Trump’s call to being nuclear testing will likely fall flat

During Trump’s Asia trip, he announced that he wanted to restart nuclear testing.

Trump stated that other countries were testing their nuclear weapons (it has been nearly a decade since any known nuclear test has been conducted).

As I suspected, the idea has not been a popular one.

Resume Testing

Trump stunned everyone with the announcement, stating, "We've halted many years ago, but with others doing testing I think it's appropriate to do so.”

Experts in the field immediately pushed back. For instance, Corey Hinderstein, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for Nuclear Peace, stated, "I think a decision to resume nuclear testing would be extremely dangerous and would do more to benefit our adversaries than the United States.”

First, there is a treaty in place that is currently blocking testing by nations who had signed the treaty, and the United States is one of those nations, which I will get more into just below.

Second, I think Trump may be confused between the delivery device and the warheads.

The Treaty

The treaty mentioned above is called the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The treaty was introduced during the Bill Clinton administration and signed by more than five dozen countries as soon as it was introduced. It now has 187 signatories, but only 178 have ratified the treaty.

The loophole for Trump is that the treaty never came into force, as nine signatories have not officially ratified it.  Once all signatories have ratified the legislation, the treaty will go into effect after 180 days have passed.

Even so, the countries that signed the treaty are respecting the spirit of the treaty, and they are not testing weapons.

Not Yet

After Trump’s announcement, Democrats in states where tests would likely take place were already pushing back.

Not only that, but Energy Secretary Chris Wright seemed to be on the same page as me in terms of thinking that Trump has confused the delivery system with the warhead itself, stating, “I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions. So you’re testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon.”

The biggest problem that Trump is going to have to convince Republicans to move forward with testing, in addition to the dangers of contamination, is going to be the monumental cost of testing these weapons, which would likely cost hundreds of millions per test.

Fiscal hawks like Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) are never going to go for this. Even testing the delivery devices is expensive, not to mention the cost of replacing the systems that are used during the testing. This is going to be a fight that I would be surprised if Trump wins.