A former national security adviser during the Trump administration says the U.S. should resume testing nuclear weapons if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Robert O'Brien, in a column entitled "The Return of Peace Through Strength" in Foreign Policy magazine, says the U.S. "must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992."
O'Brien adds that such testing would help the U.S. "maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles."
The column comes at a time when North Korea claims it has tested a new tactical ballistic missile capable of carrying a huge warhead, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggests his country should resume production of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles, and China has been undertaking a massive military buildup of both nuclear and conventional weapons.
O'Brien wrote that the Biden administration has responded poorly to Chinese and Russian buildups of nuclear arms. He added that the U.S. has not tested post-Cold War developed weapons.
The U.S. stopped explosive testing of nuclear arms in 1992 and eventually persuaded other atomic powers to do the same. Since then, the country has relied on experts and computers to verify the lethality of weapons.
Trump's co-campaign managers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, told The New York Times in a statement that O'Brien and other individuals were "misguided, speaking prematurely, and may well be entirely wrong" about the former president's plans in a second administration.
Officials during the Trump administration did discuss a restart and called for reductions in the preparation time for a U.S. nuclear test resumption, the Times reported. At the time, the federal agency in charge of the nation's nuclear test site ordered the required time for preparations to drop from years to as little as six months.
The Heritage Foundation has recommended the U.S. eliminate the preparation time and called on Washington "to move to immediate test readiness," the Times reported.
Biden administration officials and other Democrats warn that the resumption of nuclear testing could lead to testing by other countries and begin a nuclear arms race.
"It's a terrible idea," Ernest J. Moniz, secretary of energy in the Obama administration, told the Times. "New testing would make us less secure. You can't divorce it from the global repercussions."
Christian Whiton, who served as a State Department adviser in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations, wasn't as sure.
"It is unclear if existing and aspiring nuclear states would follow us," Whiton said, the Times reported. "If they do, the downside is that they might improve their capabilities marginally."
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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