Following the expiration of a nuclear arms treaty, the New Start agreement, the United States accused China of conducting a covert nuclear test on June 22, 2020, just days after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in deadly clashes in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley.
US President Donald Trump has suggested he wants to keep nuclear arms limits but also engage China in a possible new deal. (AFP)The accord, which limits the deployment of US and Russian missiles and warheads, was signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.
The U.S. accusations at a disarmament conference in Geneva point to serious tensions between Washington and Beijing at a critical juncture on nuclear arms control.
“I can disclose that the U.S. government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including test preparations with a designated yield of hundreds of tons,” U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Thomas DiNano told the conference.
He alleged that the Chinese military tried to cover up the test by creating confusion around the nuclear explosion because “it admitted that these tests violated the test ban commitment”.
More Read
“China has used ‘decoupling,’ a method to reduce the effectiveness of seismic monitoring, to hide their activity from the world,” DiNanno added.
Also Read | The original US-Russia nuclear deal has expired. Should the world be concerned amid global uncertainty?
China conducted one such “yield test” on June 22, 2020, DiNanno added.
Just a week before this date, on June 15, 2020, Indian and Chinese troops clashed in the Galwan Valley of eastern Ladakh. 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the clash, while Chinese casualties were reported to be over 30. But Beijing has officially acknowledged the deaths of only four of its soldiers.
Earlier, he also noted that the New Start limits are no longer relevant in 2026, “when one nuclear power is expanding its arsenal to a scale and pace not seen in more than half a century and the other continues to maintain and develop extensive nuclear systems unconstrained by the terms of New Start”.
DiNanno also said that while all of America’s nuclear power was subject to treaty limitations, only a fraction of Russia’s “very large stockpile” was kept under the embargo.
“Exactly zero Chinese nuclear weapons are covered by New Start,” the US official claimed.
HTEditorial | Restart for weapon control
No longer constrained by the treaty, and in response to “the destabilizing behavior of these other countries,” DiNano said, the United States could “eventually” take steps to strengthen deterrence on behalf of the American people and its allies.
“This combination of repeated Russian violations, global stockpile growth, and New START’s design and implementation flaws creates a clear imperative for the United States to call for a new architecture that addresses today’s threats, not those of a past era,” the undersecretary wrote in a post on X.
DiNanno said the United States has long sought strategic stability and arms control measures that are “verifiable, enforceable and contribute to the security” of the United States and its allies. He added, “What we are proposing is not talk for talk’s sake — through this effort, the United States is seeking meaningful progress based on concrete action.”
Earlier, on online publishing platform ‘Substack’, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Russia and China “should not expect” the US to stand still “even as they avoid their obligations and expand their nuclear power”.
“We will maintain a strong, credible and modernized nuclear deterrent,” Rubio added.
What China said about the demand for nuclear testsAlthough China has not directly addressed the allegations leveled against it by the US undersecretary, it has always behaved responsibly on the nuclear issue.
Shen Jian, China’s ambassador for disarmament, said, “China notes that the United States continues to hype the so-called Chinese nuclear threat in its statements. China strongly opposes such false narratives. It (the US) is guilty of escalating the arms race.”
DiNanno also told the conference that China will have more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.
See: Secret credentials as New Start expires China rejects Trump’s US demand for BIC tests
In response, Shen reiterated that his country would not participate in new negotiations with the United States and Russia at this stage. Previously, Beijing has highlighted that it has a fraction of the number of warheads, around 600, compared to around 4,000 each in Moscow and Washington.
But diplomats at the world summit in Geneva expressed concern over the new allegations brought by the United States.
Also Read | Are we back to nuclear weapons testing? The Trump-Putin rivalry signals a new arms race: why it matters
Furthermore, both China and the US have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans explosive nuclear tests, but neither has ratified it. Meanwhile, Russia signed and ratified it, until it withdrew its ratification in 2023.
What is the New Start Agreement?In 2010, then-US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, signed the New START treaty, limiting each side to no more than 700 missiles and no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on bombers — ready for deployment and use.
The deal was originally scheduled to expire in 2021, but was extended for another five years.
In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying his country could not allow US inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies publicly opposed it in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
Also Read | China denies Trump’s claim of explosive secret nuclear weapons test
However, the Kremlin also stressed that it was not fully withdrawing from the deal, pledging to respect nuclear arms limitations.
In September, Putin noted that the duration of the deal would be destabilizing and could even fuel nuclear proliferation, offering to abide by the new START restrictions for a year to buy both sides some time to negotiate a successor deal, news agency PTI reported.
New Start was one of the last remaining agreements in a long series of agreements between the United States and Russia to limit their nuclear arsenals, beginning with SALT I in 1972.
Trump wants to include China in the new agreementUS President Donald Trump has suggested he wants to keep nuclear arms limits but also engage China in a possible new deal.
Trump told the New York Times last month, “I actually feel strongly that if we’re going to do this, I think China should be a member of the extension. China should be part of the deal.”
Trump tried to push for a trilateral nuclear deal involving China.
“China’s nuclear power is not on the same scale as that of the United States and Russia, and thus China will not participate in denuclearization talks at the current stage,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Thursday.
Jian added that China regretted the expiration of New Start and called on the United States to resume nuclear talks with Russia soon. He said the United States should also respond positively to Russia’s suggestion that the two sides continue to abide by the agreement’s key limits for the time being.
