Nuclear tests and a legacy of harm in the Asia-Pacific

Nuclear “tests” are best conceptualized as environmental disasters with long-lasting consequences that are still felt nowadays, particularly in Oceania, as well as Central Asia.

nation states began to “export” nuclear testing to colonial areas, where vulnerable local populations faced the burden of contamination.

With weapons testing comes a history of global contamination and forgotten victims

Japan Times, By Maxime Polleri. The Diplomat, Nov 17, 2025

Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump made headlines when he told the Pentagon to resume testing of U.S. nuclear weapons, citing his concerns that countries like China or Russia had supposedly conducted secret underground nuclear weapons tests and that the United States was falling behind.

While the American president’s post created much controversy around the nature of such tests, the U.S. energy secretary later explained that Trump’s planned tests would not include any actual nuclear explosions, but would encompass “system tests” to verify the state of American nuclear arsenals.

While the fact that the United States does not plan to detonate nuclear weapons is reassuring, the country, as well as China and Russia, have a long history of experimenting with real nuclear weapons to measure the performance of their devastating arsenals.

Throughout the 20th century, nuclear testing has taken different forms, such as above-ground nuclear weapon tests, underwater tests and underground tests. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty prohibited atmospheric, outer space and underwater tests, while some nation states later declared moratoria on underground tests.

Nowadays, nuclear “tests” are done via computers or laboratory scale experiments and do not include actual explosions. However, understanding former nuclear experiments as “tests” is highly misleading, since each atomic and thermonuclear explosion throughout the 20th century released a tremendous quantity of long-lasting radioactive pollutants. Nuclear “tests” are best conceptualized as environmental disasters with long-lasting consequences that are still felt nowadays, particularly in Oceania, as well as Central Asia.

In the early 1950s, the United States began to test numerous nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site, releasing large quantities of radioactive fallout that afflicted its own population. People exposed to such fallout became known as “downwinders” and faced a plethora of health problems.

Aware of the danger of bombing themselves, many nation states began to “export” nuclear testing to colonial areas, where vulnerable local populations faced the burden of contamination. Testing nuclear weapons in such locations was often a strategic choice, since many of the indigenous local population were already invisible from the public scrutiny or did not have the means to speak back to the dominant power that controlled their territories.

For instance, in March 1954, the U.S. tested a thermonuclear weapon, Castle Bravo, in the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands, an archipelago in Micronesia that was turned into U.S. military bases after World War II. The nuclear fallout heavily impacted residents of the atolls, who were later forced to evacuate their beloved home.

In fact, the scope of the fallout was so powerful that a Japanese fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, was contaminated by the test, resulting in cases of acute radiation syndrome for the fishing crew and the death of its radioman.

Much like the United States, France also conducted atmospheric and underwater tests in French Polynesia, resulting in the contamination of many atolls, like Moruroa. Nuclear tests in the Asia-Pacific region created a tremendous legacy of harms, which included the destruction of coral reefs and the death of marine ecosystems, but also forced displacements, contamination of the food chain, destruction of the social fabric and health issues.

A similar pattern of exporting nuclear tests to vulnerable populations was also apparent in Central and East Asia. For instance, the Soviets repeatedly tested their nuclear weapons in the Semipalatinsk Test Site, a region that was historically dominated by ethnic Kazakhs. Nowadays, as anthropologist Magdalena Stawkowski highlights, Kazakhstan has inherited the remnants of one of the world’s most contaminated landscapes, dealing with contested health issues, precarious economy and marginalization.

Moreover, the People’s Republic of China has historically tested its nuclear weapons in the region of Lop Nur, leading Uyghurs, a Muslim minority ethnic group of northwestern China, to voice concerns about the long-term impact of residual radiation. In many of these instances, issues of national security — such as the health and well-being of local populations — were sacrificed for issues of international security.

Ironically, in each of these cases, humans tested nuclear weapons to prepare for a war that never came — globally contaminating ourselves in the process.

Far from being mere experiments, the detonations of nuclear weapons during such tests are best understood as a global catastrophe. And while a moratorium on nuclear testing ought to be applauded, many people are still grappling with the legacy of past nuclear tests.

The recent movie “A House of Dynamite” has brought up fresh fears of a nuclear war, as well as numerous discussions surrounding nuclear deterrence theories and mutually assured destruction. Instead of focusing our time, energy and resources on hypothetical strikes that happen in science fiction or game theory, we should delve deeper into the poisoned heritages of the real explosions that occurred in the 20th century and prompt efforts to revitalize communities that are still suffering from its harm.

Maxime Polleri is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Universite Laval and a member of the Graduate School of International Studies. Dr. Polleri is the author of “Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan” (New York University Press, 2026). © 2025, The Diplomat