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Posted by SMAZ on Thu Aug 4 02:30:38 2016 Trump's Nuclear Football In a week of campaign madness, the only issue that matters is Trump's terrifying ignorance about nuclear weapons. Trump's Nuclear Football By Emily Arrowood | US News & World Report There's been no shortage of conjecture on what kind of president Donald Trump would be, but today we received a peek into a terrifying possibility: the kind that starts a nuclear war. Trump repeatedly wondered why the U.S. doesn't use its nuclear arsenal, according to an account relayed by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough Wednesday morning. "Several months ago, a foreign policy expert went to advise Donald Trump," Scarborough recalled. "And three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons – three times he asked. At one point, 'If we have them, why can't we use them?'" The Trump campaign denies this conversation took place, but this isn't the first time he's reportedly expressed a desire to use nukes: He told MSNBC's Chris Matthews he'd be willing to drop a nuclear weapon on Europe and would never take the use of nukes off the table in any situation; in an interview with Bloomberg, he said the key to making other countries respect us to is to be "unpredictable" with our use of nuclear weapons. It's tempting to view such yearning to use nukes as just another notch on Trump's crazy belt. It's only Wednesday, and already this week he's doubled down on his feud with a Gold Star family, refused to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sens. John McCain and Kelly Ayotte for re-election, tossed a baby out of a rally and preemptively declared the November election rigged, to say nothing of his continued refusal to release his tax returns or explain his campaign's relationship with Russia. Republican bigwigs are reportedly planning an intervention to get him back on message. But carelessly flirting with the idea of launching nuclear weapons isn't a gaffe. It isn't offensive or bizarre, like so much of Trump's rambling. It's deadly serious, and good reminder that nothing else really matters if the Republican nominee gets his stubby fingers on nukes. Our nuclear command security sequence isn't really equipped with checks and balances to stop a president who wants to set off nuclear weapons. As a nuclear security expert explained to Politico, "There are no restraints that can prevent a willful president from unleashing this hell. If he gave the command, his executing commanders would have no legal or procedural grounds to defy it no matter how inappropriate it might seem." In other words, if we elect Trump in November, he basically has free-range to nuke the first person or country to tweet an insult in his direction. Trump at least appears to appreciate that nuclear weapons do terrible things. (Silver lining?) He's previously said he would "love to see a nuclear-free world" and that he'd "be the last to use nuclear weapons. It's a horror to use nuclear weapons." Yet to openly wonder why we don't use them reflects a spine-tingling ignorance of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, even more troublesome than his obvious unfamiliarity with the nuclear triad in a debate during the primary. And with Trump's number-one foreign policy adviser being himself, it isn't likely he'll educate himself on the issue anytime soon. Experts credit mutually assured destruction as the single largest contributor to world peace over the last 50 years. Haphazardly or not, Trump is expressing his desire to toss that out the window – "mutual assurance" is basically the opposite of Trump's preferred unpredictability. Former national security adviser John Noonan lays this out in exceptional, horrifying detail (read his full thread here), but his overarching point is: Trump would toss out this established nuclear strategy in favor of ... what? Most likely whatever happens to pop into his head at the time. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said he's "very, very concerned" by the possibility of Trump with the nuclear codes, particularly because of how "erratic" he is. As Hillary Clinton put it in her speech at the Democratic National Convention, "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons." The ghostwriter of Trump's "The Art of the Deal" recently told The New Yorker: "I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization." The Republican nominee is proving he has no desire to take that possibility off the table. |
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