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Trump administration says it won’t carry out a nuclear weapons test ‘at this time’

Trump administration says it won’t carry out a nuclear weapons test ‘at this time’, By Kylie Atwood, CNN, June 24, 2020  Washington , The US told Russia that that there is no reason for the Trump administration to carry out a nuclear weapons test “at this time,” during nuclear negotiations in Vienna this week, but reserved the right to conduct one if they see a need to do so.

“We made very clear, as we have from the moment we adopted a testing moratorium in 1992, that we maintain and will maintain the ability to conduct nuclear tests if we see any reason to do so, whatever that reason may be,” said Marshall Billingslea, the top US envoy for nuclear negotiations, as he spoke to reporters on Wednesday. “But that said, I am unaware of any particular reason to test at this stage.”
The top nuclear negotiator said the Russians had asked him about the possibility of a US nuclear test during their meetings, based on a media report about a test being discussed by US officials last month.
“I won’t shut the door on it, because why would we,” Billingslea said………
China currently has far fewer nuclear weapons than the stockpiles of the cold war foes. The US and Russia both have at least 5,000 nuclear warheads while it is estimated that China only has about 320, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The Trump administration has recently focused on developing some new nuclear weapons.
The US military deployed a new submarine-launched low-yield nuclear weapon earlier this year, the first new US nuclear weapon in decades. The weapon was called for in the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which warned that adversaries might believe they could use a smaller nuclear weapon against the US or its allies without fear of the US launching a nuclear retaliation due to American weapons being disproportionately more destructive.
The Pentagon sees the weapon development as critical to countering the threat posed by Russia’s arsenal of smaller tactical nukes. But the rhetoric from Trump administration officials continues to focus on China…….. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/24/politics/trump-administration-nuclear-test/index.html

June 25, 2020 - Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war

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