June 21, 2016
Jeffrey Lewis
The following is an excerpt of an article published June 20 by Foreign Policy.
“[Trump has] gone and done it again. This time, during a rambling speech in Atlanta best known for a Twitter account of the crowd, Trump said, “Our nuclear is old. Putin’s is tippy-top, from what I hear. We’ve got to be careful.”
Donald Trump August 19, 2015 (Credit: Michael Vadon, Wikimedia Commons)
… The “tippy top” comment is, in fact, a further example of precisely the same phenomenon – an instance where Trump’s statement differs only in rhetoric, not in substance, from the views of most so-called nuclear weapons experts. If his words are plain and vulgar, perhaps that’s because our conceptions about nuclear weapons strategy are equally so. We are talking about mass murder, after all.
This is Trump’s gift. He is unmatched as a spirit guide to the dark recesses of our brains, the place that convinces us the best guarantor of peace and security is the unending and permanent threat of nuclear holocaust
So let’s do this: Every time Trump puts his elfin finger on something uncomfortable about our nuclear strategy, I’ll see if I can use it to illustrate something deep and enduring about how we think about nuclear weapons. Oh, and stupid. Something deep, enduring, and stupid about how we think about nuclear weapons.
The notion that Russia’s nuclear weapons are tippy-top, while ours are not, is the perfect place to start.”
Continue reading at Foreign Policy
