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This past week, President Donald Trump called on the Department of Defense (DOD) to restart nuclear weapons testing “immediately,” citing false claims about other countries’ nuclear arsenals and testing.
In a Truth Social post on Wednesday and an interview that aired on Sunday, Trump was vague regarding the extent of the future nuclear weapons testing, including whether he would push for actual nuclear explosions.
Trump claimed in his social media post that the U.S. has the most nuclear weapons out of every country in the world, followed by Russia and China. This is false — Russia actually has the most nuclear weapons. Trump also claimed that China would reach parity with the U.S. “within 5 years,” although nuclear arms experts doubt that China will come anywhere close to possessing the amount of nuclear weapons the U.S. has within the next few years.
“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War [sic] to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote. “That process will begin immediately.”
Despite Trump’s suggestion that other countries are testing nuclear weapons, only one country, North Korea, has even tested such weapons in the 21st century. Indeed, most countries ended their nuclear weapons testing in the 1990s. (The U.S. suspended tests in 1992.)
Trump repeated these falsehoods in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday evening.
“We’re the only country that doesn’t test,” Trump said.
When host Norah O’Donnell attempted to correct him, Trump rejected the idea that he could be wrong, asserting that China and Russia both conduct nuclear weapons tests — despite the fact that international monitoring organizations would be aware of such tests and alert the public if they were taking place.
O’Donnell suggested to Trump that he could be referring to a missile test that Russia conducted last week, which did not include an actual nuclear weapon but could potentially carry such an arsenal.
“My understanding is what Russia did recently was test the delivery systems for nuclear weapons, essentially missiles,” O’Donnell told Trump.
But the president continued to insist that other countries were doing broader tests of nuclear weapons.
“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” he said.
Political observers have noted that this isn’t the first time Trump has struggled to accurately convey crucial details about nuclear weapons — indeed, during the 2016 presidential campaign, he appeared to have no idea what the nuclear triad was.
Any mention of nuclear weapons by leaders of the nine countries that have them — including the possibility of resuming testing — is closely watched, and could be followed by action from the remaining eight countries to increase production or ready their own military capabilities.
Earlier on Sunday, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright sought to assure Americans that Trump had not yet planned for nuclear weapons testing that would include explosions. However, even Wright’s comments were not definitive.
“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests,” Wright said in a Fox News interview.
Notably, Project 2025 (the policy blueprint for the Trump administration developed by the Heritage Foundation during last year’s presidential election) includes sections that discuss nuclear testing. For example, the document calls on Trump to reject the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It also encourages the Trump White House to “move to immediate test readiness” when it comes to the country’s nuclear arsenal.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) recognized in a recent press release that Trump’s statements on restarting nuclear weapons testing are “not clear” regarding whether he would pursue nuclear-explosive testing, but noted that many of the president’s allies have suggested he should do so.
The announcement from Trump last week is “a wake-up call that the threat of nuclear war is real and accelerating,” CND said, adding:
If the U.S. re-starts testing its nuclear weapons, this will accelerate a new nuclear arms race, as other nuclear weapons states do the same. With heightened tensions over Ukraine, it will further escalate this terrible conflict. It will also increase tensions with China.
“CND calls for more global pressure to create diplomatic space for new treaties to be established, to push for nuclear weapons states to abide by nuclear disarmament obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and for the ratification of the CTBT by all the nuclear weapons states,” the organization continued.
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