ANALYSIS || It was not China that motivated Trump’s decision, but rather “others”. The United States will also begin carrying out nuclear tests, in a clear step towards a dangerous escalation
The Kremlin’s constant nuclear bluster may have finally reached the White House, with President Donald Trump ordering the resumption of US nuclear weapons testing.
“Because of the testing programs of other countries, I have instructed the War Department to begin testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote in a social media post this Thursday.
It was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to a nuclear weapons test or a test of a nuclear-capable weapons system. The announcement was made shortly before a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, but the official indicated that China had not motivated the decision, telling a reporter that “it had to do with others”.
Trump’s order came just hours after Russian leader Vladimir Putin, visiting a military hospital in Moscow, launched his last nuclear bomb. Sitting alongside the chief doctor and a carefully selected cast of Russian soldiers wounded on the front lines of the brutal war in Ukraine, Putin claimed that another “invincible” Russian weapon had been successfully tested.
This time, it was – an experimental nuclear-powered submarine torpedo which, according to military analysts, could have a range of more than 9,650 kilometers and which Putin revealed had been tested for the first time.
“The power of Poseidon significantly exceeds that of our most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile,” the Russian president told his audience, already worried about war. “It is unique in the world”, he added, stating that interception of the weapon would be “impossible”.
Formidable arsenal
Putin mentioned, almost as an aside, that the long-awaited and massive Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, popularly known as “Satan 2,” will also be launched soon — a low-key announcement of the arrival of what has been widely dubbed the world’s deadliest nuclear weapons delivery system.
It is the second time in a week that Putin has boasted that he has new weapons of mass destruction about to join Russia’s already formidable nuclear arsenal. The US and Russia agreed to limit their nuclear weapons arsenals under the New START treaty, which came into force in 2011. Under the terms of the agreement, the two countries had seven years to meet limits set on the number of intercontinental-range nuclear weapons they could have. However, the treaty expires in February 2026.
Just days before the Poseidon announcement, the Kremlin strongman announced that Russia had successfully tested a nuclear-powered cruise missile, the – or Storm Petrel – which the Russian military claims is capable of flying at subsonic speeds, using nuclear fuel, for a virtually unlimited time and distance.
It is clear that there are serious technical doubts about the practicality of weapons that depend on nuclear energy, which is notoriously unreliable, not to mention toxic energy. Its use, if it happens, is probably very, very far away.
For its part, the Kremlin sees its nuclear saber-rattling maneuvers less as a direct military threat and more as a diplomatic tool: a cost-effective and immediate way to make the US and the West at large take notice; to give Moscow what it wants in Ukraine and to focus attention on the potential existential threat that a provoked or denied Russia could pose.
The Kremlin already feels both ways about Ukraine: provoked, most recently, by the debate over whether to supply Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles, which would put targets in and around Russia’s largest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, under threat; and negated by Washington’s failure to force Ukraine and its European backers to accept Moscow’s maximalist conditions for ending the fighting in Ukraine.
It is true that the timing of the latest threats, at a time when diplomatic progress with the United States has stagnated, was not very subtle.
But for the Kremlin, the White House’s reaction was unexpected.
As Trump – frustrated by the Kremlin’s continued refusal to immediately end the war in Ukraine – hinted at canceling a planned Budapest summit with Putin, before imposing sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies, the Russian president made sure he was photographed overseeing what he insisted were “planned” nuclear triad exercises, in which long-range missiles were tested from land, sea and air.
It was a classic example of Kremlin nuclear saber-rattling, but it seemed to elicit little reaction from the US.
Small talk
Days later, the tests of the Burevestnik cruise missiles were announced by Putin dressed, somewhat unusually, in a military uniform. But even that was ignored by a dismissive White House.
“And I also don’t think it’s an appropriate thing for Putin to say,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One this Monday, en route to Asia for a three-stop tour that included a historic meeting with Chinese leader Xi.
“He should end the war, a war that should have lasted a week and is now in its fourth year, that’s what he should do instead of testing missiles,” Trump added.
But by ignoring this advice and immediately announcing the test of the Poseidon nuclear torpedo, potentially capable of causing radioactive destruction to entire coastal regions of the United States, the Kremlin may have inadvertently led the White House to make the decision to resume its own nuclear weapons testing.
It could be a lesson in the dangers of mixing idle talk with nuclear weapons in an increasingly volatile world. And what the Kremlin may have intended as a way to reinforce its arguments in relation to Ukraine, may have plunged us all into a new, dangerous and unpredictable era.
