Disorder Defines Trump’s World

By JASON SIBERT

President Donald Trump has been described as a conservative – or right-wing – populist.

However, his actions in the field of nuclear arms control are anything but conservative. As writer Jon Wolfsthal points out in his recent story “Trump is Pushing the World Toward Nuclear Anarchy,” Trump’s policies are producing a world defined by disorder. A conservative is someone who wants to conserve something in the past, while an anarchist is someone who believes the state ought to be abolished in one way or another.

Much has been written on the destructive nature of nuclear weapons, and it’s only natural that any rational person would want to control their use. To realistically establish control, states – or a group of nation-states – must establish laws controlling them. In this arrangement, the states would establish the rules of the game to promote a desirable outcome and punish those who don’t follow the rules. It is the same concept used in domestic law enforcement where law breakers are punished in some way.

The law-and-order approach to nuclear weapons started in the 1960s when President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968). This treaty committed the nations that signed the treaty to work for the non-proliferation – or abolition — of nuclear weapons.

The trend toward law and order – a term used by Trump in the 2016 campaign – continued in the administration of President Richard Nixon when Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972. The treaty controlled the number of ABM systems that the US and Soviet Russia could possess. The two superpowers were increasing the number of ABM missiles in their stockpile. ABM missiles are used to destroy ballistic missiles, which are used to deliver nuclear, chemical, conventional, or biological warheads, by striking a missile when it’s in the air. The problem with ABM missiles in the Cold War arms race was that each side had to continue to stockpile ballistic missiles because each side wanted to see if their superiority in the area of ballistic missiles would be enough to evade the other side’s ABM capacity.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles – plus their launchers - within the range of 500 to 1,000 kilometers. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty which barred the number of warheads the United States and Soviet Russia could deploy on top of ballistic missiles, as each side could not deploy any more than 6,000 warheads on top of 1,600 ballistic missiles. President George W. Bush signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in 2003 which limited the United States’ and the Russian Federation’s operationally deployed nuclear warheads to 1,600 to 2,200. This treaty expired in 2011, and President Barack Obama signed the New Start Treaty in 2011. New Start reduced the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers of our country and the Russian Federation by half.

Through the work of presidents in both political parties, the world’s deadly nuclear arsenal has been reduced significantly. Now Trump is taking us down a different path, as his actions would undermine the basis for nuclear non-proliferation. The president withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Treaty, an Obama Administration treaty designed to limit Iran’s nuclear arsenal. In addition, Trump has threatened to withdraw from the INF Treaty and has suggested New Start could be next.

There is a legitimate concern about Russian violations of the INF Treaty. The obvious solution would be to work with our European allies to try to bring them back into compliance. However, Trump has done his best to alienate us from our natural European allies and there has been no attempt to bring Russia back into compliance using the mechanism of diplomacy. If the US withdraws from INF, we will have no way of controlling the Russian arsenal – period! This will mean that Russia will develop a bigger arsenal and we will balance their arsenal. It must be added that Trump’s approach had a prequal in President George W. Bush’s withdraw from the ABM Treaty in 2001.

Nuclear arms control treaties have made the US – and the world in general – more secure. The withdraw from law in the nuclear sphere would mean more money spent on nuclear weapons, as the US and Russia – and China – balance each other on nuclear weapons. Leaving the non-proliferation structure would also increase the risk of miscalculation. Sometimes false alarms occur in the world of nuclear security and false alarms could lead to a nuclear confrontation based on fallacious information.

Trump’s trend toward nuclear anarchy should worry the progressive populist. We live in a country where millions lack health insurance, affordable housing, and enough income to wade their way through a $900 emergency. In addition, our country’s infrastructure is falling apart. Nuclear anarchy is moving our consciousness to a place where we allocate a greater amount of our budget to nuclear weapons and ignore the fact that we are rotting internally.

Jason Sibert worked for the Suburban Journals in the St. Louis area for over a decade and is currently executive director of the Peace Economy Project in St. Louis, Mo. Email jasonsibert@hotmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2019

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