A Trump Resumption Of Nuclear Weapons Tests Would Bring World To Brink Of Nuclear Armageddon
While shopping at WalMart I noticed a bearded man wearing a MAGA T-shirt with the words “Undefeated World War Champs” against a background of the American flag.
It was as ominous as it was ignorant, reflecting the attitudes of the macho, chest-thumping, America First, bombastic, MAGA leader who infamously once promised to “rain down fire and fury” on North Korea if the nation posed a threat to the U.S. Trump also tried to frighten North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un when he said that “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Kim did not quake and eventually tested more powerful nuclear tipped missiles.
If trump heeds his advisors suggesting he resume nuclear weapons testing, he may very well drag the nation into a new nuclear arms race that could push the world closer to the brink of Armageddon.
“Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992” in order to maintain technical superiority over China and Russia, according to an article in the June edition of Foreign Affairs by Robert O’Brien, trump’s national security advisor from 2019 to 2021.
O’brien titled his column, “The Return of Peace Through Strength, Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy.” He begins with the words, “si vis pacem, para bellum,” a Latin oxymoron from the fourth century that means “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Sounding much like trump’s campaign rhetoric, O’Brien writes that the “morass of American weakness and failure cries out for a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength.”
According to O’Brien, in November, “the American people will have the opportunity to return to office a president who restored peace through strength — and who can do it again. If they do, the country has the resources, the ingenuity, and the courage to rebuild its national power, securing its freedom and once again becoming the last best hope for humankind.”
If reelected, trump would have the last word on nuclear weapons testing and development. This is a man who believes that battery powered airplanes could not fly in cloudy conditions. This is a man who said that the COVID-19 pandemic was “going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” And many millions of Americans died. This is a man who would sell the nation’s and the world’s future to the highest petrochemical industry political donors.
O’Brien wrote that a second trump administration should support nuclear testing “for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992.” The tests would help the U.S. “maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles,” O’Brien wrote.
“The United States has to maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles. 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,” O’Brien wrote. “If China and Russia continue to refuse to engage in good-faith arms control talks, the United States should also resume production of uranium-235 and plutonium-239, the primary fissile isotopes of nuclear weapons.”
The U.S. stopped explosive testing of nuclear arms in 1992 and now relies on experts at the nation’s weapons labs to verify the capabilities of the nation’s arsenal. The technology includes room-size supercomputers, the world’s most powerful X-ray machine and a system of lasers the size of a sports stadium, according to a report in the N.Y. Times. O’Brien criticized the current system as just “using computer models.”
Most countries don’t conduct live tests of nuclear warheads in adherence to the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Resumption of nuclear tests would violate the treaty which was signed by the U.S. and the world’s atomic powers to curb the mushrooming arms race. The treaty bars nuclear weapons test explosions and any other nuclear explosions, for civilian and military purposes, in all environments. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on September 10, 1996, but has not entered into force, as eight specific nations, including the U.S., have not ratified the treaty.
In October 2023, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that since the U.S. had not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, consideration could be given to withdrawing Russia’s ratification of the treaty. On November 2, Putin officially signed into law the withdrawal of ratification of the treaty.
The 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty followed enactment of the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), formally known as the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, which prohibited all above ground test detonations of nuclear weapons. The Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States on August 5, 1963. Since then, 123 other states have signed on while 10 states have signed but not ratified the treaty.
Three countries have tested nuclear weapons since the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1996. India and Pakistan each had two sets of tests in 1998. North Korea tested nuclear weapons six times, in 2006, 2009, 2013, two in 2016 and one in 2017. The first successful North Korean hydrogen bomb test supposedly took place in September 2017.
In 2017, trump suggested resumption of tests in part to reduce preparation time for a U.S. nuclear response. Last year, the conservative Heritage Foundation, which strongly supports trump, recommended that the U.S. “move to immediate test readiness.”
O’Brien wrote in Foreign Affairs that the renewed tests are necessary because the Biden administration has failed to respond strongly to Chinese and Russian buildups of nuclear arms. O’Brien noted that tests are needed for the safety and reliability of two new thermonuclear weapons, including the W93, which fits on submarine missiles and the B61–13, a variation of a bomb first deployed in 1968.
O’Brien wrote that trump’s role model for national security is President Andrew Jackson.
“Trump thinks highly of his predecessor Andrew Jackson and Jackson’s approach to foreign policy: be focused and forceful when compelled to action but wary of overreach,” O’Brien wrote in Foreign Affairs. “A second Trump term would see the return of realism with a Jacksonian flavor. Washington’s friends would be more secure and more self-reliant, and its foes would once again fear American power. The United States would be strong, and there would be peace.”
Trump has a great deal in common with Jackson. In 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, also known as the Trail of Tears. Historians refer to it as a campaign of ethnic cleansing in which tens of thousands of Native Americans were forced from their ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi, resulting in thousands of deaths. Trump would do likewise in a modern-day Trail of Tears by deporting millions of immigrants.
Trump’s temperament also is similar to Jackson who “had a reputation for being short-tempered and violent which terrified his opponents,” according to the 1948 book, “Andrew Jackson: Legend and Reality,” by Albert Somit.
According to Somit, Jackson (like trump) took things very personally.
“If someone crossed him, he would often become obsessed with crushing them. For example, on the last day of his presidency, Jackson declared he had only two regrets: that he had not hanged (political rivals) Henry Clay or shot John C. Calhoun,” Somit wrote.
Jackson was trailed by lurid accusations, akin to those attached to trump. In a particularly nasty campaign leading to the 1828 election, Jackson was accused of being the son of an English prostitute and a “mulatto” and he was labeled a slave trader who trafficked in human flesh. A series of pamphlets known as the “Coffin Handbills” accused him of having murdered 18 white men, including the soldiers he had executed for desertion and alleging that he stabbed a man in the back with his cane.
Coffin Handbills also said that Jackson had intentionally massacred Native American women and children at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, ate the bodies of Native Americans he killed in battle, and threatened to cut off the ears of congressmen who questioned his behavior during the First Seminole War, Somit wrote.
O’Brien writes that a return to trump policies would reverse the situation in the middle east. He said the current war between Israel and Hamas is a result of Biden’s efforts to re-join in the Iran nuclear deal “that trump pulled out of in 2018, having recognized it as a failure.”
O’Brien claims that the nuclear deal did not eliminate or freeze Iran’s nuclear program but instead “sanctified it, allowing Iran to retain centrifuges that it has used to amass nearly enough uranium for a bomb.”
The landmark Iran nuclear treaty was orchestrated under President Barack Obama and signed in 2015 by the U.S., United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, Germany and the European Union. The deal restricted Iran’s critical nuclear facilities and included international inspections.
Trump pulled the U.S. out in 2018 and instituted new sanctions under the policy of “maximum pressure.” Under a second trump administration, O’Brien wrote that the U.S. should resume “maximum pressure” to enforce U.S. sanctions on Iran, deploy more Naval and Air Force assets to the Middle East, “making it clear not only to Tehran but also to American allies that the U.S. military’s focus in the region was on deterring Iran, finally moving past the counterinsurgency orientation of the past two decades.”
O’Brien wrote that the U.S. should pressure Iran and continue to support and not to pressure Israel into negotiations with Hamas.
“The focus of U.S. policy in the Middle East should remain the malevolent actor that is ultimately most responsible for the turmoil and killing: the Iranian regime,” O’Brien wrote.
O’Brien wrote that the world has become less safe because the Biden administration has undermined efforts to build international alliances by “pitting allied democracies against rival autocracies.” Instead, the nation should fortify relations with “conservative elected leaders in countries allied with the United States.” Leaders include the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Polish President Andrzej Duda.
“In fact, these leaders are responsive to the desires of their people and seek to defend democracy, but through policies different from those espoused by the kind of people who like to hobnob in Davos,” O’Brien wrote, referring to the annual conference of world leaders held in Davos, Switzerland.
Bolsonaro, a far right leader, was president of Brazil from 2019 to 2023. In the runoff of the 2022 general election, Bolsonaro lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On January 8, 2023, his supporters stormed federal government buildings, calling for a coup d’état, not unlike the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by trump supporters. On June 30, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court blocked Bolsonaro from seeking office until 2030 for attempting to undermine the validity of the election through his unfounded claims of voter fraud, and for abusing his power by using government communication channels to both promote his campaign and to allege fraud. Testimonies from military officials showed that Bolsonaro had allegedly planned a self-coup with the military to keep himself in power.
Similar efforts to bar trump from seeking office were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Orban, the autocratic prime minister of Hungary, has curtailed press freedom, weakened judicial independence, and undermined multiparty democracy, amounting to democratic backsliding during Orbán’s tenure, according to a story in The Economist. He has built closer relations with Russia, has been strongly anti-immigrant, opposes protecting the LGBTQ community and considers himself a defender of Christian values.
Netanyahu, the longstanding prime minister of Israel, has come under increasing worldwide criticism for the carnage caused by Israel’s invasion of Gaza to defeat Hamas. Netanyahu also has led efforts to limit the power of the Israeli supreme court.
Duda has been President of Poland since 2015. Trump has praised the policies of the right wing leader. In February 2018, Duda signed into law the Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, making it illegal to accuse ‘the Polish nation’ of complicity in the Holocaust and other Nazi German atrocities.
As president and as candidate, trump has said and done much to undermine the nation’s security and bring the world closer to a nuclear conflagration.
As president, in 2018, the trump administration opposed the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
At a 2019 meeting of officials from the five nuclear-armed states, China proposed a joint statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Trump objected and the statement was not adopted until January 2022 when the Biden administration led reaffirmation of the statement.
In 2020, the trump administration discussed resuming nuclear testing but the Democratic-majority Congress blocked funding for the plan.
In his first year in office, trump suggested launching a nuclear strike against North Korea and blaming it on someone else, according to the book, “Donald Trump v. The United States” by New York Times Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt. Trump made the alleged comments behind closed doors in 2017 when he publicly warned North Korea that it would “be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it continued to make threats.
In 2017, trump visited Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria destroyed much of the island. While traveling with then-Governor Ricardo Rossello, trump discussed the topic of nuclear war and insisted that “if nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button,” according to a new book by Rossello, “The Reformer’s Dilemma.”
During his 2016 campaign, trump asked of one of his foreign policy advisors, “Why have them (nuclear weapons) if we can’t use them?”
That same year, in a phone conversation with Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump said, “Let it be an arms race … we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
In 2022, trump bragged to Bob Woodward about U.S. nuclear weapons development.
“I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,” the then president told the Washington Post reporter. “We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.”
During his tenure as president, trump destroyed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Treaty; and tore up the landmark Iran nuclear agreement and the Open Skies Treaty by withdrawing the United States from them.
The INF Treaty was an arms control treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. The U.S. Senate approved the treaty on May 27, 1988, and President Ronald Reagan and then Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev ratified it on June 1, 1988. The treaty banned the two nations from developing nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers (310–620 mi) (short medium-range) and 1,000–5,500 km (620–3,420 mi) (intermediate-range). The treaty did not apply to air- or sea-launched missiles. By May 1991, the nations had eliminated 2,692 missiles, followed by 10 years of on-site verification inspections.
Trump announced on October 20, 2018 that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the INF treaty because of Russian non-compliance. Trump also claimed the withdrawal was to counter a Chinese arms buildup in the Pacific, including within the South China Sea, as China was not a signatory to the treaty. The U.S. formally suspended the treaty on February 1, 2019, and Russia followed suit on the following day.
Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the landmark, Iran nuclear treaty, which was orchestrated under President Barack Obama and signed in 2015 by the U.S., United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, Germany and the European Union. The deal restricted Iran’s critical nuclear facilities and included strict, international inspections. In return, international sanctions against Iran were limited.
Trump pulled the U.S. out in 2018 and instituted new sanctions under the policy of “maximum pressure.”
In November 2020, trump ordered the U.S to withdraw from the 1992 Open Skies Treaty. The treaty permits its 34 states-parties to conduct short-notice, unarmed observation flights over the others’ entire territories to collect data on military forces and activities. Under the treaty, all imagery collected from overflights was made available to any of the states-parties. Since its entry into force, treaty parties had undertaken 1,534 observation flights, according to a Belgian description.
Trump withdrew the U.S. despite domestic and international pressure from many U.S. allies and President-elect Joe Biden to remain a party of the Open Skies Treaty. Again, trump claimed that Russia had violated the treaty. Russia repeatedly denied the accusations and emphasized its concerns with how the remaining states-parties to the treaty will handle information obtained under the treaty after the likely U.S. withdrawal.
In January 2018, trump responded belligerently to perceived threats from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,’” trump wrote on Twitter. “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
In August 2017, trump vowed to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea if it posed a threat to the United States. In the fall, he spoke before the United Nations General Assembly and warned that he would “totally destroy North Korea” if the United States were forced to defend itself or its allies.