For the first time in more than 30 years, the former national security advisor to President Donald Trump is advocating that US nuclear testing should resume during a second term in government.
Nuclear weapons specialists think that’s a bad idea because, if the embargo on that type of testing isn’t upheld, the US, Russia, and China may find themselves in the throes of an arms race very rapidly.
Former Trump advisor Robert O’Brien stated in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday that the US should test new nuclear weapons to offset China’s and Russia’s ongoing nuclear arsenal investments.
“China has doubled the size of its arsenal since 2020: a massive, unexplained, and unwarranted expansion. The United States has to maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles,” O’Brien stated.
He added, “To do so, Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992 — not just by using computer models.”
The US should also start producing uranium-235 and plutonium-239, the two main isotopes used in nuclear weapons, O’Brien continued.
Experts on nuclear weapons and arms control promptly denounced O’Brien’s ideas, even though it’s uncertain if such measures would be Trump’s top goals in a prospective second term.
Expert on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation and former Obama administration official for national security affairs Jon B. Wolfsthal said on X, “The ignorance of Trump advisors continues to stun,” adding that the “US has the world’s most reliable and advanced nuclear weapons.”
Resuming US nuclear testing, according to Wolfsthal, “would only make it easier for RF [Russian Federation] and PRC [People’s Republic of China] to resume nuclear testing and catch up.” He continued by saying that the US already had nuclear weapons from the Cold War in its stockpiles, thus no more were required.
Executive director of the Arms Control Association Daryl Kimball called O’Brien’s opinion “dangerous, counterproductive Dr. Strangelove thinking,” writing that “nuclear bullying doesn’t work and leads to arms racing.” He remarked that in a nuclear arms race, nobody wins.
Kimball drew attention to the distinction between O’Brien’s case for nuclear testing restarting and the Biden administration’s current stance, which is committed to maintaining the status quo.
“The United States does not need to increase our nuclear forces to outnumber the combined total of our competitors in order to successfully deter them,” stated Jake Sullivan, national security advisor to US President Joe Biden, in 2023. He mentioned that we have already learned that lesson
