The
broad debate over President Trump’s fitness for the difficult and
demanding office he holds has recently been reframed in a more pointed
and urgent way: Does he understand, and can he responsibly manage, the
most destructive nuclear arsenal on earth?
The
question arises for several reasons. He has threatened to “totally
destroy” North Korea. He has reportedly pressed for a massive buildup in
the American nuclear arsenal, which already contains too many — 4,000 —
warheads. And soon he will decide whether to sustain or set a course to
possibly unravel the immensely important Iran nuclear deal.
Doubts about his competency were reinforced this week by Senator Bob Corker,
who charged that Mr. Trump was treating his office like “a reality
show” with reckless threats that could set the nation “on the path to
World War III.” Mr. Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, says he is
relying on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim
Mattis and John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, to help “separate
our country from chaos.” That is a searing indictment, and Mr. Corker
is no garden-variety legislator; as chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, he is a respected, and largely responsible, voice
on national security issues.
Further, NBC News now reports
that Mr. Tillerson judged Mr. Trump a “moron” after a July 20 meeting
in which Mr. Trump, apparently distressed that the arsenal has declined
since the Cold War, said he wanted a nearly tenfold increase in weapons.
Mr.
Trump’s policy pronouncements during the campaign betrayed either
profound ignorance or dangerous nonchalance: At one point he wondered
why America had nuclear weapons if it didn’t use them; at another he
suggested that Japan and South Korea, which have long lived under the
American security umbrella, should develop their own nuclear weapons.
But nothing he said has been quite as unsettling as his recent
tweetstorms about North Korea, his warnings of “fire and fury” and his quip about “the calm before the storm.”
Continue reading the main story
The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal Is Already Too Big
President Trump believes the U.S. needs more weapons, but
its current stockpile of 4,000 could decimate much of the planet.
Each bomb
equals five
warheads
A New York Times analysis found the U.S. could
use 1,103 nuclear warheads and decimate China, Russia, North Korea,
Iran, Libya, Iraq, and Syria...
... and still have 2,897 left.
Many
have hoped, and still hope, that Mr. Trump’s aggressive posture is
mostly theater, designed to slake his thirst for attention, keep
adversaries off guard and force changes in their behavior by words
alone. But there is no underlying strategy to his loose talk, and
whatever he means by it, Congress has been sufficiently alarmed to
consider legislation that would bar the president from launching a first
nuclear strike without a declaration of war by Congress. It wouldn’t
take away the president’s ability to defend the country.
That’s
a sound idea, and could be made stronger with a requirement that the
secretaries of defense and state also approve any such decision. As
things stand now, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, passed when there was
more concern about trigger-happy generals than elected civilian leaders,
gives the president sole control. He could unleash the apocalyptic
force of the American nuclear arsenal by his word alone, and within
minutes.
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