Newly Unbound, Trump Weighs More Nuclear Arms and Underground Tests

In the five days since the last remaining nuclear treaty between the United States and Russia expired, statements by administration officials have made two things clear: Washington is actively weighing the deployment of more nuclear weapons, and it is also likely to conduct a nuclear test of some kind.

Both steps would reverse nearly 40 years of stricter nuclear control by the United States, which has reduced or kept steady the number of weapons it has loaded into silos, bombers and submarines. President Trump would be the first president since Ronald Reagan to increase them again, if he chose to do so. And the last time the United States conducted a nuclear test was 1992, though Mr. Trump said last year that he wanted to resume the detonations “on an equal basis” with China and Russia.

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China has, until now, shown little interest in arms control, at least until its forces approximate the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s.

As Franklin Miller and Eric Edelman, two nuclear strategists who served in past Republican administrations, noted in Foreign Affairs last year, China “regards any willingness to engage in arms control as a sign of weakness, and it views the transparency and verification process that would presumably undergird such an accord as intrusive and akin to espionage.”

Read the full article in the New York Times.