On October 29, hours before his high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump issued a loaded statement claiming that Russia, China, North Korea and even Pakistan were secretly conducting nuclear tests but the US was not, in view of its moratorium commitments. To level the playing field and to protect the US’ lead in the nuclear arms race, he said he was directing the Pentagon to resume nuclear tests after a gap of 33 years.
The statement, issued through the Truth Social platform, caused considerable alarm worldwide but Islamabad, Moscow and Beijing took no time to reject Trump’s claims as baseless. Russia even threatened to respond proportionately if the US were to abandon the 1992 moratorium on nuclear testing.
Why did Trump, who was till recently clamouring for a Nobel Peace Prize citing his supposed efforts to stop wars, suddenly drop the N-word? According to Trump, the US already has more nuclear weapons than any other country. Russia is second and China is a distant third but is fast catching up. He said, without proof, that China would bridge the gap in five years. “We're the only country that doesn't test… and I don't wanna be the only country that doesn't test,” Trump said in a subsequent interview to US television channel CBS News, in which he repeated the claims.
Context and intent
Trump’s message went out just before his scheduled in-person meeting with Xi on the sidelines of the Pacific Rim summit in Busan, South Korea. The Truth Social post also came weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to continue to observe the nuclear arms limits of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) -- the last remaining nuclear arms deal between the US and Russia. In 2021, it was extended for five years till February 4, 2026. Putin said he was ready to extend it for one more year, subject to US reciprocation. Trump reportedly quipped that it “sounds like a good plan” but apart from that, there was no move to hash out a successor agreement.
Given the US president’s propensity for creating spectacular optics and upping the ante as a negotiation tactic, there were questions about Trump’s real intention behind threatening a return to nuclear testing. According to some analysts, the nuclear sabre-rattling was aimed at Putin, who recently announced Russia’s successful testing of the nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile Burevestnik, capable of strikes within 14,000-km range. Besides, Russia recently tested the nuclear-powered Poseidon torpedo, referred to as an ‘underwater drone’ that can carry nuclear weapons.
Trump’s latest social media post – just like any of his past ones -- had several loopholes. Trump said he had asked the Department of War (Department of Defense) to resume nuclear testing. However, it is the Department of Energy that conducts nuclear tests, not the Pentagon. Also, underground nuclear testing can’t be started by a presidential ask. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a federal agency under the Department of Energy that conducts nuclear tests, will take a few months to be test-ready. According to its key planning document called the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, the federal agency is supposed to be ready to perform an underground nuclear test within 36 months, “assuming current barriers to achieving this timeline in relevant laws and regulations will be overcome”.
It is possible Trump may have meant non-critical nuclear tests that are done to see if the warheads work properly. Such tests include limited explosions but they stop short of triggering a nuclear chain reaction. Energy Secretary Chris Wright sought to address concerns of a fresh arms race saying the planned activities were “system tests” and not nuclear explosions.
Is anyone testing?
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been signed by 187 states, including the US. Before the 1992 moratorium came into force, the US is estimated to have conducted 1,054 tests, Russia 715, and China 47 nuclear tests, both above-ground and underground. No country has tested nuclear weapons since the late 1990s, except North Korea.
However, Trump's claim that Russia and China are testing despite the moratorium is not entirely without basis. According to a Department of State compliance report, satellite imagery indicated “increased activity” at China’s dormant Lop Nor test site between 2020 and 2024.
Satellite imagery also showed an expansion of Russia’s nuclear testing site, Novaya Zemlya, over the years. These could point to clandestine testing, though there is no confirmation. Another US defence intelligence report said Russia conducted nuclear tests “in a manner consistent with the zero-yield standard” of the US.
The exact threshold that determines when a nuclear activity counts as a 'test' is a point of contention between the US, Russia and China. While the US insists that it is zero-yield, it is possible to do extremely small nuclear tests whose seismic yields won't be captured by any recording devices. Such tests could produce a nuclear chain reaction good enough to offer data about weapons designs or the behaviour of fissile material. These are called ‘subcritical tests’, which study how plutonium and other nuclear materials behave under extreme pressure, without triggering a full explosion.
According to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the moratorium on testing has not stopped nuclear powers from upgrading their nuclear arsenal. Most of the nine nuclear-armed countries — the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel — have either upgraded existing weapons or added newer versions, it said.
Does the US need to do underground tests?
Technically, no. It is possible to test and confirm the safety, security, and efficacy of nuclear arsenal using super computers and high-energy lasers - without the need for the conventional, underground testing. In an interview to Fox News, Wright clarified that the US has enough computation power to simulate a nuclear explosion. “With our science and our computation power, we can simulate incredibly accurately exactly what will happen in a nuclear explosion,” Wright said, adding, “Now, we simulate what were the conditions that delivered that and, as we change bomb designs, what will they deliver.”
Each year, the national security lab directors and the Commander of US Strategic Command assess the stockpile and determine if there is anything that would require a need to return to underground nuclear explosive testing. “Tremendous investments were made in science, computing, and engineering capabilities to help sustain the existing stockpile without resorting to underground nuclear explosive testing,” says the NNSA in its report submitted to the Congress in September 2024.
Why China may be eager to do tests
If the US were to return to testing nuclear weapons, it would give a good excuse for other nuclear powers to follow suit. Russia has already announced it would respond in kind; Putin has reportedly asked his officials to put together a plan to resume tests. China has been cautious in its response, but Beijing is expected to greenlight its own tests. Experts say China stands to benefit the most if tests were to resume. Testing means credible data to determine the efficacy of nuclear weapons. And more tests mean more data and, therefore, more accuracy in assessing weapons’ potency. A routine testing regime will give China critical information to boost its nuclear arsenal.
Enter Project 2025
Several analysts believe Trump’s sudden policy announcements are not knee-jerk reactions to intelligence inputs, but part of an elaborate playbook called Project 2025. The call for return to nuclear tests could also be traced to this 900-page policy blueprint titled ‘Mandate for Leadership’. This comprehensive but controversial document was prepared by the Heritage Foundation, an American right-wing think tank, to overhaul the federal government by expanding the powers of the president and centralising decision making.
The project document is a policy manual for “the next conservative president” and written by veterans of the first Trump administration and other conservatives. It says the president must show the resolve to order nuclear tests to make the forces ready for any adverse circumstances.
It also recommends radical reforms in nuclear policy and calls for modernisation of its nuclear weapons. The government, it says, needs to make the design, development and deployment of new nuclear warheads a top priority. “Existing warheads were designed and built during the Cold War, and the US lacks sufficient plutonium production capabilities,” it says, adding that the federal nuclear agencies must ensure that the existing nuclear warheads are viable and provide a strategic deterrent.
Importantly, the document calls for rejecting the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and indicating “a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary”. This language finds its resonance in Trump’s latest nuclear posturing that the US was forced to consider testing again as a response to surreptitious underground tests by other nuclear powers. The US signed the CTBT on September 24, 1996 but refused to ratify it.
CTBT bans all nuclear test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes. The treaty seeks to stop the development of new nuclear weapons and prevent upgrades to existing ones.
The Heritage Foundation document clearly identifies ‘Communist China’ as the US’s main adversary with the potential to overtake it in terms of nuclear weapons. “Beijing presents a challenge to American interests across the domains of national power, but the military threat that it poses is especially acute and significant. China is undertaking a historic military buildup that includes increasing capability for power projection not only in its own region, but also far beyond as well as a dramatic expansion of its nuclear forces that could result in a nuclear force that matches or exceeds America’s own nuclear arsenal,” it says. To counter this, it quotes former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller’s idea that a “denial defense” must be set up to hurt China’s efforts to expand its influence across the globe.
Connecting the dots
Interestingly, Trump has repeatedly denied having any truck with Project 2025. More so after some of its radical suggestions were flagged by Democrats during the presidential election campaign. However, several of Trump’s decisions could be linked to the Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint.
For example, Trump has aggressively targeted the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives and signed multiple executive orders to abolish policies supporting the initiative. DEI is something Project 2025 has explicitly sought to eliminate, calling it a “burdensome ideological project”.
As for immigration policy, it is hard to distinguish between the Project 2025 recommendations and Trump’s orders. Both call for restricting immigration and tightening border security, mass detention of undocumented migrants and giving sweeping powers to local law enforcement agencies to target the undocumented.
Another important decision with global ramifications is slashing federal spending and eliminating humanitarian aid programmes. This also appears to have been inspired by the Project 2025 suggestion that “the President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”
Trump also reinstated military personnel who were fired for not complying with its Covid vaccine mandate, as Project 2025 urged. He also ended DEI programmes in the military after the document called for eliminating “Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff”.
The most striking of all Trump decisions with direct link to Project 2025 seems to be the withdrawal from climate change commitments. Project 2025 proposed leaving the Paris Climate Agreement, which Trump did on his first day in office. Also, Trump’s public speeches against climate change efforts are in line with the project document.
Shutting down the USAID, pushback against ‘woke’ policies, undoing the final rulemakings of the Biden Administration, withdrawing from the UNESCO, UN Human Rights Council and WHO, stopping funds for UN Relief and Works Agency, and ceasing funds for ‘biased’ media outlets such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) are among the other recommendations by Project 2025 that have been implemented in full.
According to Project 2025 Tracker, an online tool that tracks the implementation of Project 2025's proposals, 48% of the ideas have been implemented in the first 10 months of Trump 2.0 with several policy recommendations currently in progress. However, several key decisions are stuck due to legal challenges. Critics may still dismiss Project 2025 as a right-wing wishlist. And Trump may continue to deny that he looks up to Project 2025 as his North Star. But, his induction of the document’s authors in his administration tells a completely different story.
