David Doel of The Rational National podcast has sounded the alarm that Donald Trump poses a unique danger if he returns to the U.S. presidency, citing a story in The Intercept claiming that he ordered his generals to draw up plans envisioning a U.S. first-use of nuclear weapons against North Korea when the two countries were nearly drawn into direct conflict in 2017. Doel directly quotes The Intercept article on the allegedly unique danger:
"He didn't merely threaten to attack North Korea if it possessed the ability to strike the United States. He ordered the Pentagon to develop new plans over the resistance of then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis, to do so. As Slate columnist Fred Kaplan reports in his book, "The Bomb," the Joint Chiefs of Staff created new war plans 'that assumed the United States would strike the first blow.'"
Furthermore, the article states, "Mattis had the authority to order the bombing of North Korean launch sites - that is, to start an escalation that could lead to nuclear war, without the approval of Congress or even Trump."
This is all certainly alarming enough, but what makes Doel think the U.S. contemplating a first-strike nuclear attack (or delegating the decision to launch such an attack) is anything new? Forty-two years ago the U.S. Nuclear Freeze movement attracted over a million people to a New York City protest against the U.S. mass production of first-strike nuclear weapons and their deployment minutes from their targets in the then Soviet Union. Similar mass protests rocked Europe. Why does Doel, who follows politics closely and generally intelligently, appear to be completely ignorant of this major event in recent history?
The plain fact of the matter is that the U.S. initiating nuclear war is longstanding U.S. policy supported by both parties and all U.S. presidents going back to and including JFK. The policy is to launch a nuclear strike to knock out an opponent's nuclear retaliatory capacity, then threaten with an overwhelming second strike if said opponent refuses to capitulate to U.S. demands. Furthermore, in order to prevent a nuclear adversary from doing the same to us first, the U.S. has delegated the decision to launch nukes well down the chain of command, so that if Washington is taken out and the Commander in Chief with it, U.S. nuclear weapons can still be fired.
When he worked for the Pentagon Daniel Ellsberg tried to find out just how far down the chain of command a nuclear launch decision had been authorized, and he was unable to get a clear answer. So Trump is far from our only problem here. The prime risk factor for nuclear war is not who the Commander in Chief is, though that is certainly an important consideration, but a world wired up to explode in atomic fury at a moment's notice, whether by accident or design. Trump's thin skin and erratic temperament are hardly what we need at the top, but the idea that we're necessarily safer with Harris in the presidency is dogma, not fact. The decision to launch a nuclear war needn't include the president at all, and that has been true for a long time.
Trump's lunacy is an upstart political brand threatening to displace the bi-partisan monopoly on crazy that long preceded his appearance on the scene. Neither is worthy of any support.
Sources:
David Doel, "This Needs More Attention," The Rational National, October 23, 2024
Jon Schwarz, "By Far The Worst Thing Trump Did Was Flirt With Nuclear War With North Korea," The Intercept, January 20, 2021
Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine - Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner," (Bloomsbury, 2017)
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