The new nuclear arms race

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s statement last week that the US would resume testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Russia and China wrong-footed his own officials as much as it did Beijing and Moscow.

Restarting warhead tests would break a three-decade moratorium by the major nuclear powers. Coming after Russia’s Vladimir Putin bragged of two new weapons delivery systems, it bolstered concerns that the world is sliding into a new nuclear arms race – when much of the cold war-era arms control architecture has collapsed.

Trump’s comments appeared primarily as a response to Putin’s claims to have tested two nuclear-powered delivery platforms: Burevestnik, a long-range cruise missile, and Poseidon, a torpedo said to be able to devastate coastal regions with a radioactive tidal wave.