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nuclear tests
Trump: A Symptom of the End of the World?
The president of the United States is deeply involved in dealing with the two ways we human beings have figured out how to destroy ourselves (and potentially so much else on this planet): nuclear war and climate change.
Nov 18, 2025
When I began TomDispatch in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, believe me, the world did not look good. But I guarantee you one thing: If you had told me then that, almost a quarter of a century later, the president of the United States would be Donald J. Trump (and had explained to me just who he was), I would have thought you an idiot first class or totally mad! Donald J. Trump as president of the United States, not just once, but twice? In what century? On what planet? You must be kidding! (And what a dreadful joke at that!)
Now, of course, I would have to put all of that in the past tense (and probably add yet more exclamation points)!!
Once upon a time, you could never have convinced me (or just about anyone else) that we would find ourselves in such a world. Living in it now, however, it’s all too easy to see—yes!—President Donald Trump as a (if not the) crucial actor (making up his lines as he goes along) in a potentially devastating planetary drama still distinctly in development. (And I’m not even thinking about the possibility that, in the not-too-distant future, he might actually order some kind of invasion of, or assault on, Venezuela!) What’s rarer is to imagine him as a genuine symptom of this world’s end (at least as we human beings once knew it).
(And yes, there are indeed a lot of parentheses in this piece so far, perhaps because, at almost 81 and a half, I feel increasingly parenthetical to this eerily strange world of ours.)
He’s clearly right that heaven will indeed be a problem for him, since he’s so intent on sending us all, himself included, to hell in a handbasket.
Okay, I know, I know, all of that couldn’t sound more extreme. And unfortunately, that’s not even the half of it. After all, at this very moment, the president of the United States is deeply involved in dealing—in a fashion that would once have seemed as unimaginable as Donald Trump himself—with the two ways we human beings have figured out how to destroy ourselves (and potentially so much else on this planet): nuclear war and climate change.
Think of “President” Trump, in short, as a twofer when it comes to potential planetary destruction. And once upon a time (twice upon a time?), who would have imagined that possible when it came to a president of the United States? I’ll say it again: the “president” (and given the strange circumstances of this world of ours, that word does seem to me to need quotation marks!) of—nowhere else but—the United States of America! (And yes, we do seem to be on a planet where exclamation points can’t be used too often!! In fact, we may truly need some new symbol for the extremity of this world of ours!!!)
Okay, let me calm down a bit. After all, so many years after he first entered the White House, it’s true that, if you check statistician Nate Silver’s website, the president’s approval figures are indeed dropping significantly. But that may not, in the end (and “end” is anything but an inappropriate word here), truly matter to the man who clearly thinks better of himself than anyone else on this planet and possibly any other planet, even if he does now worry about whether or not, in the next life, he’ll actually make it to heaven. (“I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he said recently. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole.”)
Nonetheless, I’d advise Saint Peter, if he’s still holding the keys to that kingdom’s gateway, to watch out. For his own safety, I’d urge him to consider burying those keys and stepping aside. (Oh, and let me use parentheses—and dashes—again here to suggest, sadly enough, that Donald J. Trump couldn’t be less dashingly parenthetical in this all too strange world of ours and, for all we know, the next one, too.) In fact, should he indeed surprise himself and the rest of us by making it to heaven, count on something else—and yes, I’ll need a colon here (lots of punctuation being necessary to deal with You Know Who): Expect him to tear down those ancient pearly gates and begin building a heavenly—or do I mean hellish?—version of Mar-a-Lago up there; in short, a new East Wing of heaven.
Living in a Sci-Fi World
In the 1950s and 1960s, from Brave New World and 1984 to Fahrenheit 451, I grew up on dystopian fiction and sci-fi, but honestly, there wasn’t a shot in hell of a chance that Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, or Ray Bradbury, amazing as each of them was, could ever have imagined Donald Trump. (Think of him, in fact, not as Big Brother but perhaps as Humongous Brother.) If any of them had done so back then, rest assured that they wouldn’t have sold a copy of a book with such a ludicrous, unrealistic character and plot line. It tells you something that former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died recently, the fellow who became “the Darth Vader” of the administration of George W. Bush and helped launch the disastrous post-9/11 American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, by opposing Trump, now seems almost like a positive figure by comparison.
After all, today, Donald J. Trump has his hands on (all over, in fact) the two distinctly apocalyptic and all too science-fictional ways we humans have discovered to do in ourselves and much of the rest of the planet. Only recently, he demanded that the US military start testing nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992. In fact, on Truth Social, just minutes before he met with China’s President Xi Jinping, he stated that he had ordered “the Department of War” to resume such tests. “I’m saying that we’re going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes,” he recently told CBS’ Norah O’Donnell. “Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it.”
Hmm, not only don’t they talk about it, but as far as anyone on this planet other than Donald Trump can tell, like the United States, neither of those countries has tested a nuclear weapon since the 1990s. But no matter. If President Trump wants to set off new nuclear explosions on Planet Earth, why shouldn’t he? What harm could he possibly do? (Admittedly, Russian leader Vladimir Putin is talking about responding in kind and is indeed already testing nuclear delivery systems.). And if it led to a future nuclear confrontation with either Russia or China, honestly, how bad could that possibly be? Well, yes, if such testing were indeed to lead to an actual nuclear conflict, there is the possibility of creating what’s come to be known as “nuclear winter” on Planet Earth, but let’s not go there. (Brrr…) And mind you, that’s the less likely of the two possible ways President Trump could bring end-of-the-world possibilities into the everyday lives of us all.
With Donald Trump in the White House, consider us lucky (after a fashion) that we haven’t yet come up with a third or fourth way to do this planet and ourselves in, because count on this: He’d be on it instantly.
The other way—what might be thought of as a future climate-change summer—would be a slow-motion version of atomic hell, thanks to the pouring of endless amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, and so potentially heating this planet to the boiling point. Sadly enough, that possibility seems to fit Donald Trump’s skill set to a T. After all, though few may remember this anymore, he won his presidency the second time around on the stunningly blunt slogan “Drill, Baby, Drill,” which really couldn’t have been a more forthright promise about what he planned to do if reelected. Yes, let me say it one more time—pour greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels into our atmosphere in a distinctly hellish fashion. And give him credit, when it comes to campaign promises made in 2024, he’s proven (at least on this one issue) to be a man of his word.
After all, his record after only one term in office was impressive enough, although, on this strange planet of ours, he was anything but alone. (Good job, Vlad!) Just consider the fact that the last three summers have been the three hottest in recorded history, while 2024 was the warmest year on record (and 2025 is likely to come in second or third). In fact, a recent report found that a person somewhere on Earth is now dying every minute from rising global heat, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels. And none of that is faintly stopping Donald Trump from acting to ensure that the future will be so much worse. After all, barring a total surprise, he’ll have three more years to continue what he’s been doing from the first day of his second term in office: “unleashing” oil, natural gas, and coal in any way he can. (Mind you, to put things in even grimmer perspective, under Joe Biden, a president who claimed to be determined to decarbonize our world, US oil production hit a record high in 2024.)
Only recently, for instance, President Trump opened the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which is estimated to hold billions of barrels of crude oil, to fossil-fuel drilling. And that’s just one—let me put this as mildly as I can, though I’m already sweating—modest act of his. Meanwhile, he’s been going out of his way to discourage the production of clean energy, especially wind power, in any way he can. As the British Guardian reported recently, a total of nine offshore wind projects set to provide electricity to nearly 5 million American households and create about 9,000 jobs in this country are already under investigation or have been paused by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, approvals of oil and gas drilling permits are—I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn—distinctly on the rise.
And give him credit for accuracy: He’s clearly right that heaven will indeed be a problem for him, since he’s so intent on sending us all, himself included, to hell in a handbasket. But here’s the thing when it comes to climate change: None of this should faintly be a surprise. All of it was apparent enough in his first term in office and yet Donald (“drill, baby, drill”) Trump was indeed reelected in 2024, despite what everyone should have known about his plans for this planet and the rest of us.
A Slow-Motion Version of a Global Nuclear Catastrophe
With Donald Trump in the White House, consider us lucky (after a fashion) that we haven’t yet come up with a third or fourth way to do this planet and ourselves in, because count on this: He’d be on it instantly. And yet, sadly enough, two ways are undoubtedly going to be plenty. Or even one way, since I must admit that I find it hard to believe that even Donald Trump is going to get us into an actual nuclear war. Unfortunately, with him, I certainly wouldn’t rule anything out, but somehow it doesn’t seem likely.
And yet, if you think about it, in some sense, we’re already in the equivalent of a nuclear war, since climate change just happens to be a slow-motion version of a global nuclear catastrophe. Think of the release of all those greenhouse gases as indeed a long-term version of that nuclear mushroom cloud, blasting this planet in a fashion that’s likely to lead to an all too literal hell on Earth in the decades to come.
And if we’re indeed heading into such a landscape, then consider Donald J. Trump a slow-motion version of Satan (as are Vladimir Putin and all too many other global leaders). Certainly, his policies are making a mockery of global efforts (however modest) to rein in greenhouse gases. In some way, what lends him such a hand is the very fact that, unlike a nuclear war, climate change, being a slow-motion version of global hell, is strangely hard to take in.
Whether Donald Trump makes it to heaven or not, there can be little question that his legacy on earth will be satanic indeed.
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The Perilous Norm of Nuclear Weapons Testing
Trump's testing threat is the latest episode of existential terror imposed from above, highlighting what depths of apocalyptic misbehavior are now considered normal when it comes to how nuclear weapons countries behave toward one another.
Nov 14, 2025
On October 29, just before meeting with China’s President XI Jinping, President Donald Trump posted on the right-wing social media network Truth Social that “because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”
The US stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1992—that is, detonating nuclear warheads. It regularly tests “delivery vehicles,” the missiles that would be used to carry the nuclear weapon to its intended target. The most recent of these tests took place early on Wednesday, November 5, when an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the coast of California. It’s possible that Trump simply does not understand the difference between these two things.
Observers speculated that Trump’s nuclear test announcement was a response to Russia's recent test of its Burevestnik missile, which is nuclear-capable—meaning it could carry a nuclear warhead, though it did not during the test—and powered by nuclear energy. Some pointed out that it would be the Department of Energy, rather than the Pentagon, that would carry out a test detonation of a nuclear weapon. Trump’s use of the phrase “on an equal basis,” given that China and Russia are not detonating nuclear weapons, was comforting to some.
Whatever he meant, it’s worth considering how this latest episode of existential terror imposed from above highlights what depths of apocalyptic misbehavior are now considered normal when it comes to how nuclear weapons countries behave toward one another.
We should not let nuclear testing once again become part of nuclear-armed countries’ business as usual.
The missile Russia tested was designed to deliver a nuclear weapon without being intercepted by missile defense systems, using nuclear power to extend its flight time much longer than non-nuclear powered missiles. The Russian government also claimed to have tested its Poseidon torpedo, also nuclear-capable and nuclear-powered, and designed to be used in coastal waters to create a huge wave of irradiated water that would wash ashore.
Neither of these, nor the ICBM test, amount to a “nuclear test.” But, should the US conduct a test explosion of a nuclear warhead, it would be adding to the environmental burden that has led to nearly half a million deaths, by one scholarly estimate, from the over 1,000 test nuclear detonations the US has carried out. (This is about half of the over 2,000 total tests carried out worldwide between 1945 and 2017.) The health and environmental effects of this testing are ongoing, and the United States hasn't come close to cleaning up after its earlier nuclear tests.
To take just one example, waste from tests conducted in the Marshall Islands is still sitting in the Runit Dome, a cracking concrete structure on Runit Island in the Enewetak Atoll that is under constant threat from worsening storms as a result of climate change. US nuclear testing has rendered Marshallese ways of life untenable for the long term, with no real prospects for full remediation on the horizon. (ICBM tests launched from Vandenberg are aimed at the Marshall Islands’ Kwajalein Atoll, a less dramatically destructive but still significant burden on a place that has long paid a high price for the maintenance of US nuclear weapons.)
Still, even if Trump is responding to recent nuclear tests that didn’t happen, this is largely in keeping with how nuclear-armed countries tend to justify changes in their nuclear policy as reciprocal responses to unprovoked aggression, no matter what the facts are. What’s more certain, however, is that if the US tests a nuclear weapon, Russia and China are far more likely to begin testing nuclear weapons of their own, as Russia has already threatened. This would lead to more environmental damage, more health consequences across the globe, and more normalization of nuclear explosions as part of the business of doing politics.
It seems as if much of the press has lost sight of the actual stakes here. The Washington Post’s coverage of Trump’s announcement, for one, skipped over all the reasons a nuclear test might actually be undesirable and instead merely named "far-reaching consequences for relations with adversaries" as the real thing its readers should be worried about. If that is indeed the main concern, conducting multiple missile tests a year that signal the US’ willingness to use ICBMs should be viewed for what it is—a gesture that keeps nuclear war on the mind of governments around the world as a real possibility, a norm of global politics rather than a collective fate that must be avoided at all costs.
The reality is, Americans share the unfortunate situation of everyone else in the world of being first and foremost potential victims of nuclear weaponry, vulnerable to the whims of the leaders they have theoretically empowered to control the country’s thousands of nuclear weapons, nearly all of which are much, much more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear arsenals have been maintained using advanced computer modeling for decades. The fact that nuclear test explosions have entered even the far reaches of possibility, even for an administration which embraces brutal violence with such open enthusiasm, is cause for alarm and collective action against the threat that nuclear weapons pose to human life.
It’s easy to dismiss a “test” as something less than the full terrifying reality of nuclear weapons use. In some cases, this is true. Underground nuclear tests are less immediately hazardous to human and environmental health than atmospheric tests, which the US stopped conducting in 1962. An ICBM test does not involve the detonation of a nuclear weapon.
But the scale and political importance of a nuclear weapon test means any indication of a willingness to use it under any circumstances has political significance. Historians have noted that one of the main reasons the United States ultimately decided to use nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to test whether they would work as expected.
We should not let nuclear testing once again become part of nuclear-armed countries’ business as usual. A nuclear explosion is a nuclear explosion, and the fallout will be all of ours to deal with.
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Trump’s Nuclear Testing Threat: Playing with More Than Dynamite
We have to hope that there is sufficient wisdom and leverage hidden in the cracks of the Trump administration to convince Trump that he needs to reverse course.
Nov 11, 2025
The thriller House of Dynamite, playing in theaters and streamed into our homes, leaves its audiences hanging as an unprepared US president must decide humanity’s fate after a surprise nuclear attack. Now picture the real president, Donald Trump, whose uninformed and garbled statement about resuming nuclear testing may have sounded the starting gun for an existentially dangerous multinational nuclear arms race. We can hope that those who may be able to influence this unstable and ill-informed president will devise a face-saving way for him to walk back the threat. But we can’t count on that happening.
In a recent track II session with US, Russian, and European former arms control diplomats, military officials, and analysts, there was something like a consensus that Trump misunderstood one or more reports about recent Russian nuclear activities. The claim is that either Russia or China conducted explosive, rather than subcritical, tests, a claim rejected by the head of the US Strategic Command. Not wanting to be out done by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump made his threat. When questioned about it, Trump reiterated the threat. This has caused profound uncertainty and confusion, leading the Kremlin to request clarification about US nuclear weapons testing policy.
Worth noting is that this brouhaha comes at a time when significant forces within the Republican Party advocate renewed testing. The Kremlin has yet to receive that clarification or another one in response to its offer to extend the most essential elements of the New START Treaty beyond its February expiration date.
Among senior arms controllers, there is an understanding that if the US or Russia resume testing, it will open the gates for extremely dangerous nuclear weapons proliferation. Among the candidates for a nuclear breakout are South Korea, where a majority of the population wants their nation to develop nuclear weapons out of fear of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and growing uncertainties about Seoul’s military alliance with the United States. Other breakout candidates include Saudi Arabia, which recently concluded a military alliance with nuclear Pakistan and near-nuclear Iran. Despite Trump’s claims of having destroyed Tehran’s nuclear program, Tehran moved its highly enriched uranium prior to the Israeli and US missile strikes against its nuclear infrastructure. And as history teaches us, knowledge is not easily destroyed.
In our various nations we can use our people’s power to name, shame, isolate, and insist on no new nuclear weapons testing.
While Russia is reported to be in a position to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing in relatively short order, this is not the case for the US. While the Pentagon could detonate a nuclear weapon as a show of terrorizing force, it would take several years to install highly advanced nuclear testing technologies into the Nevada test site. Similarly, nations that aspire to join the nuclear powers will not immediately be able to test these “weapons of the Devil.”
However, the seminally important Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has successfully limited nuclear weapons proliferation and thus the dangers of nuclear war, will be at risk if Trump persists with the threat to resume nuclear weapons testing. Despite the US and China having yet to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, with the exception of North Korea nuclear powers have respected the moratorium on kinetic testing since the CTBT was negotiated 30 years ago in 1996. Fears abound that if Trump does not reverse course before the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, which begins at the United Nations in late April, he could torpedo the treaty. Despite the treaty’s double standards and failure to lead to the elimination of the world’s nuclear arsenals as prescribed in Article IV, the treaty remains a powerful diplomatic barrier to nuclear weapons proliferation. Dangerously, the last two Review Conferences were deemed failures for their inability to negotiate and issue a final declaration. The probability is that a commitment to resume nuclear weapons testing would sink the third RevCon.
In the tradition of three strikes and you’re out, a third successive NPT RevCon failure would likely doom the NPT, if not immediately then over the course of several years. In the mistaken belief that nuclear deterrence can provide national security, some states would withdraw from the treaty, become nuclear powers, and the resulting collapse of the treaty would “end the world as we know it.”
Where does this leave us? First and foremost, we have to hope that there is sufficient wisdom and leverage hidden in the cracks of the Trump administration to convince Trump that he needs to reverse course. In our various nations we can use our people’s power to name, shame, isolate, and insist on no new nuclear weapons testing. And with the NPT Review Conference approaching, we can organize to insist that the treaty’s Article IV commitment to nuclear weapons abolition, and previous implementation agreements, be respected.
Along the way we can remind people that even as we are enter and resist a new US-Russia-China Cold War, that arms control agreements between great power rivals can be negotiated, as was the case during the first Cold War. We can urge the US to join with Russia to extend the elements of the New START Treaty beyond the treaty’s February expiration. And we can join efforts to use the new Netflix film House of Dynamite to teach new generations about the existential threat of nuclear weapons and war and the reality that, as the Hibakusha teach, “Human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.”
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