Nuclear Don

“I am the first one that would like to see ... nobody have nukes, but we’re never going to fall behind any country even if it’s a friendly country, we’re never going to fall behind on nuclear power. It would be wonderful, a dream would be that no country would have nukes, but if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack”   ~ Donald Trump, February 24^th, 2017.

Trump’s recent comment about nuclear weapons wasn’t his only foray into that topic.

 There was the December 2015 interview with Hugh Hewitt in which Trump was asked about the nuclear triad.  Trump’s answer was sheer gobbledygook because he had no idea what the triad is and so he sounded like the high school kid who is called on to describe the previous night’s homework assignment when he didn’t even crack the book.  (For the sake of clarification, the triad includes ground based ICBMs, submarine launched ICBMs and strategic bombers).

There was the suggestion, made several times by Trump that he wants to be “unpredictable” as regards a first strike.

In March of 2016 he suggested that he wouldn’t rule out the use of nukes against ISIS.

Two months later Trump declared that he would see no problem with a nuclear arms race in Asia. 

Trump has made other statements about nuclear weapons and suffice to say that they all fluctuated between nonsense and terrifying. 

Trump’s proclamation may have been lost on many Americans.  After all every day presents a new chore of sorting through another one of Trump’s toxic spills. It’s easy to lose track of one of Trump’s turds floating by when you have to deal with his daily massive release of crap.

It didn’t get by me though.  You see I lived through much of the Cold War. Many, many Americans either have forgotten about or never experienced those years when the world was on a razor’s edge of destruction.  I lived through that period in history of brinkmanship; of nations (particularly The United States and The Soviet Union) contending for the biggest arsenal with the most potent yields. 

In order to put Trump’s nuclear view into perspective perhaps a little time travel would be in order; back to the fifties and sixties when nuclear war was very much on the world’s mind. It's necessary, if a little cumbersome to relive a time a half century and more ago when a thermonuclear sword dangled over the Earth.

I was born in 1953.  Came out of the chute and smack dab into that period known as the Cold War.  Eight years before, The United States had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, ending the Second World War and placing the whole world into uncharted waters.  Four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, an event that shook America from President Truman down to the poorest, remotest dirt farmer in Truman’s home state of Missouri.  The year before I was born The United States upped the ante and exploded a hydrogen bomb; the very first thermonuclear weapon. 

Five months after I was born The United States conducted the Castle Bravo test; the detonation of a 17 megaton bomb.  Within one second of detonation a fireball measuring nearly 4.5 miles was created that could be seen from 250 miles away.  Within a minute the resulting mushroom cloud reached a height of 14,000 feet and a diameter of 7 miles.  When all was said and done a 7000 square mile area of the Pacific Ocean was contaminated.  It would turn out to be the fifth largest explosion ever created by man.  

Eight years later in 1961, The Soviet Union detonated Tsar Bomba, the largest ever manmade explosion.  It was a 57 megaton bomb (equal to 57 million tons of TNT) that was essentially Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s geopolitical statement to John F. Kennedy and the world that “mine is bigger than yours.”  The fireball was visible 620 miles away.  The shockwave damaged windows hundreds of miles away in Norway.  The mushroom cloud reached a height of 40 miles and had a peak width of 59 miles.  The blast could have caused third degree burns as far away as 62 miles.  The island over which the bomb was detonated was completely leveled and rocks melted.  The surface of the island was later described as being as smooth and flat as a skating ring. 

All of this one-upmanship was carried out during a period of world tensions.

                The 1948 Soviet blockade of West Berlin and the subsequent airlift of supplies

                The success of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949

                The establishment of NATO in 1949

                Germany’s official division into a Communist East and a Democratic West with each side’s troops literally facing each other

                The Korean War from 1950 - 1953

                Continuing unrest in the Middle East and Southeast Asia

                The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961

                The Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961 

These were a few of the myriad events that had the world on edge immediately following the end of World War II.  It all reached a crescendo in October 1962, when The United States discovered that The Soviet Union had delivered nuclear missiles to its ally Cuba.  Khrushchev had counted on having missiles on the ground and operational before The United States discovered them - his gamble failed. 

What occurred over the next two weeks is something that most people from my generation recall very clearly.  Kennedy called for a naval blockade (termed a quarantine at the time) of Cuba, a move that U.S. generals saw as weak.  General Curtis LeMay who wanted immediate airstrikes on Cuba was spoiling for war. LeMay’s advice to JFK was, “The Russian bear has always been eager to stick his paw in Latin American waters. Now we’ve got him in a trap, let’s take his leg off right up to his testicles. On second thought, let’s take off his testicles, too.” LeMay had in fact been spoiling for war for years.  In 1965 LeMay stated in an interview that, “we’d have been a hell of a lot better off if we’d got World War III started in those days (referring to the 1950’s)”

War was eventually averted when Khrushchev “blinked,” and The USSR removed the missiles from Cuba.  But it was close.  Two days before Khrushchev announced the removal, US commanders began putting together an invasion plan of Cuba.  It would later be discovered that there were operational tactical nukes in Cuba that could have conceivably been used against an invading army. 

I had just turned nine when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred.  I saw the concern, the outright fear, in my parents and adults everywhere.  It was the fear that if this thing spun out of control the result could be the termination of America as we knew it.  No nation on Earth had ever faced such fear before. As bad as Pearl Harbor had been it was an attack that had been localized; terrible but survivable.  The bombings of Britain during World War II while horrible were something that the nation could recover from.  Even 9/11 as heinous and terrible as it had been was something that was contained to one area of one city.

The notion of nuclear war meant that if the missiles started flying and bombs dropping there might be a time when you just wouldn’t wake up in the morning.  And people in other cities across America wouldn’t wake up – because there would be no cities left.  And if you did wake up the results would be catastrophic to the point that you might be better off if you hadn’t awakened. 

As a nine year old, I as well as most of America was aware that there had been a Tsar Bomba (although we didn’t know that it was not really a weapon but rather intimidation).  Living in San Mateo just 25 miles south of San Francisco, my friends and I all knew that a nuclear war would leave us among the instantaneously fried. Thankfully the cooler heads of both Khrushchev and Kennedy prevailed.

Kennedy was the last President who would be faced with the choice of the nuclear option.  During the Korean War, it was suggested to Truman that nukes be used against the Communist forces.  Eisenhower would also be faced with the suggestion of the use of nuclear weapons.  In 1958, when China threatened a blockade of Taiwan senior Air Force officers suggested the use of 10 to 15 kiloton nuclear bombs against the Chinese.  As history tells us both Presidents resisted those temptations. 

And none of the preceding takes into account the accidental near misses such as the Black Brant Scare in which a scientific missile to study the Aurora Borealis was launched off of Norway.  The missile was detected by Russian early warning radar and considered a threat to the point that the Russian “nuclear briefcase” was activated and Russian submarine commanders were ordered to prepare a counterstrike.  When it was determined that the missile was veering away from Russia the stand down orders were issued.  Boris Yeltsin had paused; considered and possibly saved the world.

The Black Brant incident highlights a critical detail of nuclear strategy that a launch is not subject to group discussion.  If the US launches, Congress and the American people don’t get to vote.  That is the whole idea behind the “nuclear football,” which is the briefcase that the President uses to authorize a nuclear strike.  The decision to launch may well have to be a “now or never” situation in which waiting means that your side gets cooked if you don’t act immediately.

And so our time machine brings us back to Donald Trump.  There is an implicit trust that the world harbors that the various keepers of the nuclear arsenals will be responsible and level headed and not incinerate the planet.  In the case of The United States that global trust filters down to the American electorate; a trust that voters will make an informed, intelligent choice of who should have the nuclear “keys.”  Imagine how disappointed the world must be that this big responsibility was put in the hands of an electorate who took (and still take) the words of a con-man and his dissimulating stooges to be gospel.

Truman (Hiroshima and Nagasaki notwithstanding), Eisenhower and JFK all were faced with the nuclear option and each of these men opted for other less extreme measures.  Having lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the day by day, hell – hour by hour, nail biting updates of the events; having seen the stress and the fear and the uncertainty I have to wonder if we would still be here if JFK had been a Donald Trump.

The stresses on JFK and his Soviet counterpart must have been enormous beyond description.  I wonder how Donald Trump would handle such stress. Would he have handled the Taiwan incident as Eisenhower did? How would Trump have dealt with Khrushchev?  Would he have done Curtis LeMay’s bidding and cut off the “bear’s” testicles? During the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy the general feeling among the military chiefs was that their presidents were weak. How would Donald Trump, as egotistical and thin skinned as he is, react if he were aware that his military commanders considered him weak?

This is a man who refuses to accept facts that belie his own grandiose vision of himself.  He is a small man; a man with a giant ego and a misguided moral compass.  A man who lashes out at the smallest slight that other President’s and world leaders have learned are all a part of the job.  He is a man who is apparently led by a virulent nationalistic, megalomaniac in Steve Bannon. 

And Donald Trump is a man with a puny world view – dwarfed by any President since George Washington (and yes I’m including George W. Bush in there).  Donald Trump views world politics as a real estate deal.  He has no experience in running a government but that doesn’t matter to him, his stooges or his supporters because they all believe that America can be run like a business.  But in business you can bluff and bluster and any resulting damage might mean a bankruptcy and some dissolved 401Ks.  In a nuclear world, bluff and bluster could barbecue the Earth.  And as despicable and ruthless as Vladimir Putin is, I have to believe that the man has a coherent knowledge of geopolitics and an appreciation for the dangers of nuclear weapons.

The problem with Donald Trump and America as a whole is that 55 years have passed since the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Only the baby boomers are left to remember.  The whole notion of a nuclear holocaust seems as distant as black and white televisions and rotary phones.  Maybe what we need as a wakeup call are a few nuclear tests to remind the world just how destructive they can be (and that was said in dark jest).

Donald Trump’s seems to have a shocking lack of appreciation of his massive responsibility.  A chilling exchange between Chris Mathews and Trump included the following:

MATTHEWS:  “OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.”

TRUMP:  “Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?”

A few days ago Donald Trump essentially called for a new arms race.  It isn’t enough that as of 2017 the nuclear arsenal of The United States will be at around 1300 warheads (Russia will be at about 1800). These figures don’t include stockpiled or retired warhead.  Donald Trump’s mindset, his whole reason for existing is that he has to be number one.  My sense is that Donald Trump’s ego loves the fact that the “nuclear football” follows him around.  It probably gives him a hard on.  No other businessman, no politician, no mogul, no world class athlete; no other American wields that enormous power and Trump thrives on enormous and he thrives on power. 

 And so Trump is apparently set on being number one in the nuclear game.  I lived through the last nuclear arms race.  I lived it as a kid in the shadow of San Francisco, a metropolitan area that was, and I’m certain still is, on the nuclear target list.  I certainly don’t want to live through another -especially when America’s driver in the race is as unstable as the current President of the United States.