The post on Truth Social arrived two hours before the meeting with Xi Jinping. No diplomatic pleasantries, no groundwork. Just a blunt announcement: the United States will resume operations. nuclear tests “immediately,” after 33 years of voluntary moratorium.
Donald Trump wrote it from South Korea, while his advisers were setting the table for what was supposed to be a summit to reduce trade tensions. Instead, the president who recently congratulated the Nobel Peace Prize winner has just ordered the Pentagon to dust off the Nevada silos. The reason? "Parity" with Russia and China, which he claims are testing nuclear weapons. There's just one detail: Neither country has detonated a nuclear warhead since the 90s. And that's not the only dissonant thing said by the blond American leader.
All the numbers that don't add up in Trump's speech
“The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country,” Trump wrote. “Russia is second, and China is far behind in third place.” Too bad that the data of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists say exactly the opposite: Russia owns 5.460 warheads against the 3.748 American. China has about 600, but is ramping up production to 100 warheads per year from 2023, as also reported by Stockholm International Peace Research InstituteOf course, in 50 years it will have settled the accounts.
Trump confuses delivery system tests with actual nuclear detonations. Russia actually tested the Burevestnik cruise missile, which flew for 15 hours and covered 14.000 kilometers, and the nuclear-powered Poseidon torpedo. But neither test involved the detonation of a nuclear warhead.
The last explosive nuclear tests they date back to some time ago: it was 1992 when George H.W. Bush imposed a voluntary moratorium at the end of the Cold War. China conducted its last test in 1996Since then, none of the three nuclear superpowers has detonated a warhead. No one in the world would have done so, except for North Korea (the most "bad guys" suspect it of conducting nuclear tests for third parties, but proof is needed).
In any case, to resume nuclear tests in the USA It will take between 24 and 36 months, at least according to an estimate of Congressional Research Service.
From the Nobel Prize to the Bomb
The contradiction is glaring. Trump has spent months building his image as a "president of peace," quoting the Beatitudes and clamoring for the Nobel Prize. He even called the Venezuelan dissident who "beat" him in the race for the coveted prize. He congratulated her, it must be said, even as he publicly complained about the Oslo committee's choice. So what?
Now, however, that same person is ordering nuclear tests to "achieve parity" with countries that haven't tested in decades. His justification? "With others testing, I think it's appropriate for us to do so too." But which others? Putin tests missiles and torpedoes, but doesn't detonate warheads.
China builds silos and expands its arsenal, but doesn't detonate bombs. Trump doesn't seem to understand the difference. Or maybe he does, but he's decided that the rhetoric of force sells better than diplomacy.
The worst possible timing
The announcement, as I wrote at the beginning, came two hours before the meeting with Xi Jinping in South Korea. A summit that was supposed to reduce trade tensions and stabilize relations between the two economic superpowers. Instead, Trump chose to "flex his muscles" precisely at the moment he should have been negotiating.
China responded coolly: “We hope the US will uphold its commitment to suspend nuclear tests and take concrete action to safeguard the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime.” Arms control experts They called the announcement "unnecessary and destabilizing." The New START Treaty between the US and Russia, which limits the number of strategic warheads, expires in February 2026.
Resuming testing now complicates any future negotiations. The 1992 moratorium lasted 33 years. Trump repealed it with a post. Maybe they weren't entirely wrong in Oslo.
