Is the world closer to the doomsday?

As Trump directed his country's Department of War to what he said start testing their Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis in response to other countries' testing programmes, the world is going to enter the insanely competitive era of nuclear testing. Here, by other countries, he has evidently meant Russia. Notably Russia recently tested its two nuclear-powered and nuclear capable weapon systems, the Bureveshtnik cruise missile and Poseidon underwater drone. No doubt, Russian testing of these two new generation nuclear missiles has tipped the global nuclear scales in its favour. However, though these two nuclear missiles did not carry any nuclear warhead to trigger a race for nuclear tests, President Trump, in his characteristic way, thought it otherwise and ordered renewed nuclear testing after a decades-long moratorium on nuclear testing.

The US conducted its nuclear test for the last time in 1992. President Trump issued this order while on his way abroad military helicopter, Marine One, to meet Chinese Xi Jinping to hold trade talks in Busan, South Korea. President Trump is often driven by hubris and optics in his various utterances on world affairs. But there are certain areas such as conducting nuclear tests where such political grandstanding might lead the world into the dangerous terrain of uncontrolled nuclear arms race.

In reaction to Trump's announcement of starting nuclear tests, the Arms Control Association (ACA) expressed its strong reaction. ACA is a non-government body founded in 1971, that educates and warns the public and policymakers about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons and conducts campaigns advocating effective arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament policies. In his reaction, ACA's Executive Director Daryl G. Kimball stated, "Trump appears to be misinformed and out of touch. The U.S. has no technical, military or political reason to resume nuclear explosive testing for the first time since 1992, when a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Congress mandated a nuclear test moratorium. It would take, at least, 36 months to resume contained nuclear testing underground at the former Nevada Nuclear Test Site outside Las Vegas." Notably, since the start of nuclear arms race with the USA's dropping of two nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9 during the Second World War in 1945, the US, till 1992, conducted 1,030 nuclear test explosions. When compared with all nuclear tests including those conducted by Russia, Britain, France and China, which numbered some 2,056 nuclear test explosions worldwide, US's was the highest. However, till then India, Pakistan and North Korea had not yet joined the exclusive nuclear club.

In the new millennium, no country, except North Korea, has tested any nuclear weapons. In this connection, 187 states which comprise world's overwhelming majority of nations, including the five largest nuclear powers, have signed the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). So, being a signatory to the treaty, the United States is legally bound to respect it. The ACA executive director further said that by announcing his intention to resume nuclear testing, Trump will trigger strong international opposition that could unleash a chain reaction of nuclear testing by U.S. adversaries, and blow apart the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. So, if Trump by his announcement really means business, then the Doomsday Clock which is already ticking too close (to be specific, 89 seconds to midnight) to the zero hour, perhaps, Trump's announcement would push the second hand of that clock further closer to the moment of mutual nuclear annihilation. But does anyone seem to care?

The Cold War era arms control architecture is already falling apart. The United States has withdrawn from the Antiballistic Missile (ABM Treaty in June 2002 and rather recently from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty in August 2019. It is important to recall here that the ABM treaty was an arms control agreement signed in 1972 by the then two superpowers, the United States and then-Soviet Union. The treaty aimed to limit the number of ballistic missiles deployed by each country. Clearly, the aim was to prevent any accidental nuclear war between the two superpowers as well as establish strategic stability between them. Such treaties help nuclear powers avoid seeking any nuclear advantage against another. Actually, the treaty ended the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In those decades immediately following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear experiences, humanity was gripped by the terror of the nukes and there evolved no end of organisations campaigning against the production and testing of nuclear weapons. It is against this backdrop that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was opened in July, 1968. However, the treaty, effectively entered into force in March 1970. But some countries including India, Israel, Pakistan and South Sudan never signed the treaty, while North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003.

The Intermediate Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty, on the other hand, was a landmark arms control agreement reached between the two Cold War superpowers, the USA and then-Soviet Union in 1987. Through signing the arms control deal, it ensured elimination of ground-launched ballistic missiles from both the countries. But as noted in the foregoing, the treaty became void with the allegation of Russia violating it and finally the USA withdrawing from it in 2019. Now the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty is the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).

The New START came into force in 2011, that limited each signatory country to 1,550 deployable nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. The treaty was extended for five years in 2021 and will expire in February 2026. Since, there is apparently no intention either on the part of Russia or of the USA to reach any fresh nuclear arms limitation talks, prospect of a nuclear arms-free world is zero. Now with Russia testing nuclear capable missiles, though those did not carry and nuclear warheads and president Trump's reaction to it with the order to Pentagon for carrying out tests that involve nukes have thrown the world into a kind of nuclear arms race on which neither party has any control. Worse yet, the two major nuclear powers seem to be on a collision course. At such times, as during the Cuban missile crisis in October,1962, it required a level-headed leadership to end the crisis and save the world. It does not appear we have any at the moment.

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