Article by Andrew Court in "The Daily Mail":
The Trump administration has discussed
whether to conduct America's first nuclear weapons test in almost three
decades, according to a report in The Washington Post.
A
senior administration official told the newspaper Friday that
deliberations took place on Friday May 15, during a meeting with members
from top national security agencies.
At least one member of the Trump administration prefaced the discussions by claiming that 'both Russia and China are conducting low-yield, underground nuclear tests' of their own. Both of those countries have denied that they are doing so.
The United States has not conducted a nuclear weapons test since 1992, and any plans to do so could have dramatic geopolitical consequences.
Daryl Kimball, the executive director of
the Arms Control Association, told The Washington Post: 'It would be the
starting gun to an unprecedented nuclear arms race. You would also
disrupt the negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who may
no longer feel compelled to honor his moratorium on nuclear testing.'
'If
this administration believes that a nuclear test explosion and nuclear
brinkmanship is going to coerce negotiating partners to make unilateral
concessions, that's a dangerous ploy,' he added.
Such sentiments were reportedly echoed by some members of the national security agencies during the May 15 meeting.
The
Trump administration official told The Washington Post that there were
'serious disagreements' about whether the U.S. should resume nuclear
weapons testing. Members of the National Nuclear Security Administration
are said to have been particularly vocal.
The administration official claims that
the proposal to resume U.S. weapons testing - whilst divisive - is 'very
much an ongoing conversation.'
However,
another source familiar with the May 15 deliberations claimed it
concluded with a decision to 'avoid a resumption of testing'.
Marshall
Billingslea, who currently serves in the Trump administration as the
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing - has
previously warned that China may be 'intent on building up its nuclear
forces and using those forces to try to intimidate the United States and
our friends and allies.'
The Trump
administration is not currently 'pursuing new nuclear weapons designs
but reserves the right to do so if China and Russia refuse to negotiate
on their programs.'
Any U.S. nuclear testing that would be done would likely involve existing arsenal.
Around 2,000 nuclear tests have been
conducted in the past, with more than half of those carried out by the
U.S. The U.S. is also the only country to have launched nuclear weapons
during conflict.
However, concerns
about the health consequences of nuclear testing resulted in
the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty adopted by the U.N. in 1996.
184
countries have signed the treaty, but it not currently in force as
eight specific nations - including the U.S., China and Iran - have not
ratified it.
Last year, Forbes
reported that the Trump administration could 'trash the treaty' after
the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Robert P.
Ashley, Jr., claimed that the U.S. 'believes that Russia probably is not adhering to its nuclear testing moratorium.'