The U.S. needs new oversight on the unlimited power of the president to order nuclear use on any day at any moment for whatever reason. The singular nuclear launch authority one person has is an extreme and potentially cataclysmic authority. Now is the time for a sane nuclear launch system
Deterrence in nuclear capabilities? North Korea’s gamble, and the world’s gamble, is that their offensive force will deter devastation in the vein of the first war in North Korea, when the US air campaign of General LeMay leveled nearly every building. Today’s NK ‘gamble’, ratcheting up, is in no country’s interest
As war drums beat, talk of war grows closer. Yesterday, we exchanged pre-publication messages with professor Tom Nichols over the issue of “preventive” versus “preemptive” war. We went further by asking how many Americans, who support a US attack on North Korea, even know the difference between preventive and preemptive war. A Trump-ordered first strike […]
Count the ways words and belligerance can escalate to war. A litany comes to mind — miscalculation, provocation, preemption, a Gulf of Tonkin moment, or just a temper-tantrum acted out in a “fit of pique” (James Clapper’s words). We could go on, but words that draw the world closer to the edge, push closer to disaster
Failure to act warning by Sec of State Tillerson: “Failing to act now on the most pressing security issue in the world may bring catastrophic consequences.” In an earlier “Oval Office” Reuters interview, the president is quoted: “There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea”
“The US is making up its mind to stop the North from conducting further nuclear tests, it doesn’t plan to co-exist with a nuclear-armed Pyongyang,” reports the lead April 12 editorial in the Chinese Global Times
The “button” can morph into a perverse temptation for an unstable leader. In 1974, during his impeachment proceedings, President Richard M. Nixon said to reporters: “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes, 70 million people will be dead.”
