In December 2018, midway through his first term, Donald Trump announced on Twitter the withdrawal of US troops from Syria. Shortly before, he had used the same platform to communicate to Rex Tillerson his dismissal as Secretary of State. The news surprised its Western allies and surprised Russia, with whom the United States maintained a joint force aimed at eliminating the bases of the Islamic State in the region.
However, the announcement was never fulfilled. It received more publicity than any internal order, it caused chaos in the chancelleries of half the world, but it was nothing more than the relief of a social media addict with a tendency to mood swings. In any case, the precedent should have served Trump to assess and moderate his tendency to legislate via tweet, something that the president of El Salvador would later copy, Nayib Bukele. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.
Last week, Trump returned to his old ways by publishing a message on Truth Social, his own social network, in which he warned that the United States was going to resume nuclear testing on its own territory, something that had not happened since 1992. The post was ambiguous and fallacious, as is usual for the American president. It presented the tests as a response to what Russia and China were doing, and it also did not present a clear timetable.
The thing is, neither Russia nor China have conducted a nuclear test since 1990 and 1996, respectively. In fact, as such a State, Russia has never tested its nuclear weapons or has not done so officially. The 1990 test was still in the times of the Soviet Union and for self-proclaimed “pacifist” purposes. What both countries have tested recently are conventional weapons that can carry nuclear warheads when the time comes. For example, the Burevestnik cruise missile or the torpedoes of the Poseidon nuclear submarine.
Medvedev and Putin’s response
The fact is that the Kremlin has found the perfect excuse to escalate the nuclear tension, which is what it has been doing since at least 2022. The first to come forward was, as usual, the former president Dmitri Medvédevwho made it clear that, whether on a social network or in the White House, the announcement came from the president of the United States and it was mandatory to take it seriously. Russia signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) at the time, but revoked its ratification in November 2023.
Medvedev has been directly followed Vladimir Putin. The Russian president stated this Wednesday that Russia has no plans to deviate from the CTBT guidelines… unless the United States does so. Even the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskovacknowledged that nothing had been decided and that they were just waiting to gather information to see if it was necessary to start preparations. In short, it is most likely that neither the United States nor Russia will end up doing anything… but nuclear panic is already activated in world public opinion, which is exactly what benefits Moscow.
It must be remembered that Russia is the country with the most nuclear warheads in the world, with a certain advantage over the United States. In what state these heads remain is what remains to be determined after so many years. US intelligence detected in October 2022 that the Kremlin was seriously contemplating the use of a tactical nuclear weapon on a military target in Ukraine, but pressure from the Administration Biden and NATO as a whole made Putin change his mind.
A new 180 degree turn
The curious thing about all this rhetorical escalation is that Trump came to power promising just the opposite. His idea and that of the MAGA movement was that it was advisable to invest less in weapons, strengthen trade agreements, stop all wars and prevent the world from being once again on the brink of a nuclear holocaust. He repeatedly accused his predecessor, Joe Bidenof fueling war tension, it is not very clear in favor of what diffuse interests.
This reasoning was what led the White House to stop the sale of weapons to Ukraine and even the director of National Intelligence of EEthe well-known pro-Russian Tulsi Gabbardpublished a dramatic video in which he warned that the world was “on the brink of nuclear annihilation” and blamed “warmongers and politicians who are recklessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.” He also pointed out that this was because these “warmongers” – the reference was intended to be to Biden and Zelensky – were confident that they could escape the Holocaust by hiding in their bunkers.
The publication of the video coincided with the agreement between Zelensky and Trump to resume arms sales, so Gabbard was clearly disavowed. Now, directly, it is Trump who seems to “recklessly foster” these nuclear tensions, in what can only be described as a new 180-degree turn in his political argument. It could be said that there is an important distance from words to actions, and it is true, but history shows us that small gestures and small misunderstandings are what can later lead to major catastrophes. Taking care of them shouldn’t cost that much.