Six days after President Donald Trump instructed the Pentagon and the Department of Energy to “restart the process” of nuclear weapons testing, Vladimir Putin convened his Security Council in the Kremlin and issued a familiar but chilling directive. Russia, he said, must draft formal proposals to resume nuclear weapons testing for the first time in more than three decades—if the United States moves ahead with its own.
The sequence began on October 29, when Trump, en route to a summit with China’s Xi Jinping, posted on Truth Social that he had ordered the “Department of War” (his rebranded Pentagon) to test “on an equal basis” with Moscow and Beijing. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright clarified on November 2 that no nuclear explosions are planned; the work will focus on sub-critical experiments.
Yet the symbolism landed hard. Putin’s response – ordering preparations at the remote Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, the site of Soviet-era blasts that once scarred the atmosphere – was framed as symmetry, not aggression.
“If any state begins conducting nuclear tests,”
Putin warned,
“Russia will respond accordingly.”
This exchange is not a fleeting flare-up; it marks the steady unraveling of the last thread holding back a new arms race. At its center lies the New START treaty, the 2010 agreement that caps deployed strategic warheads and delivery systems between Washington and Moscow. Negotiated under Barack Obama and extended for five years by Joe Biden in early 2021, it now limps toward expiration in February 2026.
Russia suspended its participation in 2023 amid the Ukraine war – halting inspections and data exchanges but claiming to observe numerical limits. On November 11, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov floated a one-year bridge extension requiring no negotiation – only U.S. consent. Trump has not answered. With Trump back in the White House and Putin under pressure at home and abroad, even that fragile adherence hangs by a thread.
The roots of this crisis stretch back to misplaced priorities long before these latest salvos. During Trump’s first term, U.S. foreign policy fixated on trade wars with China – tariffs on steel, aluminum, and consumer goods monopolized headlines and diplomatic bandwidth. This narrow economic lens came at the expense of strategic vigilance.
As Washington obsessed over supply chains, Moscow quietly modernized its arsenal: deploying hypersonic missiles, expanding its submarine fleet, and reviving exotic projects such as the nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile. The most recent test of that weapon – lasting roughly 14,000 kilometers over fifteen hours, publicly confirmed by Putin on October 26 – underscored just how far Russia’s nuclear ambitions have advanced while arms-control diplomacy stagnated.
Although inspections under New START continued during those years, meaningful dialogue on a follow-on framework stalled. Trump’s advisers viewed the treaty as an Obama-era relic, unfairly limiting U.S. innovation while ignoring tactical warheads and emerging technologies.
Critics inside his administration called for withdrawal, arguing that the U.S. was playing by rules Moscow bent with impunity. By 2018, American intelligence agencies had flagged Russia’s covert buildup, yet Washington’s response was fragmented – economic sanctions here, cyber countermeasures there – without any reinvigorated arms-control initiative.
Biden, elected on a promise to restore alliances and predictability, extended New START in 2021 as a stopgap – an achievable win that bought time and transparency. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 ended that fragile détente. Putin cast NATO’s expansion and Western military aid to Kyiv as existential threats, using that rationale to suspend treaty participation.
As the war ground on, informal channels for risk reduction evaporated. Washington’s focus shifted toward arming Kyiv and sustaining European unity, while Moscow turned inward, equating diplomacy with weakness.
Now, in Trump’s second term, echoes of the early Cold War are unmistakable. His October 29 directive to “resume testing” was cast as a matter of parity: America, he declared, must compete “on an equal basis” with Russia and China. A subsequent Minuteman III intercontinental missile launch on November 4–5 – a routine drill rebranded as a show of resolve – reinforced the message. Putin, ever the mirror, ordered his generals to draw up test-site plans. Defense Minister Andrei Belousov framed the move as “readiness” rather than aggression, but state media quickly boasted of a potential Russian edge: fewer fiscal constraints and more mature production lines.
Technically, neither power has yet broken the three-decade taboo against full nuclear explosions. But the norm itself – cemented by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which both nations signed but never ratified – is visibly cracking. The Arms Control Association now warns that “testing is back on the table.” Experts caution that even sub-critical or “preparatory” experiments risk setting off a chain reaction of escalation, prompting China and other nuclear states to follow suit. As of November 13, no detonation has occurred.
This emerging brinkmanship does not just flirt with apocalypse – it erodes the culture of restraint that kept catastrophe at bay for generations. There remains a narrow path back to stability, but it demands diplomacy over dramatics. Washington and Moscow should convene an urgent “Grand Bargain” summit, hosted by a neutral partner such as Switzerland, bundling Ukraine stabilization with verifiable nuclear de-escalation.
The framework could be simple yet profound: freeze current nuclear deployments in exchange for a moratorium on tests and a one-year bridge extension of New START’s limits. Link that to phased Ukraine aid – U.S. commitments calibrated to measurable Russian pullbacks, monitored by international observers.
Include tactical warheads in the caps, addressing Trump’s long-standing critique, and invite China as a stakeholder to avoid a three-way spiral. Europe, with its energy leverage and strategic proximity, must lead enforcement.
Such a deal would not solve every grievance, but it could rebuild the guardrails that have prevented catastrophe since the Cold War’s thaw. Biden’s administration preserved those limits amid chaos; Trump now faces the decision of whether to inherit that prudence or dismantle it. Putin, cornered yet calculating, has signaled conditional openness to talks if reciprocity is shown. The alternative – a cascade of tests, treaty collapse, and unchecked escalation – serves no one’s interests, least of all the citizens from Kyiv to Kansas.
The nuclear age began with a flash over Hiroshima, a warning etched in human conscience. Eighty years later, we again stand at an inflection point. Leaders in Washington and Moscow must choose discipline over reflex. Because this time, the echo might not fade – it could multiply.
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