Reed: Trump’s Nuclear Saber Rattling Could Upend Decades of Weapons Cooperation

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, President Donald Trump created international confusion with an apparent call for the Pentagon to start testing nuclear explosive weapons, a reversal of decades of U.S. nuclear policy that could have far-reaching consequences.

In response, U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued the following statement:

"Once again, President Trump has it wrong when it comes to nuclear weapons policy. This time, he seems to have ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear explosive weapons testing. This confusing directive reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of our nuclear enterprise-it is the Department of Energy, not the Department of Defense, that manages our nuclear weapons complex and any testing activities.

"Breaking the explosive testing moratorium that the United States, Russia, and China have maintained since the 1990s would be strategically reckless, inevitably prompting Moscow and Beijing to resume their own testing programs. Further, American explosive testing would provide justification for Pakistan, India, and North Korea to expand their own testing regimes, destabilizing an already fragile global nonproliferation architecture at precisely the moment we can least afford it.

"The United States would gain very little from such testing, and we would sacrifice decades of hard-won progress in preventing nuclear proliferation."

The last U.S. nuclear explosive weapon test was held in 1992, before President George H.W. Bush implemented a moratorium on such exercises at the conclusion of the Cold War.

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