Top Trump adviser says US should test nuclear weapons

Former President Donald Trump's last national security adviser during his first term, Robert O'Brien, advised him in the pages of Foreign Policy magazine to cut off China economically and diplomatically, deploy the entire Corps Marines in the Pacific and resume nuclear weapons testing for the first time in decades.

O'Brien, who served as Trump's national security adviser from 2019 to 2021, is widely seen as likely to play a role in a future Trump administration. In May, he traveled to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside two other former Trump administration officials, declining to say whether he represented the former president while telling NBC News that he was “in regular contact” with Trump.

“The United States must maintain its technical and numerical superiority over the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles,” O'Brien wrote in a lengthy opinion piece published Tuesday, arguing that the United States must demonstrate its nuclear power as China and Russia are developing. their arsenals. “Washington must test the reliability and security of new nuclear weapons in the real world for the first time since 1992 – and not just using computer models. »

The last American nuclear test took place on September 23, 1992 in Nevada. The tests were interrupted during negotiations of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signed by the United States in 1996 and which prohibits any signatory from carrying out “any test explosion of nuclear weapons or any other nuclear explosion”, according to the Arms Control Association. Only one country has tested a nuclear weapon in the 21st century: North Korea.

“Dangerous and counterproductive thinking from Dr. Strangelove. Robert O'Brien calls for the resumption of US nuclear testing for the first time since 1992 and for US production of [highly enriched uranium and plutonium] despite our surplus,” Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, wrote on social media. “Nuclear intimidation does not work and leads to an arms race.”

There are about 12,000 nuclear warheads worldwide, according to the Federation of American Scientists. The United States holds 5,044, just behind Russia's estimate of 5,580. China has about 500 in its stockpile, and the U.S. Department of Defense projects it will have more than 1,000 by 2030, according to a report submitted to Congress last year.

For its part, the Biden administration does not believe that expanding the U.S. nuclear stockpile is in the best interests of U.S. foreign policy. In a speech to the Arms Control Association last June, Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the president was focused on modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal and reaching nuclear agreements. arms control with Russia, China and other countries.

“The United States does not need to increase its nuclear forces to exceed the total number of its competitors in order to successfully deter them. We went. We learned that lesson,” Sullivan said, later adding that the limits the Biden administration would accept would “of course be affected by the size and scale of China’s nuclear development.”

In his opinion piece, O'Brien called for a much more aggressive foreign policy toward China, including deploying the entire United States Marine Corps to the Pacific, helping our allies there strengthen their military with arms deals of the type the United States has entered into. long with Israel, and decoupling the US economy from that of China with 60% tariffs on Chinese goods and strict export controls on “any technology that could be useful to China”.

“The Pentagon should consider deploying the entire Marine Corps to the Pacific, including offloading missions in the Middle East and North Africa,” O'Brien wrote. “US bases in the Pacific often lack adequate missile defense systems and protection against fighter jets – a scandalous shortcoming that the Department of Defense should address by quickly shifting resources elsewhere. »

Currently, approximately 29,000 Marines are deployed in dozens of countries around the world, according to the Department of Defense. As of March 31, the vast majority of those Marines – 20,312 – were deployed to Japan, with hundreds more stationed in South Korea and the Philippines.

“This quagmire of American weakness and failure calls for a Trump-style peacemaking by force. Nowhere is this need more urgent than in the fight against China,” O’Brien wrote, later adding: “In November, the American people will have the opportunity to return to power a president who has restored peace by force – and who can do it. Again.”