US President Donald Trump stated that Russia and China are carrying out nuclear tests “but they are not talking about them”, without specifying their nature, in an interview with the US network CBS broadcast this Sunday, November 2.
“Russia is doing tests and China is doing tests, but they don’t talk about it,” said the US president.
“We are going to do tests because others are doing them. North Korea is doing tests. Pakistan is doing tests,” he also said. “You know, as powerful as (nuclear weapons) are, it’s a big world. You don’t necessarily know where they’re testing. They’re testing underground, deep down, where people don’t really know what’s going on. You feel a little vibration. They’re testing and we’re not testing. We have to test.”
“What I’m saying is that we are going to do nuclear tests like other countries do,” Donald Trump insisted, without specifically answering a question regarding the actual detonation of a nuclear charge, which the United States has not carried out since 1992.
“The tests we are going to do are on new systems”
His Energy Minister, Chris Wright, told him this Sunday on Fox News that “these are not nuclear explosions.”
“They are called ‘non-critical explosions,’ which means that all the other parts of a nuclear weapon are tested to make sure they have the proper geometry and trigger the nuclear explosion,” he explained.
“The tests we are going to carry out are with new systems and, once again, they are non-nuclear explosions,” the minister insisted.
Donald Trump sparked widespread concern and protests around the world when he announced on Thursday that he had ordered the Pentagon to “begin testing our nuclear weapons on equal footing” with Russia and China.
He has since reiterated his intention to resume nuclear weapons testing, without saying exactly what he plans. Doubts remain about his statement: does he refer to testing weapons capable of carrying a nuclear warhead or to the actual detonation of a nuclear charge?
A decision clashed
This shocking decision comes against an incandescent geopolitical backdrop, at a time when nuclear rhetoric has periodically come to the fore since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
No power has officially conducted a nuclear test for three decades, with the exception of North Korea (six times between 2006 and 2017). Russia (then Soviet Union) has not operated one since 1990 and China since 1996.
But many countries, led by the United States, periodically carry out vector tests: missiles, submarines, fighter aircraft and others. Washington is a signatory to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Carrying out a nuclear explosion would constitute a flagrant violation.
Source: BFM TV
