William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Sojourners is an endorser of the “Appeal to Halt and Reverse the Arms Race.”
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Christians Ended the Arms Race Once; Let’s Do It Again
Trump is calling for renewed nuclear testing. We know how to stop it.
THE LAST NUCLEAR weapons accord, which caps the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals, expires in February. Signed in 2010, the New START treaty is the final remaining between the U.S. and Russia to limit nuclear weapons. Absent new constraints, the two sides will likely increase the number of deployed nuclear weapons. And thus begins a new acceleration of the nuclear arms race.
In late October, President Donald Trump added fuel to the fire by ordering the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing. Such a step prompts other nations to do the same—indeed, in early November, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian officials to submit plans for “retaliatory” nuclear tests—and reverses one of the signature achievements of the disarmament movement, a de facto nuclear test ban that has lasted more than 30 years.
As participants in the antinuclear weapons movement of the 1980s, we are dismayed to see the gains of that era reversed.