The world is on the brink of a new nuclear arms race, and the tensions between the US and China are at the heart of this growing crisis. 'Nuclear tests': US, China tensions explode, as Beijing is accused of conducting secret nuclear explosion tests and attempting to disguise its violation of a global prohibition treaty. The US government has revealed that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the new explosions because it recognized these tests violated test-ban commitments. China has firmly opposed the US attempt to fabricate excuses for its own restarting of nuclear tests. The disarmament conference was addressing the expiry of the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) between Moscow and Washington. But this is only part of the problem. The uneasy balance of mutually assured destruction (MAD) that held the USSR, the US, France, and Britain at bay during the Cold War is teetering on the brink. Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea now have their own warheads. Iran is in the process of building them. And US President Donald Trump’s antipathy towards the NATO alliance and its previous commitments in the western Pacific has nations including Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea contemplating a move to secure their own 'nuclear umbrellas'. The risk of a renewed nuclear arms race is rising, and at the heart of the matter is the live testing of nuclear warheads. The US is accusing both Moscow and Beijing of using 'decoupling' as a means of disguising an underground nuclear explosion. Decoupling is a process in which the warhead is placed at the center of an enormous, empty cavern. This void prevents much of the shockwave produced by the nuclear blast from transferring into the surrounding bedrock. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty does not define what constitutes an explosion, and some analysts believe Beijing and Moscow may be interpreting this as allowing the initiation of 'limited' nuclear chain reactions. A test 'in the hundreds of tons' is not a 'zero-yield' chain reaction. Nevertheless, Beijing 'will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage'. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates Washington has 3700 active nuclear warheads. Russia has 4300. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio now argues that the START limitations treaty was 'negotiated at a different time to meet a different challenge' and 'no longer serves its purpose'. The risk of a domino effect is high, as the Saudi crown prince has made clear that Saudi Arabia would pursue nuclear weapons should Iran cross the nuclear threshold. The world is at a critical juncture, and the tensions between the US and China are a major factor in the growing risk of nuclear proliferation.
