Editorials & Other Articles

In any case, resuming nuclear testing is a terrible idea, not only because it would undermine America’s long-standing 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, pollute parts of the United States and the former Soviet Union, and make 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.