{"text":[[{"start":6.69,"text":"Donald Trump’s statement last week that the US would resume testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Russia and China wrongfooted 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."}],[{"start":43.339999999999996,"text":"Trump’s comments appeared primarily 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. Russia’s president said both could evade existing defences, in a swipe at Trump’s plan to expand today’s US missile defence system into an elaborate “Golden Dome”."}],[{"start":74.03,"text":"Trump may have intended to signal the US would step up testing of delivery systems, not warheads. In a weekend TV interview, though, he appeared to confirm that he meant explosive nuclear testing. His energy secretary said the US would simply continue systems tests involving “non-nuclear explosions”."}],[{"start":97.72,"text":"Whatever the truth, a return to US warhead testing would be a highly retrograde step. It would provide cover to do likewise not just for Russia and China but other nuclear states keen to upgrade their weapons. That could encourage non-nuclear states to pursue their own."}],[{"start":119.87,"text":"It would also demolish one of the few remaining pillars of US-Russian arms control. Agreements limiting missile defence systems (intended to buttress mutual deterrence) and intermediate-range missiles are no longer in force. The New Start treaty, limiting deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 on each side, is due to expire next February. Putin has offered a conditional one-year extension; Washington has made positive noises but not formally responded."}],[{"start":153.25,"text":"The erosion of arms control, rush for new systems and loose talk on testing are all the more unsettling since Russia’s war on Ukraine has marked the return of nuclear blackmail. Putin has used it from the outset to deter Nato countries from intervening and supplying the most lethal weapons to Kyiv. Chillingly, US intelligence estimated at 50-50 the chance that Moscow would carry out a threat to use a nuclear weapon when Russian forces were losing ground in Ukraine in late 2022."}],[{"start":190.5,"text":"The decades-old strategic balance between the two nuclear superpowers threatens to be upset, meanwhile, by China’s rise as an atomic power. The Pentagon estimates Beijing’s armoury could swell from about 600 warheads to more than 1,000 by 2030. Trump has insisted China should join future arms control agreements; US officials worry that, in terms of deployed warheads allowed by New Start, Russia’s arsenal plus China’s could soon dwarf its own. Beijing has rejected joining talks, arguing it has far fewer weapons."}],[{"start":233.29,"text":"Despite its resistance to caps on its warheads, however, it is in China’s interest to take part in efforts to avert a senseless, multilateral, new arms race. Beijing is already understood to have privately urged restraint after Putin’s 2022 threats. Nuclear weapons are not only abhorrent for their fearsome power, but ruinously expensive."}],[{"start":259.99,"text":"Whatever Trump’s justifiable frustrations with Putin in his efforts to end the Ukraine war and regardless of China’s position today, the US president ought to engage with Moscow on extending New Start as a step towards rebuilding arms control. He has previously called that a priority. Making decisive progress towards it would be a far better way of earning the Nobel Peace Prize he craves than ending the long taboo on weapons testing."}],[{"start":300.58000000000004,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1762337692_8671.mp3"}