A Canadian friend mentioned concerns about the likelihood that the Trump administration would use nuclear weapons, either deliberately (because they’re ignorant, belligerent lunatics) or accidentally (as CCing the editor of The Atlantic on war plans in Yemen made plain). This, with a few edits, was my response:
The US nuclear policy decision tree includes complete operational branches that assume the civilian government is in dispute, unreachable, incompetent, unverifiable, or nonexistent, so the ritual claim that civilian nuclear control is sacrosanct is — by definition — not true, or at least not nearly so simple. Last time Trump was president, concerns about his control of the “nuclear codes” was a staple of liberal rhetoric.
My hunch at the time — based on decades of reading and several years with a specialty in technical editing of books about US mil / intel / presidential affairs — was that the DOD had quietly modified presidential (at that time Trump’s) control over US nuclear weapons. That view was widely scoffed at, but it turned out to be more accurate thannot: Sec Def Milley had advised his underlings to clear any nuclear orders directly with him before doing anything. I suspect even that story was intended to inoculate the DOD and specific people against accusations in this context, and that the changes to Pentagon procedure were in fact much deeper.
There is no chance whatsoever — zero — that when Biden was elected, the DOD’s response was just “Phew! Thank God a Democrat was elected, now we can forget about the threat posed by rogue civilian control!” They’ve certainly introduced measures that (a) would provide additional layers of protection against incompetent presidents, and — I suspect — (b) would insulate even those changes from being rescinded or even discovered.
(2) More specific to the present situation (i.e., Trump 47), nuclear saber-rattling has been one of Putin’s go-to scare tactics for many years, in part because it’s been an effective way to manipulate the left, in particular in Europe. (It’s my own view — and not necessary to this argument — that the US left is routinely, and sometimes deeply, manipulated by Russian influence operations on social media.) We should expect to see a rise in noise about the nuclear threat as Trump ratchets up his imperialist ambitions: (a) to stoke Trump’s fantasies of omnipotence, (b) to inflame tensions, and (c) to drive a wedge between the left and technocratic centrists. I AM IN NOT SUGGESTING THAT YOU ARE PREY TO THIS AT ALL. But we do need to take care about amplifying ideas that may not be entirely organic and may serve other agendas.