Trump Is Very Confused About Nuclear Weapons
Just before heading to his meetings with the leader of China, the president of the United States issued some comments about nuclear weapons, or “nuclear,” as he tends to call them. He wants to resume nuclear bomb tests, something no nuclear state except North Korea has done since the last century. But his reasoning is a bit confused: In the space of one short announcement, he managed to get a lot wrong, which is worrisome, because he’s the only person in America who has the authority to order the use of nuclear arms.
On Wednesday evening, the president placed this post on his Truth Social site:
The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. 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. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Almost none of this is right. Russia has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear bombs, largely because the Russians are still holding onto a lot of smaller tactical weapons designed for use on a battlefield. Trump is correct that China is much farther back; the People’s Republic probably has something like 600 warheads, meaning that it would have to produce almost 1,000 bombs a year to reach parity with the U.S. or Russia by the end of the decade. (Possible? Maybe, but Beijing has only added about 100 warheads in the past two years.) Also, the United States did not create some shiny new arsenal during Trump’s first term. It is true that America is about to spend a gigantic amount of money—roughly $1 trillion—to modernize its strategic nuclear arsenal, but that plan has been in the works since the Obama administration.
So what, exactly, is Trump talking about? Parsing the president’s posts is never easy, but Trump is probably nettled about Russia’s claim to have tested a long-range, nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik.
Trump shouldn’t worry too much: The Burevestnik is a truly stupid idea. Cruise missiles are stealthy and difficult to counter, because they can fly low and hug terrain—but they are basically just unpiloted small aircraft using regular fuel, and so they have a far more limited range than ballistic missiles. The Russians, however, now claim that they have a cruise missile powered by a nuclear reactor that can fly halfway around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin first announced this project back in 2018, and the Burevestnik has all the hallmarks of Soviet-era boasting about a great technical achievement that doesn’t provide a lot of strategic advantage. (In the old days, the Soviets had a compulsion to claim that the Soviet Union had the biggest and best of everything, leading to the Cold War-era joke that the Kremlin bragged about making the world’s biggest microchips.)
In any case, resuming nuclear testing is a terrible idea, not only because it would undermine America’s longstanding commitment to restraining a global arms race, but because detonating warheads to see if they actually work hasn’t been necessary in a very long time. Nuclear tests don’t make much sense for U.S. national security, but they’re a great way to raise international tensions. During the Cold War, the superpowers sometimes engaged in nuclear tests as a way of signaling nerve and resolve. Unfortunately, these tests served mostly to put both East and West on edge, polluted parts of the United States and the former Soviet Union, and made a lot of people sick.
Trump may be stuck in this sort of Cold War mentality, trying to show his toughness by resuming testing, especially because he seems to take it personally when Russia engages in occasional nuclear swaggering. But Trump is not alone on this issue. Some nuclear hawks will claim that the U.S. deterrent lacks credibility because none of its bombs have been detonated in decades, as if other nations are emboldened by the possibility that America is fielding weapons that won’t work. In fact, America and other nuclear states have ways of testing every component of their arsenal—and every nuclear-armed nation knows it. Nuclear stability rests on many policies, but no one is contemplating an attack on the United States based on some mad assumption that the response will be a rain of duds.
Of course, another possibility is that Trump’s announcement means nothing. Before Trump, statements by the president were policy. But Trump says a lot of things, and he reverses course regularly; often, what look like important pronouncements turn out to be random thoughts that have escaped the weak gravity of Trump’s attention span. In any case, resuming nuclear testing isn’t easy: Such tests require a lot of preparation and infrastructure, unless Trump’s goal is merely to explode some weapons and call it a “test.”
For now, this announcement about nuclear testing seems to be yet another example of Trump reflexively taking Russian bait. Resuming nuclear testing looks weak and petulant, not strong and confident. No American president should ever let the Kremlin get under his skin—especially not where nuclear weapons are concerned.
