Rash: Trump’s ‘alarming’ and ‘incoherent’ stand on nuclear testing

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of commentary online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Twice last week, in international and domestic affairs, President Donald Trump called for the nuclear option.

Regarding U.S. politics, he used the euphemism in calling for the Senate to jettison the filibuster in order to end the government shutdown. “It is now time,” the president posted on Truth Social, “for the Republicans to play their ‘TRUMP CARD,’ and go for what is called the Nuclear Option – Get rid of the Filibuster and get rid of it, NOW!”

Regarding geopolitics, the president’s proverbial nuclear option involved resuming detonation tests of nuclear weapons, which this country hasn’t conducted since 1992.

“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons,” he wrote, again on Truth Social.

The startling statement was “incredibly unclear and it could mean a whole range of things,” University of Minnesota associate professor of political science Mark Bell said, explaining that it could signal no shift, or a huge shift, in policy.

Trump’s call was concurrently “really alarming” and “very incoherent,” agreed Alicia Sanders-Zakre, the policy and research coordinator for the Geneva-based International Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”

By Sunday, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright tried to clarify that any tests would not involve “nuclear explosions” but “the other parts of a nuclear weapon.” His comments came four days after the president’s missive included misstatements about adversaries’ testing.

But on the same day, Trump insisted in a “60 Minutes” interview that Russia and China had conducted secret detonation tests. “They test, and we don’t test,” he said. “We have to test.”

Just last week, Trump’s assertion was contradicted by Navy Vice Adm. Richard Correll, his own nominee to lead the U.S. Strategic Command, who told Congress that “neither China or Russia have conducted a nuclear explosive test” — a view mostly echoed by experts on nuclear issues.

Meanwhile, CIA Director John Ratcliffe claimed Trump “was right” about Russia and China. And an Energy Department spokesman told the New York Times that Wright “is proudly following President Trump’s direction to expand nuclear testing.”

What triggered Trump may have been news that Russia had tested delivery systems of a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a large torpedo. But notably, neither test involved a nuclear detonation.

The U.S., Bell said, historically has had more tests and thus more data, and so “the thought has been if you’re the United States, you actually want to maintain this testing moratorium for as long as possible because if that goes away it’s actually going to be to the advantage of your adversaries.”

More testing could mean more peril. “It’s always difficult to really put a specific assessment of nuclear risk,” Sanders-Zakre said, adding that some experts “estimate we are at the highest level of nuclear risk than at any point in the Cold War.”

In January, the most noted experts at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set their seminal Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight — “the closest it’s ever been to catastrophe.”

That’s the feeling the film “A House of Dynamite” gives viewers. From Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, the Netflix feature about a single, unattributed missile shot at Chicago rattles the nerves of the fictional political and defense officials — as well as real-life viewers of Netflix’s most-watched movie, which is scarier than anything screened last Halloween weekend.

Bigelow defended in turn, recently saying that similar films in previous eras have “trailed off.” The prospect of using nuclear weapons, she said, “has become normalized. We don’t think about it, we don’t talk about it. And it’s an unthinkable situation. So, my hope was to maybe move it to the forefront of our lives.”

That’s the ethos behind ICAN’s can-do efforts as well, said Sanders-Zakre, who said that “it’s really important to use arts to educate about the risks of nuclear weapons.”

Bell said it’s not surprising that “as we move into an era in which nuclear weapons are a prominent feature of international politics” that movies like “Oppenheimer” and “A House of Dynamite” become “more prominent in our collective consciousness.”

So far, 95 nations have made it part of their country’s collective consciousness by signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This diplomatic development comes despite — or perhaps because of — geopolitical crises, said Sanders-Zakre. “It’s actually been at times of enhanced international tension and crisis that there has been forward movement on nuclear arms-control agreements.”

To some, ICAN’s quixotic quest is naïve. But what’s naïve, said Sanders-Zakre, is “to think that nuclear weapons will continue to exist and not be used.”

Getting to a nuclear-weapons “global zero,” concluded Sanders-Zakre, is “the only safe way to prevent nuclear catastrophe.”