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The first USSR nuclear test Joe 1 at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, 29 August 1949. Credit: CTBTO

By John Burroughs
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Dec 2 2025 (IPS)

In a Truth Social post that reverberated around the world, on October 29 President Donald Trump wrote: “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”

A month later, it remains unclear what “testing programs” Trump had in mind. Other than North Korea, which last tested in 2017, no country has carried out nuclear-explosive testing since 1998.

Some commentators speculated that Trump was referring to tests of nuclear weapons delivery systems, since Russia had just carried out tests of innovative systems, a long-range torpedo and a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Perhaps to underline that the United States too tests delivery systems, in an unusual November 13 press release Sandia National Laboratories announced an August test in which an F-35 aircraft dropped inert nuclear bombs.

It appears, though, that the testing in question concerns nuclear warheads. In what was clearly an effort to contain the implications of Trump’s announcement, on November 2, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said regarding US plans that “I think the tests we’re talking about right now” involve “noncritical” rather than “nuclear” explosions. The Energy Department is responsible for development and maintenance of the nuclear arsenal.

In contrast, Trump’s remarks in an interview taped on October 31 point toward alleged underground nuclear-explosive testing by Russia, China, and other countries as the basis for parallel US testing. His remarks perhaps were sparked by years-old US intelligence assessments that Russia and China may have conducted extremely low-yield experiments that cannot be detected remotely.

The prudent approach is to assume that Trump is talking about a US return to nuclear-explosive testing. That assumption is reinforced by the fact that a few days after Trump’s social media post, the United States was the sole country to vote against a UN General Assembly resolution supporting the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The Russian government is taking this approach. On November 5, President Vladimir Putin ordered relevant agencies to study the possible start of preparations for explosive testing of nuclear warheads.

US resumption of nuclear-explosive testing would be a disastrous policy. It would elevate the role of nuclear arms in international affairs, making nuclear conflict more likely. Indeed, nuclear tests can function as a kind of threat.

It likely would also stimulate and facilitate nuclear arms racing already underway among the United States, Russia, and China. Over the longer term nuclear-explosive testing would encourage additional countries to acquire nuclear weapons, as they come to terms with deeper reliance on nuclear arms by the major powers.

Resumption of nuclear test explosions would also be contrary to US international obligations. The United States and China have signed but not ratified the CTBT. Russia is in the same position, having withdrawn its ratification in 2023 to maintain parity with the United States. Due to the lack of necessary ratifications, the CTBT has not entered into force. Since the CTBT was negotiated in 1996, the three countries have observed a moratorium on nuclear-explosive testing.

That posture is consistent with the international law obligation, set forth in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, of a signatory state to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty.

The object and purpose of the CTBT is perfectly clear: to prevent and prohibit the carrying out of a nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.

The CTBT is a major multilateral agreement with an active implementing organization that operates a multi-faceted world-wide system to verify the testing prohibition. It stands as a precedent for a future global agreement or agreements that would control fissile materials used to make nuclear weapons, control missiles and other delivery systems, and reduce and eliminate nuclear arsenals.

The sidelining or evisceration of the CTBT due to an outbreak of nuclear-explosive testing would reverse decades of progress towards establishing a nuclear-weapons-free world.

A return to nuclear-explosive testing would similarly be incompatible with compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Its Article VI requires the negotiation of “cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date.”

Nuclear-explosive testing has long been understood as a driver of nuclear arms racing. The preamble to the NPT recalls the determination expressed in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits above-ground nuclear tests, “to seek to achieve the discontinuance of all test explosions of nuclear weapons for all time and to continue negotiations to this end.”

In 1995, as part of a package enabling the NPT’s indefinite extension, a review conference committed to completion of negotiations on the CTBT by 1996, which was accomplished. In 2000 and 2010, review conferences called for bringing the CTBT into force.

To resume nuclear-explosive testing though a comprehensive ban has been negotiated, and to support design and development of nuclear weapons through such testing, would be a thoroughgoing repudiation of a key aim of the NPT, the cessation of the nuclear arms race.

That would erode the legitimacy of the NPT, which since 1970 has served as an important barrier to the spread of nuclear arms. The next review conference will be held in the spring of 2026. Resumption of nuclear-explosive testing, or intensified preparations to do so, would severely undermine any prospect of an agreed outcome.

It is imperative that the United States not resume explosive testing of nuclear weapons. It would be a very hard blow to the web of agreements and norms that limit nuclear arms and lay the groundwork for their elimination, and it could even lead toward the truly catastrophic consequences of a nuclear conflict.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Dr John Burroughs is Senior Analyst, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Dec 2 2025 (IPS)

This coming International Volunteer Day (IVD), celebrated every year on 5 December, is special because the United Nations will launch the International Volunteer Year 2026 or IVY 2026.

This is going to be a great opportunity to re-set the global agenda of volunteerism, one of the most important tools to promote civic engagement, the bedrock of our societies.

Civic engagement, expressed through volunteerism, can make local communities more inclusive and people centered.

Because volunteerism in essence is by the people, for the people and with the people, is not just a tool but it is a catalyst for meaningful human-to-human experiences.

If it can be designed, planned and managed properly including investing in the people that are engaged in it and driving it, volunteerism provides unique opportunities to grow and become better human beings.

In an era in which artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving and challenging some of the most foundational aspects of our lives, volunteerism could offer a new meaning, new ground to forge connections by helping others.

“In an era of political division and social isolation, volunteering offers a powerful way to forge connections and foster our shared humanity” shares UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his official message for this year’s IVD.

Yet, almost inexplicably, volunteerism struggles to be recognized for its vital role and for the functions it plays in our lives. Volunteerism should be something that can really rally people together, a glue that can help with re-establishing connections with others.

In short, volunteerism is a precious, universal unifying element in our lives. Unfortunately, we are still unable to, not only upholding its values on a daily basis but we are also far we far from practicing it, truly making it an inextricable part of our being. After all, there is a common understanding that policy makers around the world have more serious things to deal with.

Instead of considering volunteering as something transformational, it is just seen as something nice while instead it should be at the core of any serious policy promoting social cohesiveness, something that should be a priority for any government.

But will IVY mark a turnaround? Will this special initiative really make a difference? Will IVY then be embraced by leaders in a tokenistic way as normally happens or will be there a serious effort to center volunteering as a key enabler of local wellbeing and prosperity?

These might sound as rhetorical questions that can be easily shrugged off and dismissed because there are more important issues to be worried about.

UNV, the United Nations program that is formally part of UNDP, has a unique role in boosting volunteerism around the world.

I have personally a great admiration for this organization but unfortunately, it falls short of the urgent priority to turbo-charge volunteerism, spreading it, mainstreaming it. At the end I do believe that UNV is failing in what it is its central mission.

Recently I came across a post on LinkedIn about how the government of Uzbekistan is stepping up its support for UNV. This should be great news because for too long, the agency was seen as too westernized, too much modeled to reflect only a certain and partial version of promoting and practicing volunteerism.

I do recognize and praise UNV’s efforts to change and embrace a more diverse strategic outlook and engage with emerging economies, new nations like Uzbekistan.

But as I was going through the post, I immediately felt that this new type of engagement was as much as promoting volunteerism but also about strategically building a pipeline of future UN staff from the Central Asian nation.

Because UNV has always been an entry door to join the ranks of the United Nations system and this is something that always bothered me. I never understood why this agency should promote what are in practice full time jobs that have, basically, nothing to do with volunteerism and are more similar to professional internship or fellowships that, in essence, offer cheaper manpower comparatively to the UN’s pay standards.

To me, this approach does not make sense. Then why do not we entrust UNOPS, the operational arm of the UN with the tasks of running schemes that can offer tangible opportunities to those youths who dream of joining the UN?

I am aware that the UN is undergoing a drastic overhaul. I am concerned about it but I also see this process, driven by immense aid cuts by the American and other administrations, as a chance to redeem the UN as a more effective development force.

I do not know what will happen to UNV. I do appreciate and value the part of the agency that tries to elevate volunteerism in the policy making processes around the world.

This coming IVY could offer a great platform to better promote, pitch volunteerism around the world.

A new edition of The State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, a massive global undertaking, will also be unveiled. With the new global report, a new Framework for the Global Volunteer Index will also be launched, an undertaking led by the University of Pretoria.

Having more data, more parameters and indicators to measure, assess the numbers of volunteers around the world and importantly, their impact, is essential.

In this type of tasks, UNV has developed a unique degree of expertise and it can really exercise the best of the convening powers that the United Nations have been famed for.

In the eventuality of any restructuring, this component of UNV must be not only protected and safeguarded but it must also be boosted. Perhaps UNV needs to shed itself of the outsourcing and onboarding functions it ended up assuming.

They were not supposed to become so central in the agency’s identity but they became the most important, budget wise, component of the agency. Either another agency takes up these responsibilities or UNV can fully separate such functions from its core business agenda.

An autonomous, semi-independent function could operate as it is already working now but it should be sealed off from other dimensions.

This would constitute a semi spin-off of the operation of placing full time United Nations Volunteers (UNV Volunteers) in UN Agencies, a task that is deemed strategically important for many nations as the case of Uzbekistan I ran into tells us.

In envisioning such restructuring, each government willing to sponsor its UNV volunteers, should be charged an additional budget item that could be directed to support the core functions of UNV.

I still imagine UNV running volunteering schemes around the world but these should be part time and only in partnership with civil society. The current model of UNV Volunteers should be re-branded and decontextualized from any association with volunteerism.

The reason for this is simple: these promising young professionals, all well-meaning and well-motivated, are not volunteers nor they are not engaged in any volunteerism centered activity.

If UNV wants to still facilitate and deploy full time volunteers, then, the model being championed by VSO, centered on partnership with local organizations and offering small living stipends to its volunteers, should be considered.

This year’s theme of IVD is “Every Contribution Matters”.

A new and different UNV, more grounded, more agile and closer to local communities and civil society organizations, can be imagined, ensuring that every contribution would “really” matter.

Simone Galimberti writes about the SDGs, youth-centered policy-making and a stronger and better United Nations.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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