Trump orders the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing "immediately".

WashingtonThe White House appears ready to dust off the hotline. On Wednesday evening, just minutes before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, Donald Trump announced a new directive to the Pentagon to "immediately" resume nuclear weapons testing. The decision comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw nuclear force exercises last week and after the Budapest summit was suspended to end the war in Ukraine. The US president has announced to Truth Social his decision as a way to put the United States on a nuclear level "level playing field" with Russia and China.

"The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country," the president wrote to Truth Social, adding: "Russia is second and China a distant third, but will catch up with us in five years. As other countries are testing their programs, I have ordered the Department of Defense [as he has refuted the level playing field]. This process will begin immediately."

The announcement reverses decades of a nuclear policy in which Washington had halted nuclear testing for more than 30 years. The last test was in 1992, before former President George H.W. Bush implemented a moratorium on such tests at the end of the Cold War. The White House has not yet commented on the president's words nor provided further details about what kind of nuclear tests would be involved.

Although Trump has accused Beijing and Moscow of conducting nuclear tests, the reality is that the former has not conducted any since 1996, and there is no confirmation beyond 1990 that Russia has done so either. It is true that China is expanding its arsenal and that in recent days the Kremlin has conducted tests with weapons that have nuclear capabilities. First, it announced that it had successfully tested the Burevestnik long-range cruise missile, which has nuclear propulsion, and this Wednesday it made public a test of a nuclear-capable submarine named Poseidon.

The Kremlin has emphasized that Russia has not conducted any nuclear tests, but has simply tested two new-generation weapons systems with atomic propulsion. "This cannot be interpreted in any way as a nuclear test," said Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who asserted that Moscow informed the White House about these tests.

During his first presidency, Trump already considered resuming nuclear tests with a test detonation in 2020, as revealed by the Washington PostAll of this is aimed at exerting pressure in negotiations with China and Russia. Now, it is also doing so amidst the failed negotiations with Putin for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The location of the tests is still to be determined. "We will announce it," Trump told reporters during the meeting with Xi. The last nuclear tests conducted by the Pentagon at the end of the Cold War were in Nevada and were underground, under conditions that guarantee greater safety than open-air tests. It is likely that if the US government does resume testing, it will be in these underground facilities. However, greater safety does not mean there are no risks. In the past, during these last underground nuclear tests, there were cases of radioactive leaks, and the explosions underground also caused tremors in buildings as far away as those in Las Vegas, with the possibility of causing structural damage.