President Trump: Nuclear Business as Usual?

By JOHN BUELL

Last winter when President-elect Trump tweeted, “United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” the tweet was portrayed as shockingly new and threatening. As president, Trump continues his inflammatory rhetoric. Nonetheless, his nuclear posture is closer to his predecessors than is commonly recognized. It has long been US policy and practice to seek and rely on nuclear superiority. The US led every step in the arms race. That arms race remains the greatest immediate threat to the survival of human civilization and other living beings. That threat has persisted under every president from Truman to Trump.

Noam Chomsky reminds us: “Khrushchev proposed sharp mutual reductions in offensive weapons. The incoming Kennedy administration considered the offer and rejected it, instead turning to rapid military expansion, even though it was already far in the lead. The late Kenneth Waltz, supported by other strategic analysts with close connections to US intelligence, wrote then that the Kennedy administration “undertook the largest strategic and conventional peacetime military build-up the world has yet seen ... even as Khrushchev was trying at once to carry through a major reduction in the conventional forces and to follow a strategy of minimum deterrence, and we did so even though the balance of strategic weapons greatly favored the United States.”

More recently, anti-missile systems have been portrayed as defensive weapons, but this too is deceptive. No nuclear expert seriously thinks that these could withstand a full-scale nuclear exchange. Their deployment might at least plausibly repel the survivors of a first strike against a small-scale nuclear opponent, such as North Korea or Iran.

The irrationality with which Trump is properly charged is also part of the core nuclear doctrine. He is a perfect manifestation of what nuclear strategists have in mind. Chomsky cites a crucial Strategic Air Command study:

“That Stratcom study was concerned with “the role of nuclear weapons in the post-cold war era.” A central conclusion: that the US must maintain the right to launch a first strike, even against non-nuclear states. Furthermore, nuclear weapons must always be at the ready because they “cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict.” They were, that is, constantly being used, just as you’re using a gun if you aim but don’t fire one while robbing a store (a point that Daniel Ellsberg has repeatedly stressed). Stratcom went on to advise that “planners should not be too rational about determining … what the opponent values the most.” Everything should simply be targeted. “[I]t hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed … That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project.” It is “beneficial [for our strategic posture] if some elements may appear to be potentially ‘out of control’,” thus posing a constant threat of nuclear attack – a severe violation of the UN charter, if anyone cares.”

Nor is such talk merely theoretical speculation. Not only did the Kennedy Administration pour fuel on the fire of the arms race, it practiced nuclear brinksmanship of the most dangerous sort. Here is Chomsky again:

“As the crisis peaked in late October, Kennedy received a secret letter from Khrushchev offering to end it by simultaneous public withdrawal of Russian missiles from Cuba and US Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The latter were obsolete missiles, already ordered withdrawn by the Kennedy administration because they were being replaced by far more lethal Polaris submarines to be stationed in the Mediterranean. Kennedy’s subjective estimate at that moment was that if he refused the Soviet premier’s offer, there was a 33% to 50% probability of nuclear war … Kennedy nonetheless refused Khrushchev’s proposal for public withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba and Turkey; only the withdrawal from Cuba could be public, so as to protect the US right to place missiles on Russia’s borders or anywhere else it chose.

It is hard to think of a more horrendous decision in history – and for this, he is still highly praised for his cool courage and statesmanship.”

In this context we need to question corporate media’s frequent reference to modernizing nuclear weapons, the presumed sensible alternative to Trump’s bellicosity. Weapons modernization is a euphemism that hides the real agenda, to render such weapons usable in “regional” wars. US strategic rhetoric has always turned on the notion that nuclear superiority deters and that the US must therefore never take the nuclear option — even first strike — off the table. That doctrine is dangerous at its core. How does the US convince an opponent that it is always willing to use nuclear weapons? Eventually only by use of those weapons.

John Buell lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine, and writes regularly on labor and environmental issues. Email jbuell@acadia.net.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2017

Populist.com