“You don’t necessarily know where they’re testing. They’re testing way underground where people don’t know exactly what’s going on in the testing,” Trump added in the CBS interview. Tests are also being carried out in North Korea and Pakistan. “I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t carry out tests,” emphasized the US President.
Trump announced the resumption of nuclear weapons tests on Wednesday, sparking international concern and confusion. Experts are puzzled as to whether the President might be referring to tests to launch weapons systems that can be equipped with nuclear warheads, such as ballistic missiles.
Energy Secretary Wright said he believed only “system testing” was planned. “These are not nuclear explosions,” Wright told Fox News on Sunday. All parts of a nuclear weapon would be tested, but without detonating a nuclear explosive device.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing denied Chinese nuclear weapons tests. As a “responsible nuclear weapons state,” China has “always” pursued a “nuclear self-defense strategy” and “adhered to its commitment to suspend nuclear tests,” ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing on Monday.
Trump announced the resumption of nuclear weapons tests immediately before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday. After the meeting, Beijing expressed concern about Trump’s announcement. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week that Beijing hopes the United States will “seriously uphold” its commitments to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and its commitment to banning nuclear tests.
With regard to its most recent weapons tests, Russia declared that they were “non-nuclear” and threatened an “appropriate” reaction if US nuclear tests resumed.
The United Nations said on Thursday that nuclear risks were already “alarmingly high” and that such tests could not be allowed “under any circumstances.”
In the CBS interview, the US President responded to the question of whether a nuclear weapon would be detonated in the US for the first time since 1992: “I say that we will test nuclear weapons, just like other countries do, yes.”
The last US weapons test with nuclear warheads took place in 1992 in the US state of Nevada, whereupon then US President George HW Bush imposed a moratorium, which all US governments since then have adopted.
Under Democratic President Bill Clinton, the United States also signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, banning all explosive tests internationally. However, like China, the USA did not ratify the treaty, which is another reason why it never came into force. Russia reversed its ratification in 2023 under President Vladimir Putin – which the USA sharply criticized. The only country known to test nuclear weapons is North Korea.
