US President Donald Trump, ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, said he has instructed the Department of Defense to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers.
“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately,” Trump said on Truth Social, ahead of the meeting with Xi in South Korea.
“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years,” Trump noted.
President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday Russia had successfully tested a Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo that military analysts say is capable of devastating coastal regions by triggering vast radioactive ocean swells.
As Trump has toughened both his rhetoric and his stance on Russia, Putin has publicly flexed his nuclear muscles with the test of a new Burevestnik cruise missile on October 21 and nuclear launch drills on October 22.
The United States last tested a nuclear weapon in 1992.
Tests provide evidence of what any new nuclear weapon will do — and whether older weapons still work.
Apart from providing technical data, such a test would be seen in Russia and China as a deliberate assertion of US strategic power.
IN NUMBERS
• 1,032 nuclear weapons tests conducted by the US between 1945 and 1992
• 715 tests by the Soviet Union (now Russia) from 1949 and 1990
• 210 tests by France between 1960 and 199e
• 45 tests by Britain between 1952 and 1991
• 45 tests by China from 1964 and 1996
• 1 test carried out by India in 1974
(Source: United Nations)
The United States opened the nuclear era in July 1945 with the test of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and then dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to end World War Two.
According to the United Nations website, more than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out all over the world from 1945 until 1996, when the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature.
Since then, only 10 nuclear tests had been conducted, two each by rival neighbors India and Pakistan in 1998, and the rest by North Korea in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2017.
(With Reuters, AFP)
