Editors at National Review Online explain why they support a major shift in American defense policy.
The United States has not conducted a nuclear weapons test since 1992, and thus there was widespread surprise when President Trump indicated, shortly before a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping, that he would direct the Pentagon to start testing nuclear weapons on an “equal basis” with Russia and China.
“They seem to all be nuclear testing,” Trump added later to reporters on Air Force One. “We don’t do testing — we halted it years ago. But with others doing testing, it’s appropriate that we do also.”
Surprise, yes — and consternation — but the president’s position is warranted.
There are three principal objections to the resumption of nuclear testing. But none of these is a sufficient cause for Americans to object to a responsible resumption of nuclear testing. (U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright also said that the current plan was to make sure that certain components of nuclear weapons were working, not to set off actual nuclear explosions.)
First, there are some who claim that the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) of the late 1990s commits the United States to a “zero-yield threshold” — effectively a complete ban — for nuclear-weapons-related fission testing. Whether or not such a treaty commitment was wise 30 years ago, in the heyday of post–Cold War “end of history” optimism about the end of great power rivalries, there is no basis today for believing that America’s geopolitical adversaries — China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran — aim for a world with no nuclear weapons. All these countries are modernizing and working on their own nuclear arsenals, and there is no question whom their weapons are intended to deter: us.
The underlying wisdom of the CTBT notwithstanding, however, Americans should understand that it places the United States under no binding legal or constitutional prohibition with regard to nuclear testing.
