VOX has once again denounced, in the European institutions, the Spanish Government’s handling of the migration crisis in Ceuta at the end of July. MEP Hermann Tertsch spoke in a European Parliament debate on the Pact for the Mediterranean to criticize the absence of any reference to the autonomous city and to accuse Pedro Sánchez’s government of favoring Morocco’s interests.

The VOX representative also reproached the EU institutions for their response to Morocco, which he accused of receiving European funding and concessions to the detriment of Spain.

Criticism of the Sánchez Government

The party holds the central government responsible for the situation that, it maintains, Ceuta has been going through since the summer’s migration crisis. In its statement, VOX denounces security problems and pressure on public services that, in its view, make citizens’ daily lives difficult.

Tertsch aimed his criticism at the Prime Minister with a direct accusation: “The worst part is that Morocco’s supreme lobbyist is the Spanish Government of the traitor Sánchez, which decisively helped in that invasion.”

The statements are part of VOX’s strategy of taking its criticism of the handling of the crisis to the European institutions and calling for more restrictive migration measures.

Criticism of the European People’s Party

The MEP also criticized the European People’s Party for blocking, according to VOX, a committee of inquiry into the events in Ceuta proposed by the Patriots for Europe group. The party says the initiative was rejected last week in the European Parliament’s Conference of Presidents, with the PP and the left-wing groups voting against.

VOX considers that the decision prevents clarifying what happened during the crisis and demands greater involvement of the EU institutions in protecting the European Union’s external borders.

In this regard, Tertsch defended a tightening of European migration policy and called for “secure borders and urgent remigration,” a term the party uses to advocate the return of immigrants.

Read the full article at La Verdad de Ceuta

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, D.C. foreign policy and defense think tank.

China’s officials this year proposed to the Trump administration reciprocal visits to nuclear sites.

Specifically, the Chinese discussed visits to U.S. Department of Energy national labs. The U.S., a source told CNN, “would be open to discussing visits to nuclear testing sites.”

Unfortunately, China’s initiative looks suspect, and talks should not proceed until Beijing is ready to engage the United States meaningfully.

Washington has already begun “informal and preliminary” discussions with Beijing. President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping reportedly did not discuss the visits during their talks in Washington last month, but “further lower-level discussions” are expected before the two leaders meet again next month on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in China’s Shenzhen.

China’s proposal raised hopes in American policy circles for a broader agreement with Beijing about these weapons. As CNN reported, “The concept of allowing nuclear site visits could move the needle on the U.S. efforts to engage China on issues related to strategic stability and potentially serve as a building block for a trilateral agreement.”

A “trilateral agreement” — a deal among the U.S., China, and Russia — was a goal of the first Trump administration and remains a goal to this day. Trump on October 19 publicly said a meeting among the three countries would be “a very positive thing for the world.” He also hinted that such a meeting would occur next month in China.

China, at least up to this year, has also refused to discuss transparency measures and has never publicly confirmed the number of its weapons.

Beijing’s secrecy has forced others to guess the size of its arsenal. The Pentagon in a November 2022 report forecast that China would quadruple nukes from about 400 then to 1,500 by 2035.

The 2035 estimate looks far too low. Whatever the number, everyone agrees that the Chinese regime is rapidly building its arsenal. As Adm. Charles Richard, then commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said in 2021, “We are witnessing a strategic breakout by China.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything more disturbing in my career than the Chinese ongoing expansion of their nuclear force,” said then Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall in House testimony in March 2023.

“China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country,” the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported this June.

The Chinese regime appears no longer content with a “minimal deterrent” — an arsenal only big enough to prevent an attack. With its rapid build-up, it is developing a “war-fighting” capability. With such a capability, threats to launch first strikes would be credible and Beijing would be able to intimidate adversaries. The ability to annihilate the United States could convince Washington not to defend, for instance, Taiwan. China has made these threats both in the last century and this one.

Almost everybody would also like to see progress with China limiting nukes. “This is a very dangerous time, and there are very few guardrails in place on the U.S.-China nuclear relationship,” Paul Dean, a former acting assistant secretary of state overseeing arms control, told CNN. “We don’t need to wait for a crisis to start reducing nuclear risks.”

As Dean, now at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said, “the risks are very real right now.”

They are especially real because China has almost certainly detonated fissile material secretly— and then sought to deceive the international community.

Beijing says it stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1996, but it has almost certainly been conducting secret detonations.

“Commercial surveillance satellites between 2020 and 2024 observed China dramatically expanding its nuclear weapons testing site at Lop Nur, to include the apparent drilling of new tunnels for the testing of nuclear devices underground,” Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told this author in late 2025. “In addition to preparing to resume underground nuclear testing, it is also very likely that China has proceeded with ‘sub critical’ nuclear testing and the testing of components of nuclear weapons that included fissile material that produced very low-yield explosions.”

Fisher is not the only analyst who thinks the Chinese have been surreptitiously setting off nuclear devices. Huessy also assesses that both Russia and China have been conducting tests with fissile material for decades.

The U.S. intelligence community concurs. “After consultations with Director Ratcliffe and his team, they have confirmed to me that the CIA assesses that both Russia and China have conducted super-critical nuclear weapons tests in excess of the U.S. zero-yield standard,” Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated in comments posted on X in November 2025.

Christopher Yeaw, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, in a speech in June stated that there was “undeniable evidence” of Chinese yield-producing tests and that China has been “obfuscating nuclear explosions.” He said that perhaps in the future China will be testing fissile material in the 100-kiloton range. The Trump administration reports that China detonated fissile material on June 22, 2020 at Lop Nor.

The U.S. charges that China used the “decoupling” technique — detonating a device in an underground chamber instead of solid rock — to disguise and muffle an explosion of fissile material. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration conducted a decoupling test to mimic the Chinese effort.

There is concern that, in light of the Chinese deception, Beijing’s proposed reciprocal visits are little more than a public relations ploy.

As CNN reported, “skeptics noted that the Chinese may have floated the idea in an effort to create a positive atmosphere or to appear serious on the topic of nuclear arsenals.” The skeptics include U.S. officials.

Until China comes clean on its detonations of fissile material, there is no point in talking. Beijing is brazenly lying and therefore refusing to engage with America in good faith.

Read the full article at Gatestone Institute

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, D.C. foreign policy and defense think tank.