Robert Peters
The United States has not tested a nuclear weapon since 1992.REF However, given the deteriorating security environment, it may need to do so once again.
The Summer 2024 Proposal to Restart Nuclear Testing
In the July/August 2024 issue of Foreign Affairs, former Trump National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien argued that the United States should consider restarting nuclear testing, in part due to Russian and Chinese refusal to engage in nuclear arms control talks.REF
Indeed, not only have Russia and China refused to engage in even preliminary arms control discussions over the past decade,REF but they have also increasingly engaged in reckless nuclear behavior. Russia has conducted a campaign of nuclear coercion meant to intimidate Washington and the entire Western world,REF while China is the fastest growing nuclear power on the planet—on track to become a nuclear peer of the United States within a decade.REF
The reaction from the professional arms control community to O’Brien’s suggestion was both swift and predictable. The Arms Control Association responded with an article stating that “resuming U.S. nuclear testing is technically and militarily unnecessary. Moreover, it would lead to a global chain reaction of nuclear testing, raise global tensions, and blow apart global nonproliferation efforts at a time of heightened nuclear danger.”REF Leadership from the Center for Nonproliferation Studies responded to O’Brien’s piece with a Foreign Affairs piece of its own, suggesting that U.S. nuclear testing would simply incentivize testing by Russia and China.REF The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in September called proposals to conduct nuclear testing “a tremendous step backwards.”REF Many suggest that a resumption of nuclear testing by the United States would give China and Russia justification to resume nuclear testing—and as China has conducted far fewer nuclear explosive tests than the United States has, they would garner far greater benefit from such tests than would the United States.REF
But the most favored response to the proposal by O’Brien comes from those who echo the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/america-must-prepare-test-nuclear-weapons
