Alex Wellerstein, a historian of nuclear weapons, writes: Sometime in the next few weeks, Donald Trump will be briefed on the procedures for how to activate the U.S. nuclear arsenal, if he hasn’t already learned about them.
All year, the prospect of giving the real estate and reality TV mogul the power to launch attacks that would kill millions of people was one of the main reasons his opponents argued against electing him. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons,” Hillary Clinton said in her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination. She cut an ad along the same lines. Republicans who didn’t support Trump — and even some who did, such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) — also said they didn’t think he could be trusted with the launch codes.
Now they’re his. When Trump takes office in January, he will have sole authority over more than 7,000 warheads. There is no failsafe. The whole point of U.S. nuclear weapons control is to make sure that the president — and only the president — can use them whenever he decides to do so. The only sure way to keep President Trump from launching a nuclear attack, under the system we’ve had in place since the early Cold War, would have been to elect someone else. [Continue reading…]
If this article isn’t sufficiently disturbing, recall that Trump has very conspicuous Trump-labeled properties all around the globe, many in places that are somewhat less secure than 5th Ave, NYC. Surely attacks on them are inevitable. So it’s not just that psychos, militarists, and ignoramuses will be forming policy — they are virtually sure to be provoked by clever enemies, who understand that their strength lies in the reaction to their provocations.