tested nuclear designs.” Moreover, its creators, at the Los Alamos laboratory, insisted that the warhead can be deployed safely and reliably without the need for further explosive testing.
Charles W. Nakhlehthe lab’s deputy director for weapons physics, said in a Los Alamos publication that the alternatives to real detonations “will allow us to deploy the W93 without the need for additional nuclear testing.”
The other weapon Mr. Whiton mentioned is the B61-13a variation on a bomb first deployed in 1968. The Biden administration announced its development in October, and Mr. Whiton called it “majorly redesigned.” Yet the official plan says its nuclear components saved from an older B61 version and recycled into the new model.
“The idea that it’s a major redesign is not true,” he said. Hans M. Kristensendirector of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a private research organization in Washington. “They’ve already tested the part that makes the explosion.”
Mr. Whiton, however, believes that even modest changes “must be proven in the real world.” He also argued that the United States should develop new warheads to counter an emerging class of super-fast weapons — known as hypersonics — that China and Russia are developing. “It is likely that new warhead designs will be needed,” he said, and that new testing will be needed.
Despite conflicting claims and uncertain election results, nuclear experts say China and Russia are preparing their test sites for new detonations, perhaps in case the United States restarts its program, or to race ahead on its own. Dr. Moniz, the former energy secretary, said he fears Washington will go first if Mr. Trump wins a second term.
Mr. Whiton, the former State Department adviser, cast doubt on the idea that a U.S. detonation would set off a global chain reaction, noting that Russia and China were already building up their arsenals without resorting to new tests.
“It is unclear whether existing and aspiring nuclear states would follow us,” he said of a global response. “If they did, the downside is that they might marginally improve their capabilities.”
The advantage, Mr. Whiton said, is that the United States can study foreign detonations for clues about their hidden characteristics. For example, it can monitor the faint rumbling in the rock of an underground test to estimate the power of a device.
Mr Whiton added that such measurements would in turn help us “update our deterrence appropriately.”
The problem with Mr. Whiton’s point, say some nuclear experts, is its unspoken consequence: that the world could descend into the rounds of costly moves and countermoves that characterized the Cold War. In this century, they warn, a nuclear arms race could prove more global, more innovative, more deadly and more unpredictable.
“China has much more to gain from resuming testing than we do,” said Dr. Hecker, the former director of Los Alamos. “It would open the door for others to test and start an arms race to the danger of the entire world. We should not do that.”
Michael Gold contributed to the reporting.
