President Donald Trump’s penchant for impulsively making sweeping policy decisions on the fly is one of his most unsettling personality traits. Whether it’s ever-shifting tariffs seemingly based on little but his moods, or demolishing part of the White House to construct a vulgar monstrosity of a ballroom without a word to Congress, or the unilateral and adolescent-minded renaming of the Defense Department to the “Department of War,” this president’s decision-making process is the polar opposite of thoughtful deliberation.

That unsettling trait becomes terrifying on the topic of America’s nuclear arsenal. But Trump’s announcement that the U.S. will resume nuclear testing that was halted after the Cold War, while dangerous, could and should open up a wider discussion the nation must have about how that arsenal is managed today and in the future.

While traveling last week for his meeting with China’s Xi Jinping, Trump announced the reversal of America’s 30-plus-year freeze on nuclear weapons testing the way he announces most things: via his social media thumbs. His Truth Social post had the feel of something that had perhaps just occurred to him — even while revealing a lack of factual knowledge on the issue.

Trump wrote that the policy change, effective “immediately,” was in response to continued nuclear testing by other nations. “They seem to all be nuclear testing,” Trump later told reporters on Air Force One, referring to China and Russia. “… With others doing testing, I think it’s appropriate that we do also.”

Actually, no nation but North Korea has exploded a nuclear device, for testing or any other reason, for decades, and North Korea’s last detonation was in 2017. Russia, China, the U.S. and every other nuclear power have observed voluntary testing moratoriums since the early 1990s, a key benefit from the ending of the Cold War.

A president who loves destabilizing things — NATO, the Constitution, America’s confidence in its own elections — threatens here to destabilize what has been a delicate but longstanding global halt to nuclear proliferation. His erroneous claim that Russia and China are testing nukes might well become true should the U.S. resume testing, as our adversaries would likely respond in kind.

That the world survived a half-century of Cold War and has since eased the nuclear genie at least partway back into its bottle is, historically speaking, almost miraculous. That Trump would suddenly seek to scuttle that achievement and start test explosions again — with all the attendant expense, risk of nuclear contamination and, ultimately, global instability — is probably just another expression of his impulsivity and lack of historical understanding.

But there may be a silver lining to this nuclear cloud.

During Trump’s first term, as his unfitness for office became clear to many, there were calls from some to change longstanding U.S. policy that, incredibly, could theoretically allow a sitting president to launch a nuclear first strike for any reason, without consulting Congress, the Cabinet or anyone else.

After Trump’s first term ended, debate over that policy evaporated. If Trump’s escalating instability during his current term restarts that debate now, that’s a good thing. And his testing announcement could be just the fuse to get that conversation going.

This is, after all, a president who is militarizing the streets of politically unfriendly American cities under demonstrably false pretenses. It’s a president who is now routinely ordering the (almost certainly illegal) destruction of alleged drug-smuggling boats, committing what amounts to scores of summary executions with no presentation of evidence or due process whatsoever. It’s a president who doesn’t even bother concealing his determination to jail his political enemies just because they’re his enemies.

Can anyone who recognizes what all this says about the current president’s psyche really be comfortable with the fact that he could, at any time, for any reason (or none at all), send the missiles flying?

Responding to an incoming attack in which minutes count is one thing. But no president should have the power to unilaterally launch a nuclear first strike without any discussion or debate. That situation has never been a good idea.

The best potential outcome of Trump’s half-witted nuclear-testing announcement is that he will, as he sometimes does, fail to follow up and just move on to some other impulsive policy decision.

Meantime, by merely turning everyone’s attention back to whether our nuclear policy needs to change, Trump might be unintentionally serving a more constructive purpose than he generally does intentionally.

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