US prepares nuclear test site in Nevada

The Russian Foreign Ministry on November 3 warned the US not to continue full-scale nuclear tests.

“The United States must understand that conducting full-scale tests, with the infrastructure in Nevada supposedly ready, will force us to respond in kind,” the ministry said.

Earlier, President Vladimir Putin withdrew Moscow's ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to restore parity.

In October, the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) conducted an underground explosion at a site northwest of Las Vegas, with the aim of “improving the detection of underground nuclear explosive tests.” The NNSA said the explosion involved “high-powered chemical explosives and radioactive tracers.”

Moscow formally withdrew its ratification of the CTBT on November 2, noting that the US Congress had also avoided ratifying the 1996 agreement for more than 25 years “for far-fetched reasons.”

“This cannot continue forever. In conditions where the United States is pursuing a deeply hostile policy towards our country, maintaining the previous imbalance in the CTBT approach is no longer feasible,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The US has not conducted a direct nuclear test since 1992. Russia has publicly stated that it will not resume nuclear testing but will respond if the US does.

However, the Pentagon recently announced plans to develop a high-yield version of the B61 gravity bomb, while a US congressional advisory body has urged expanding the size of the nuclear arsenal regardless of the cost.

Earlier this week, the US Air Force destroyed an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a test, the second such test since early September. The US is planning to replace the older missiles with a new design, expected to be ready in the 2030s.

The next few years will determine the future world order.

In another development, US President Joe Biden declared that the world is at a crossroads and the next few years will be decisive for many generations to come.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with Chilean President Gabriel Boric on November 2, Mr. Biden said “there will come a time, maybe six to eight generations, when the world changes in a very short period of time.”

The US leader declared that “what happens in the next two, three years will determine what the world will look like in the next five or six decades.”

Last month, Mr Biden also spoke of the need for a “new world order” , suggesting that although the post-World War II system had worked for decades, it was “almost out of steam”.

Commenting on this statement, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov described this as a rare moment when Moscow completely agreed with Washington: "The world really needs a new order, based on completely new principles."

However, Mr Peskov said Mr Biden meant building “a world centered around America” , and stressed that “this will no longer be the case”. Russia has always called for a multilateral world order.

Phuong Anh (Source: RT)

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