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Donald Trump’s defence policies may spark a nuclear arms race

President Trump’s defence deals may spark a nuclear arms race https://www.newscientist.com/article/2112461-president-trumps-defence-deals-may-spark-a-nuclear-arms-race/By Debora MacKenzie

“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” The words of his vanquished opponent, Hillary Clinton, are perhaps the biggest anxiety hanging over the shock election of Donald Trump to the US presidency: can he be trusted with the power to launch Armageddon?

Every US president has constant access to a nuclear launch device only he can activate. Born in the Cold War, it is designed for when Russian nuclear missiles are detected making their 30-minute flight to the US, allowing 10-15 minutes to decide to order a counter-strike which would not be countermanded. But it could be used in other scenarios. “There is nothing to prevent a launch for very little reason,” says Paul Ingram of the British American Security Information Council, an arms control think-tank in London.

Would Trump hit the button? He has said he would be “very, very slow on the draw” but has refused to rule out using nukes, asking several times during the campaign, if they are never used, “why do we make them?”

“The very fact that one person, whoever it is, can decide to launch a nuclear strike is very worrying,” says Ingram.

Hair-trigger alert  The president’s ability to respond rapidly is to allow the launch of 450 US land-based missiles before they are destroyed in an attack – for which reason they are kept on hair-trigger alert.

One way to reduce the risk of a rash launch would be for President Obama to take US missiles off hair-trigger alert before he leaves, which would be politically delicate to reverse. Or Trump, who wants better relations with Russia, might do it himself.

The use of existing nukes is one thing; proliferation is another. Trump has said he will “renegotiate” last year’s agreement with Iran to limit its uranium enrichment. Arms control experts say we are never likely to get a better deal, so Trump’s plan could see Iran resume its efforts.

And as North Korea approaches nuclear capability, Trump has suggested its neighbours might develop their own nuclear weapons. In April he said that US allies should pay more for the nuclear protection offered by the US umbrella – or defend themselves, “including with nukes”.

Japan and South Korea, under threat from North Korea, are already under pressure to do that. But both are non-nuclear states in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and have sworn never to develop their own weapons. Their abandonment of that pledge could well be the death-knell of the treaty. While it has failed to disarm the major nuclear powers, it has kept other countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, from trying to develop the bomb.

Anti-nuclear norms  Its failures in disarmament led a large majority of UN members to vote in October to start work on a new treaty that simply bans nuclear weapons for everyone. Existing nuclear nations rejected the idea (apart from North Korea, which voted for it), as, ominously, did Japan and South Korea. Non-nuclear NATO members backed it in the hope of strengthening global anti-nuclear norms.

Those may not last long in the Trump era. He has long called NATO “obsolete” and questions US commitments to Europe. The threat of losing reliable US defence could lead to military build-up in Europe, handing nuclear deterrence to the small UK and French nuclear arsenals, which would then be more likely to go ahead with expensive upgrades.

Thomas Homer-Dixon at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada, sees a more insidious threat. He believes Trump could pick fights abroad and incite attacks on alleged enemies at home to generate a constant “emergency” to bolster his support. Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has long admired, uses such tactics.

“The risk of a slide into war which ultimately involves nuclear weapons is very real,” he says. “Trump has an insatiable need to dominate, and he seems incapable of ignoring a slight.” The deadly nuclear winter predicted to follow even a limited nuclear exchange could one day answer the president-elect’s question: if we have these weapons, why don’t we use them?

November 11, 2016 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Mr Trump will soon control America’s nuclear codes

Donald Trump and the nuclear codes  Mr Trump will soon control America’s nuclear codes http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21709999-mr-trump-will-soon-control-americas-nuclear-codes-donald-trump-and-nuclear-codesNov 12th 2016 IN A ritual out of sight of the cameras on Inauguration Day in January, America’s “nuclear briefcase” will change hands and President Donald Trump will receive a card, sometimes known as the “biscuit”. The card, which identifies him as commander-in-chief, has on it the nuclear codes that are used to authenticate an order to launch a nuclear attack. At that point, should he wish, Mr Trump can launch any or all of America’s 2,000 strategic nuclear missiles.

There are no constitutional restraints on his power to do so. Even if all his advisers have counselled against it, as long it is clearly the president giving the command, the order must be carried out. There are no checks and balances in the system. Moreover, once the order is given there is likely to be only a matter of minutes in which it could be rescinded. Once the missiles are flying, they cannot be called back or disarmed. Mr Trump, from what he has said, does not take this responsibility lightly. Indeed, he has often stated that he believes nuclear weapons to represent the greatest threat to humanity and that he will not be trigger-happy, “like some people might think”. But in common with his predecessors, he does not rule out their use.
With little more than ten minutes to take a decision that could kill hundreds of millions of people, even the calmest individual would be under intolerable stress if informed that America was under imminent attack. It is not Mr Trump’s fault that the system, in which the vulnerable land-based missile force is kept on hair-trigger alert, is widely held to be inherently dangerous. Yet no former president, including Barack Obama, has done anything to change it.

Of greater concern would be how Mr Trump might behave in an escalating confrontation if Russia were to rattle its nuclear sabre even more loudly. It is possible that his apparent desire to be buddies with Vladimir Putin might help defuse a dangerous situation. He is, however, notoriously thin-skinned and unable to stop himself responding to any perceived slight with vicious (verbal) attacks of his own. He also revels in braggadocio and is known to be reluctant to take advice. Marco Rubio, a rival for the Republican nomination, questioned whether he had the temperament to be put in charge of the nuclear codes. So did Hillary Clinton. They were right to do so. But it is now Mr Trump, not them, who takes the biscuit.

November 11, 2016 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment