The U.S. Should Resume Nuclear Weapons Testing

National Review Online

Monday, November 03, 2025

 

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. It is true that President Bill Clinton was a supporter of and signatory to the treaty, but the United States Senate decisively rejected it after extensive deliberations by a 51–48 vote, well short of the required two-thirds majority. To act like a president’s signature alone still obliges our country to the treaty’s tenets turns the Constitution’s advice and consent clause on its head. To avoid any further ambiguity, however, here’s what President Trump should do today: announce the withdrawal of the U.S. signature from the CTBT, which would end the silliness around U.S. obligations to a treaty the Senate explicitly rejected.

 

Second, U.S. intelligence agencies have long suspected that Russia and China — both of which are signatories to the CTBT, though neither has ratified it — have conducted non-zero-yield tests in underground facilities for years despite the treaty. Moreover, Russia has been testing and fielding other provocative weapons — such as the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, which the Russians claim can stay aloft almost indefinitely. It makes sense from a deterrence standpoint to confront Russia’s clandestine tests and its “flying Chernobyl” cruise missile with proportionate American tests. At a minimum, the United States should declare openly that Russian or Chinese testing will be responded to on an “equal basis” by our country — as President Trump stated.

 

Finally, though the United States has invested heavily — spending tens of billions of dollars per year — in the maintenance of our nuclear weapons arsenal, it is common sense that the development of the next generation of American nuclear weapons will be strengthened with a responsible testing regime. In living memory, the many, many changes and modifications to our weapons that have occurred over the previous three decades would have required validation in actual explosive tests. It’s true that directors of the U.S. national labs have repeatedly testified that the United States government can adequately maintain our stockpile without a return to actual weapons testing. But many experts disagree and recommend the validation of our assumptions about the weapon systems through underground testing.

 

If men were angels, no nuclear weapons would be necessary. But men are not angels, and therefore the United States must always maintain an arsenal designed to deter aggression from nations that wish us ill. There is no room for utopianism in a world that has extant nuclear weapons. A pragmatic and prudent American testing regime is warranted.