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marmar

(78,996 posts) Sun Nov 2, 2025, 10:08 AM Sunday

Make America Radioactive Again? Yes, if Trump has his way

Make America Radioactive Again? Yes, if Trump has his way
Trump's order to resume nuclear weapons testing "immediately" should worry us all

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published November 2, 2025 9:00AM (EST)

(Salon) The next time they have the opportunity, one of the right-wing influencers who now dominate the White House press corps should ask President Donald Trump if he happened to watch “House Full of Dynamite,” Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, when he was traveling this week. It’s a chilling movie about a nuclear strike on the United States, and since he seems to be suddenly concerned about America’s nuclear arsenal for no apparent reason, it would be fair to ask if the film was behind his startling announcement on his way back from Asia that he was ordering the immediate resumption of nuclear testing after a three decade moratorium.

Don’t laugh. It’s as plausible an explanation for his confusing order as anything else, because his stated reason — that other countries are testing their nuclear weapons — is simply not true. The only country to hold such tests in recent times is North Korea, where Kim Jong Un continued to evaluate his nuclear capability, despite all the happy talk and “love letters” between Trump and his good buddy. None of the nuclear powers have tested any weapons since the 1990s.

....(snip)....

As with so many other issues, Trump’s beliefs were formed when he was a young man, and they appear to be based on a very shallow understanding of the subject. In November 1984, at the behest of his mentor Roy Cohn and just after Ronald Reagan’s reelection as president, Trump gave an interview to the Washington Post declaring his desire to negotiate an arms agreement with the Soviet Union. But importantly, he withheld specific plans because he didn’t want to tip his hand:

He could learn about missiles, quickly, [Trump] says. “It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles . . . I think I know most of it anyway. You’re talking about just getting updated on a situation . . . You know who really wants me to do this? Roy . . . I’d do it in a second.”

....(snip)....

Eight years later, the problem is that there’s no one around to school him anymore. Many of the people in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon are war-mongers who believe that nuclear weapons should be on the table. The current Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge A. Colby, conceived a new strategic posture during Trump’s first term that recommended a much looser nuclear policy — including their use in response to a cyber attack. ......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/11/02/make-america-radioactive-again-yes-if-trump-has-his-way/

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Make America Radioactive Again? Yes, if Trump has his way (Original Post) marmar Sunday OP

Because others. Igel Sunday #1

Igel

(37,191 posts)

1. Because others.

Reply to marmar (Original post)

Sun Nov 2, 2025, 01:51 PM

Sunday

Russia announced a nuclear-tipped torpedo. A bit gloaty about the ability to inundat coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis. They've been beefing up their nuclear arsenal for a while now, whether the claims of hypersonic nukes or ramped up MIRVs.

The PRC's been doing the same--it's never been covered by an arms control treaty, mind you--as well as hardening military installations and making it possible to quickly relocate nuclear missiles like Saddam Hussein could relocated SCUDs. Some of the hardware they showcased at their "we won WWII" in order to rewrite the popular understanding of WWII's land-based Asia front were new nukes.

We've "tested" our weapons using models but really haven't added to them because, well, it would be irresponsible to try to maintain some sort of mutually assured destruction. They've built based on models. But since we don't have much in the pipeline if we want to saber rattle with anything like the same degree of malicious glee and triumphalism we're left with actual testing. (Then there's the ever loverly PRNK and its shifting alliances with the PRC and Russia or both, mixed in with pacifist Iranian support.)

"Golden Dome" rattled both Putin and Xi and the PRNK and they decried it as being undemocratic or whatever bit of palaver it was because it would shortchange the peace-loving protectors of the vulnerable and good and just against the militaristic land-grabbing genocidal evil Americans.

Note that both programs started before Trump 1.0, and not in anticipation of his winning in 2016. Even letting one of the longer-standing arms control treaties with Russia lapse was anticlimactic because we knew that they were violating it but in a plausibly deniable manner, and in too short a time after it lapsed suddenly fully formed new nuclear weapons were announced. (With the possibility that those on parade were just gutless mockups, which begs the question as to whether the real thing actually existed and in what state of development).

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