Step back from the nuclear brink
Last week, Donald Trump declared the United States would resume testing of nuclear warheads, something we suspended in 1992. The other major nuclear powers stopped testing, too, achieving a major step back from the nuclear arms race which made the Cold War so perilous.
In recent years, all three nuclear powers have invested heavily in new ways to deliver nuclear warheads but to this point, all have refrained from nuclear test explosions.
The knowledge that leaders such as Trump and Putin have control over omnicidal arsenals is and should be terrifying. The fact that Trump’s statements reveal his own ignorance about the arsenal and nuclear testing is alarming.
We hope that the alarm bells are ringing loudly on Capitol Hill. Senator Shaheen called Trump’s statement “dangerous and reckless.” We hope Senator Hassan and Representatives Goodlander and Pappas, likewise, denounce Trump’s plan.
There is an alternative: Instead of marching willfully to the nuclear brink we can take a step in the opposite direction. That direction is expressed in resolutions (SRes 323 and HRes 317) calling for a negotiated pathway toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons and the removal of the president’s sole authority to launch them. We urge the New Hampshire delegation to provide their endorsements.
In the early 1980s, New Hampshire communities were at the forefront of a national movement calling for the nuclear arms race to be halted. That movement contributed to Ronald Reagan’s change of heart and a turn toward sanity. It’s time for another such reversal.