Former U.S. President Donald Trump drew swift condemnation Thursday after declaring he had ordered the resumption of U.S. nuclear weapons testing, a move the United Nations warned could trigger catastrophic consequences and unravel decades of global restraint.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, said nuclear testing “can never be permitted under any circumstances,” stressing that global nuclear risks are already “alarmingly high.”
Trump made the surprise announcement on his Truth Social platform minutes before meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, saying he had instructed the Department of War to begin testing U.S. nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Russia and China. The U.S. has not conducted a nuclear explosion since 1992 and, while it signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, it never ratified it.
The Kremlin quickly warned that if Washington breaks the moratorium, Moscow would follow suit. “If someone abandons the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Russian President Vladimir Putin previously revoked Moscow’s ratification of the global test ban in 2023.
While Trump gave no details about when or where such tests would occur, his comments suggested a drastic shift in U.S. policy. He appeared to conflate the testing of missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads – which the U.S. military routinely performs – with detonating nuclear devices, which would violate international norms observed by every nuclear-armed nation except North Korea.
