Really interesting knot here. The paper of record is struggling to prop up the paper power consensus: “Mr. Trump came to office with little knowledge of the vast nuclear arsenal and the missiles, bombers and submarines it contains.” That’s a hell of an understatement, given that the Perry they somehow manage not to mention in an editorial about nuclear weapons, Rick Perry, thought his soon-to-be DOE was actually about ‘energy.’ What’s amazing is that this editorial runs the same day as the same paper’s lead DC writers depict a WH that’s part Autumn of the Patriarch, part Downfall, part Apocalypse Now, and part Keystone Kops: between fits of rage, the ghost-to-be of Mad King Donald wanders through a darkened White House because his aides couldn’t figure out the WH’s light switches! Under these circumstances, it’s impressive that the NYT could officiously claim that “the only legitimate role for nuclear weapons is deterrence.” We know SCROTUS’s retort: If the president does it, it’s legit. Nothing is ‘off the table,’ including nukes. Trump could MAGA, start to ‘eradicate’ ISIS, and send all the haters and losers into a tizzy. Bannon will egg him on (while he still can) to move fast and break things. And I bet Putin would give a nuke the thumbs up, as long as it was ‘coordinated’ with Russia: an out-of-control US breaking the nuclear lock and becoming the global pariah? What’s not to like about that? Plus, we’d owe Russia one: an IOU to use a nuke whenever it suits them, for parity’s sake. Can’t happen, you say? I think you’re right, but hope is not a plan. We should really think about who or what would seriously and literally stop Trump from trying to launch a nuclear strike. (I don’t think left denunciations of ‘militarism’ will work.) Either way, as the NYT editorial acknowledges in shock and disgust, we’re moving toward a new, deglobalized nuclear regime based on the use of ‘small’ tactical nukes rather than the threat of strategic ones. Russia surely sees how that shift could benefit it, because the power to threaten areas of trouble ‘selectively’ (think Grozny) would impose order on its neighbors and region — dirty work, to be sure, but no need to make the whole world uninhabitable. Meanwhile the paper of record, along with most of the world, is clinging to the older globalized nuclear regime, an ‘architecture’ that benefited US most of all. Time to start thinking the unthinkable — call it a mini-unthinkable.
(NYT)