Under The ICBM

The Atlantic was at it again, publishing an interview with the makers of the film, The House of Dynamite, where a nuclear missile targeting the US is launched from an unknown source, and our government officials have only 20 minutes to respond. The horrifying aspect of the film is the fact that the system of nuclear response and deterrence is set up for rapid retaliation, whereby a chain of military command that practices the scenario twice a day makes recommendations to the president, who receives only one nuclear briefing but who holds the nuclear “football” and is ultimately responsible for the decision on how to respond. There’s no time to form a committee. No time to ask Congress. With a missile incoming, the president and his immediate staff have 20 minutes to decide on a course of action. The strategy thus far has been one of mutually assured destruction. You launch at me, and I will launch at you. And with thousands of warheads aimed at major cities, we would essentially annihilate each other, thus keeping each other in check. That worked well when there existed two nuclear powers, the US and Russia. However, today, there are at least nine nuclear states, with varying degrees of hostility, some of which possess delivery systems that would make it very difficult to determine who is responsible for a launch, with submarines being the most challenging to detect. It’s an interesting film and a topic that has largely become less of a concern as the public has lapsed into a sort of nuclear complacency since the end of the Cold War. But the Atlantic being the Atlantic, where exactly did you think this interview was going to go? Two Hollywood filmmakers and an Atlantic reporter couldn’t resist taking a hard left turn into the land of Trump derangement syndrome. They praised Clinton, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and even Reagan for an era of nuclear detente and reductions in nuclear arsenals, achieved through SALT provisions. So now we have 1500 warheads each…..if you can believe the Russians….so we are only able to obliterate each other ten times over rather than a hundred. Well done. But they criticized Trump for his combative and retaliatory personality traits, suggesting that he couldn’t be trusted to make such decisions regarding potential nuclear armageddon. They even suggested that Trump was increasing our nuclear arsenal in the NATO states, potentially antagonizing our enemies. But hold on a second. The Atlantic is criticizing and questioning the competence of a president who has effectively stopped eight wars and is working on his ninth in less than a year in office. Further, he is a president who projected US air power into the Middle East to prevent Iran from becoming another nuclear state, and a highly unstable one at that. The world has changed significantly since the fall of the Berlin Wall. With nine nuclear powers jostling for position on the world stage we have one of the major players, Russia, not only on the move militarily seeking to expand its territory but also outright threatening to employ tactical nukes in Ukraine while antagonizing NATO countries in the west with aerial incursions, China is expanding its military presence and threatening Taiwan and its neighbors and seeking to control shipping lanes in the South Pacific, a rogue North Korea is continually advancing its ballistic missile program and provocatively lobbing missiles into the Sea of Japan while threatening to be able to reach the continental US, nuclear armed India and Pakistan are continually engaged in border skirmishes, hostile Arab states surround Israel, and the UK and France sit on the sidelines amidst social and political upheaval at home. It’s a more volatile world. But who would you rather have in possession of the nuclear football?  Never did they mention that in the previous four years, the world relied on Biden in rapid mental and physical decline to determine our fate in the event of a nuclear standoff. Perhaps the auto pen would step in and save us all. And does anyone have any confidence that the vacuous Kamala Harris has the mental acuity to deal with decisions at this existential level?  Please. The woman recently claimed that “some people” think she was the most qualified candidate ever to run for president. She’s absolutely delusional. And who else do we have to draw on from the left to make these decisions? Such Democratic luminaries as Newsome, Jeffries, Crockett, Schumer, Schiff, and AOC?  Please. None of these people are serious. Trump has proven himself to be an adept negotiator, establishing personal relationships with contentious foreign leaders, especially those in possession of nuclear hardware. In a dangerous world, he has proven himself to be a man of peace, but not one to appease our adversaries. I’m talking to you, Obama. So, the Atlantic remains true to form, choosing to remain a bastion of anti-Trump activism at the expense of non-partisan journalism, and in this case, sacrificing what could have been a review bringing attention to a thought-provoking movie, instead using it as a vehicle for another round of Trump bashing.