Trump’s Nuclear Weapons Tests Threaten Breach with Europe

Shot “Baker”, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear test by the United States at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Photo. US Department of Defense.

Trump’s maniacal threat to annex Greenland, has weakened the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, NATO, shaken the foundation of “the new world order”, and mocked the principle of national sovereignty and non-intervention underpinning the United Nations Charter. Like a power-drunk brawler, Trump came to the Davos World Economic Forum, leveling capricious and arbitrary tariffs, bashing trade norms established by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1948. Then, defiling the Nobel Peace Prize Trump flew back to D.C.; all this accomplished in one day.

Trump’s tariff tactics, currently at 15 percent for the European Union, will double against European countries that defend Greenland against U.S. capture. In retaliation, Europe’s “bazooka tariff” could cost the U.S. and EU economies hundreds of billions of dollars.

Trump has personally trashed the leaders of our democratic European allies. He has crashed the confidence in international laws and norms.

Compounding the stress between the EU and the US is Trump’s belligerent, negligent nuclear weapons strategy.

The only remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, NewSTART, expires on February 5, 2026. Russia withdrew from NewSTART in 2023, but has adhered to the numerical limits of deployed nuclear weapons, 1550 for each side. Russian President Putin has made several overtures to the current U.S. administration to maintain these numerical limits and has offered to renegotiate NewSTART. Tepid responses from the White House have left the last remaining strategic arms control treaty between Russia and the U.S. defunct.

With the demise of NewSTART next month, and the quixotic plan to build an impenetrable “Golden Dome” anti-ballistic missile defense (aka, StarWars 2, aka another trillion dollars wasted), Russia’s Putin has warned that “Trump’s renunciation of NewSTART would be a grave and short- sighted mistake that will have adverse implications for the Non-Proliferation Treaty”, NPT.

The NPT, ratified by 190 countries in 1970, has served as the bedrock of nuclear arms control. The NPT was thought or hoped to be inviolable as non-nuclear nations foreswore the development of nuclear weapons. Nations possessing nuclear reactors and or nuclear weapons committed to renouncing nuclear weapons development and eventually eliminating their nuclear arsenals entirely. NPT review conferences over the last fifteen years have ended without consensus, as non-nuclear nations’ frustration with the number of nuclear weapons remaining in the arsenals of the nuclear powers rankled each five-year NPT review.

Were NewSTART to expire and the US and Russia to increase the deployment of their nuclear weapons beyond 1550 each, NewSTART and the NPT may be considered null and void.

Having seen an erosion of international laws prohibiting military intervention or the military takeover of a sovereign nation, such as Ukraine, or…Greenland and the weakening of nuclear arms control, non-nuclear nations could recalibrate their need for nuclear weapons.

Europe has repeatedly warned that the resumption of explosive nuclear weapons testing would result in the proliferation of nuclear weapons in countries currently nuclear-free; abandoning the long-sought goal of a nuclear weapons-free world.

Trump’s provocative assertion that the US needs Greenland is a grandiose land grab. His threat to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing poses an even greater shock to the international nuclear arms control system. Both are unnecessary assaults on international norms developed over many decades.

Explosive nuclear weapons testing has been banned from the world since 1996. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has been signed by 187 nations and ratified by 178 nations. The U.S. has signed the CTBT, but the Senate has not ratified it. Russia ratified the CTBT in 2000, but withdrew in 2023, claiming the U.S. failure to ratify the treaty had created “an unacceptable imbalance between the two countries”. China has signed the CTBT but not ratified it. Arms experts say China would ratify the CTBT if the U.S. did so.

The European Union has repeatedly warned that any resumption of explosive nuclear weapons testing would ruin the test ban treaty. All 27 EU member states have ratified the CTBT. The EU has urged all states to ratify the CTBT, especially the U.S. and other Annex 2 states, including China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Russia, North Korea, India and Pakistan and bring the CTBT “into force”.

The EU External Action Service called the resumption of explosive nuclear testing “unwise and destabilizing”. At the United Nations in September 2025, during the bi-annual Article XIV Conference, the EU called for “the entry into force” of the CTBT, and urged all Annex 2 states, including the United States, to ratify the treaty. Article XIV Conferences, held since 1999, are designed to promote the CTBT and oppose any explosive nuclear weapons testing and or the modernization of nuclear arsenals.

The EU has repeatedly warned that “nuclear weapons testing will undermine the international consensus on the taboo of nuclear testing, as contained in the CTBT”. And the EU has consistently informed international fora, including the Article XIV conference at the U.N. in September 2025, that bringing the CTBT into force “was a top priority for Europe”.

The EU and member states, including Italy, have contributed tens of millions of dollars to create the International Monitoring System, IMS, to detect any explosive nuclear test, however small or clandestine. The IMS consists of a network of hundreds of seismographic, atmospheric and radionuclide sites worldwide. The IMS and the Commission of the CTBT Organization (CTBTO) has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build and maintain its monitoring sites and laboratories around the globe. The U.S. has funded at least twenty-five percent of the IMS budget, totaling over $100 million. Were the U.S. to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing, it would be ludicrous for the IMS detection system, funded by the American people, to discover and reveal that the U.S. had violated the international nuclear testing taboo.

Italy has been especially clear in its opposition to U.S. or any other nuclear explosive testing. Italian President Sergio Mattarella has repeatedly cautioned that “explosive nuclear testing would weaken the nuclear weapons control architecture”. Mattarella also warned against “unacceptable illusions of the use of nuclear weapons”.

Italy has stated that “explosive nuclear weapons testing is a grave threat to global security and peace” and blamed explosive nuclear weapons testing for their “devastating impact to environmental and humanity.”

The EU has condemned the 1998 nuclear weapons tests of India and Pakistan. The EU has also condemned North Korea for its six explosive nuclear weapons tests from 2006 to 2017. The European Union condemned the Russian withdrawal from the CTBT in 2023. If Trump were to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing, the EU has warned that not only the CTBT would be threatened, but that the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would be jeopardized. Would the EU then condemn the U.S. resumption of explosive nuclear testing?

France and Great Britain, both close U.S. allies and both nuclear-armed nations and NATO members, have strongly opposed the resumption of explosive testing. Both France and GB and have ratified the CTBT. France has called nuclear weapons testing “unwise, unwanted and provocative”. France dismantled its nuclear testing facilities in 1998, though it maintains an arsenal of 300 nuclear warheads. Great Britain ceased explosive testing in 1991 and abandoned its test site in Australia. GB deploys 220 nuclear warheads, all on submarines.

CNN satellite analysis of historic nuclear test sites in the U.S. (Nevada), Russia (Novaya Zemlya), and China, (Lop Nur) show significant expansion and construction of new tunnels at all three facilities over the last five years. While no imminent explosive testing is predicted by arms control experts, the lead time for conducting a nuclear explosive test has been reduced from years to months.

The greatest damage caused by any resumption of explosive nuclear testing could well be the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty itself. The NPT has experienced years of contentious reviews as non-nuclear countries express more exasperation with the nuclear countries for not fulfilling their treaty obligations to “reduce and eliminate” their nuclear weapons arsenals. Were the U.S. to resume testing to improve and modernize its nuclear weapons, it would betray the tenets of the NPT.

As Trump dismantles the new world order, alienates our allies, antagonizes our enemies, mocks global free trade, and personally insults friends of the U.S., his decision to abandon NewSTART and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and resume explosive nuclear weapons testing may cause the most havoc and long-term destruction.

The post Trump’s Nuclear Weapons Tests Threaten Breach with Europe appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mark Muhich.

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