Trump’s Depraved Embrace of Nuclear Weapons Endangers the World

Interview with Lawrence S. Wittner, professor of history emeritus at the State University of New York at Albany, conducted by Scott Harris

This Aug. 6 and 9, the world will mark the 79th anniversary of the only use of nuclear weapons in war, the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan that ended World War II.  Today, the threat of a nuclear conflict looms larger than it has in many years, as Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, where the U.S. and NATO supply the Kyiv government with an increasing number of high-tech weapons systems.

Compounding the threat of the future use of nuclear weapons is the fact that over the past 10 years, most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements have either been abrogated by the signatories or will soon expire. During Donald Trump’s four years as president, he unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran, he disavowed the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and pulled out of the 1992 Open Skies Treaty. Before losing the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Trump had blocked extending the New START Treaty, the last remaining agreement limiting U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, a policy later reversed by the incoming Biden administration.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Lawrence Wittner, professor of history emeritus at the State University of New York at Albany, who discusses his recent article, Donald Trump’s Reckless Infatuation With Nuclear Weapons, and the danger posed to the world should he win re-election this November.

LAWRENCE WITTNER: This June, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warns that given the heightened risk of nuclear annihilation in the world, as he said,”Humanity is on a knife’s edge.” And I think he’s correct. A new nuclear arms race is underway and Trump has provided a major spur to that arms race.

In December 2016, shortly after his election victory, he proclaimed, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass.” He’s boasted about creating a brand new nuclear force so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before. And this U.S. nuclear modernization program that is building new nuclear weapons of every kind to replace older generations of nuclear weapons, is estimated to cost up to $2 trillion. This is just the start, though, and the U.S. government under Trump was planning to resume nuclear testing, something that had been stopped in 1992 and the U.S. hasn’t tested since that time, hasn’t spewed out clouds of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere or tested underground. But the Trump administration was actually planning on resumption and only the fact that the House of Representatives then under Democratic control blocked it by blocking funding. Otherwise, this nuclear testing would have resumed.

A number of times, Trump, in fact, stated that he was ready for nuclear war. And in fact, he got into a war of words, including nuclear threats with Kim Jong UN of North Korea in 2017. Those denunciations flowing back and forth from both sides nearly led to a nuclear war. A recent biography of Trump’s Chief of Staff General John Kelly, revealed that Kelly was horrified that things seem to be moving toward nuclear war and that Trump found this perfectly acceptable.

Eventually, Kelly stated that he appeal to Trump’s narcissism to head Trump off and said Trump could be the greatest salesman in world history if he could work out some kind of nuclear deal with North Korea. So Trump quickly about faced, started this was a love affair with with Kim’s government, which of course went nowhere, as it turns out, since the North Korean government didn’t plan to get rid of nuclear weapons and continued its nuclear testing and nuclear arms buildup.

Oh, and then following that, I should just add, Trump got into another exchange of insults with the Iranian government and once more threatened nuclear war. So I think Trump has been exceptionally reckless. And if re-elected president, I think we face a very dangerous future.

SCOTT HARRIS: Professor Wittner, I did want to ask you about nuclear weapons as an issue in this year’s presidential election. It seems that we’re focused like a laser beam on important domestic issues: immigration, the future of Social Security and Medicare. There’s no shortage of important issues that this campaign is focused on. But it seems that the specter of nuclear war and Trump’s past statements and actions, which pose a real threat about a nuclear conflict in the future, are not being much discussed by the Democratic party.

What priority do you think the issue of nuclear weapons and the threat of war should play in this presidential election campaign?

LAWRENCE WITTNER: Oh, I think it should be playing a much greater part than it’s played so far. Every once in a while, when there’s been a a particularly reckless figure who actually talks enthusiastically about nuclear war as Ronald Reagan did in those new situations, it finally breaks through to popular consciousness and a mass movement develops.

And in fact, it’s been that that mass movement of the past, that mass resistance to nuclear war has led to the arms control and disarmament treaties of the past, treaties that actually eliminated some 83 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

But things seem to have gone backward in recent years, and all the nuclear powers are engaged in a new nuclear arms race. And I think that the public should be made more aware of that and that the Democratic party certainly should be pointing to that and to the dangerous recklessness of Donald Trump when it comes to nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

For more information, visit Lawrence S. Wittner’s website at lawrenceswittner.com.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Lawrence Wittner (18:59) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.

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