TOWARD A NEW NUCLEAR TEST RACE?

It was just before meeting his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Korea on October 30 that President Donald Trump casually dropped a surprise announcement — one that landed like a bomb in military headquarters around the world. Instead of focusing on tariffs or rare earths, the highly anticipated topics of the Seoul meeting, Trump told the world that “because of the testing programs conducted by other countries, I have instructed the Department of War to begin testing our nuclear weapons on an equal footing. This process will begin immediately.”

A vague statement, seemingly responding to triumphant announcements made in Moscow a few days earlier about the successful tests of two new strategic weapons billed as revolutionary: the nuclear-powered cruise missile — yes, nuclear-powered — Burevestnik (NATO designation RS-SSC-X-09 “Skyfall”), supposedly capable of flying thousands of kilometers while evading all air defenses; and Poseidon, a massive underwater drone designed, allegedly, to trigger a tsunami upon impact.

At this stage, no one knows whether Trump was referring to nuclear propulsion systems or to a resumption of tests of nuclear warheads themselves.

Given today’s extremely tense international climate, the issue is far from trivial. It could reignite a truly global arms race — first among the major powers (Putin reacted immediately, stating that if the Americans resumed testing, Russia would do the same), but also involving China, which aims to catch up with the two leaders by 2035, as well as all declared or undeclared nuclear aspirants.

And yet, for the past thirty years, the question of nuclear testing had seemed settled with the end of the East–West confrontation. France, under Jacques Chirac, for example, decided immediately after its final test at the Fangataufa atoll on January 27, 1996, to end all testing and permanently close its Pacific test site — which it did, even eliminating its medium-range ground-to-ground missiles.

As for the two superpowers, their testing — extensive during the Cold War (1,030 tests by the United States and 715 by the Soviet Union) — largely ceased with the end of the USSR. The last U.S. test took place in 1992, following the passage of legislation suspending testing. Russia’s last test occurred in 1990, one year before the Soviet empire collapsed.

It was also during this immediate post–Cold War period that the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) was negotiated (between 1994 and 1996) and signed by 183 states. With the exception of India and Pakistan, which conducted tests in 1998, and North Korea between 2006 and 2017, the treaty — monitored through a global network of 320 seismic stations — has largely been respected, despite Trump’s recent reference to alleged Russian subcritical tests.

Still, the treaty has never entered into force, because eight states possessing “significant nuclear capabilities” have yet to ratify it: the United States, Russia, and China foremost among them, joined by Israel, India, North Korea, Pakistan, and Egypt. The legal barrier therefore remains fragile — all the more so as the last surviving agreement from the era of U.S.–Soviet “disarmament,” the New START treaty, which caps deployed nuclear warheads at 1,550 on each side, is set to expire next February.

Meanwhile, China is rapidly accelerating its strategic buildup. The days are long gone when Mao dismissed the atomic bomb as a “paper tiger” and boasted that China could survive the loss of 300 million citizens in a nuclear war — and still win. Today, China has already quadrupled its number of warheads. It is expected to reach 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035 — achieving parity with both the United States and Russia.

At that point, as Admiral Charles Richard, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, predicted, “for the first time in our history, we will have to deter two near-peer nuclear superpowers at the same time.”

A warning issued in 2021, during Trump’s first term, already foreshadowing a new arms race. The message has been received loud and clear in Moscow. Sergey Lavrov is now proposing a resumption of dialogue with Washington…

Pierre Lellouche
December 3, 2025