Last Saturday, during an inter-class lull at my Saturday morning volunteer gig, my friend Frenchie (who, naturally, is Italian) asked me if I thought Trump was going to nuke something, anything. After a couple of seconds contemplation, I answered that Trump is a real-estate mogul, so he probably wouldn't be so callous with nuclear arms... there's just too much money to be lost. I then opined that the real danger would be Trump's regime starting a war with Iran for No Good Reason. That was last week, now I fear that my belief that the greatest danger of a Trump presidency would be a mere land war in Asia was, perhaps, naive.
All that changed when the President-Elected tweeted that "the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." Now, there has been a mad scramble by Team Trump members to clarify what the dunderhead really meant, with reports that he himself wants to reignite a nuclear arms race. At this time, the United States is believed to have almost five thousand nuclear weapons. Six years ago, President Obama expressed his commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, now we are facing the prospect of a president who is committed to atomic dick-swinging. A guy who can't even control his iPhone use really shouldn't have access to the nuclear football. I'd hate to see him nuke Baldwin because he's mad about a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Just consider this: Since 1945, there has not been a direct major power conflict. Why? Well, a big part of that is nuclear weapons. The major powers can't risk direct warfare because as soon as one of them starts to lose, whether in the first hours or after weeks of attrition, the pressure to turn the tide with a nuclear strike, followed by the inevitable escalation, becomes too great. So wars in the nuclear age have been small proxy wars, and when the nuclear powers engaged in them they did so against non-nuclear powers.
ReplyDeleteThe risk of Trump is that he is much more likely to over-react to a Chinese or Russian or North Korean action in a way that get the shooting started. After that it's just a short path to a nuclear exchange, even though that was never the intention, even by him...
He's just not smart enough, nor disciplined enough, to be trusted with foreign affairs. Maybe he wants to retain his private security detail because he's afraid the Secret Service will frag him like the Praetorian Guards fragged Caligula.
ReplyDeleteMaybe so, but knowing what I know about their intense CQB training, the SS protective detail agents could eliminate the contractors in about 8 seconds, so it's kind of a waste of time and money in that sense...
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