US could conduct nuclear test 'within months' if Trump orders it

Mushroom cloud from the first hydrogen bomb test in 1952. Photo: Reuters

While Washington has not changed its official stance on nuclear testing, which has been suspended for nearly three decades, that could change “rapidly,” according to Drew Walter, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Affairs. Walter made the remarks at an online forum hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Space Studies.

“If there was a technical issue or a geopolitical issue that caused the president to order the system to be tested, I think that would happen relatively quickly,” Walter said, adding that a very rapid test with limited analysis could happen within a few months.

The comments follow a report in the Washington Post last week of an “ongoing conversation” within the White House about whether to conduct the first US live nuclear test since 1992. A senior official told the paper that a test could send a message to Russia and China and serve as a bargaining chip in arms control negotiations – possibly “a geopolitical issue,” as Walter implied. Despite a decades-long moratorium, a bomb test would not technically be against international law, as the US has never ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The New START treaty, a major nuclear arms control agreement that limits the number of strategic nuclear weapons the United States and Russia can deploy, is set to expire next year. While Russia has signaled a willingness to extend the agreement—and even proposed restricting some of its newer weapons—the United States has shown little interest, insisting on negotiating a new treaty that would include China. However, this would complicate the negotiations considerably. China, which claims its arsenal is about 10 times smaller than Washington’s, has been reluctant to join the agreement, but the United States has stuck to its demands.

Last week, US special envoy for arms control Marshall Billingslea reiterated the proposal, calling on Moscow to “bring China to the negotiating table.” As well as warning of a “full-blown arms race,” Billingslea also asserted that the US could “make any adversary go into oblivion,” calling it a “tested and proven” strategy. The threat came just hours after the US announced it would abandon the Open Skies Treaty with Russia, a key confidence-building measure between the two countries, but argued that Moscow was not trustworthy enough to uphold the agreements.

Despite public opposition to an “arms race,” US officials and policies continue to push in the opposite direction, according to RT. While mulling over a new bomb test, Washington has also launched a $1.2 trillion nuclear modernization effort, deploying the first batch of low-yield submarine-launched warheads in February. Furthermore, the country’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review has significantly lowered the threshold for using bombs, even suggesting a nuclear response to a cyberattack./.