THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH-APRIL 2026 39 FOCUS NUCLEAR SECURITY Is Nuclear Testing Needed? On October 30, 2025, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the United States would resume nuclear testing. Though it came as a surprise to many, it was one of the recommendations in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy initiative, which in many ways has served as a blueprint for the Trump administration. The president’s announcement raised many questions about its intent, not least because it seemed to misstate several important facts. For example, the post asserted that the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country, when in fact Russia is known to have a greater number overall, if nondeployed warheads are included. While China is increasing its stockpile by roughly a hundred per year, it is not, as Trump asserted, on the verge of matching the United States. Mark Goodman is a nonresident fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. He retired in 1995 after serving for 30 years as a U.S. government policy expert and a leading practitioner of multilateral nuclear nonproliferation diplomacy at the Department of State, the Department of Energy, and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, most recently in 2025 as senior scientist in the State Department’s Office of Multilateral Nuclear and Security Affairs. Goodman has a PhD in physics from Princeton University and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. Maurice “Monte” Mallin is a senior fellow at Sandia National Laboratories. In April 2025, he retired from 30 years of federal service as the director of policy for the National Nuclear Security Administration. Mallin also served at the National Defense University as the chair for nuclear security programs, as well as at the State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was a key member of the team that negotiated the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which opened for signature in 1996. An October 2025 social media post by the U.S. president instructed the Department of Defense to begin testing nuclear weapons. But is it really necessary? BY MARK GOODMAN AND MONTE MALLIN
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