Would Trump use nuclear weapons?

I’m just out of the cinema having seen Kathryn Bigelow’s masterful film, “A House of Dynamite” about a nuclear missile found on the radar to be heading towards America. The film ends with the destruction of Chicago and the US president unsure of what to do.

In the Cold War days, some of us used to say, “Better red than dead”- to rebuff those who believed in nuclear deterrence as a means of giving the West security. We had powerful films about nuclear war exploding the myth of successful deterrence- Nevil Shute’s “On the Beach” of 1959, portraying the last people to die after a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union- in a submarine off the coast of Australia; and Peter Sellers’s “Doctor Strangelove” of 1964, portraying an Air Force general going beserk and attempting to initiate a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia. (It was based loosely on true events.)  And we had the marchers of Aldermaston to London in the UK, members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.  None of the films nor the marchers managed to persuade Western leaders to disarm but they made people in power as well as well as the electorates wake up and this did constrain the politicians from precipitate action- doing the unthinkable without thinking. President Ronald Reagan became a nuclear pacifist after watching films of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Now, a generation later, those of us who are frightened that Trump could start a nuclear war over Iran or North Korea, should see this film to see how ordinary human beings working on national security in the White House would react to a missile launch from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean when they have only 20 minutes to find out if the launch is a hostile or accidental launch before giving the doubting US president their final advice. It is either suicide or surrender, they conclude- the same idea as Better Red than Dead. The film, so brilliant is its story telling and cinematography, has the ring of authenticity.

At the UN President Donald Trump (aka Fire and Fury) once threatened to “totally” destroy North Korea if the US was forced to defend itself. But that is the suicide option since North Korea would see the US rockets coming and would fire more of its own.

Senator Bob Corker, the ex-chair of the US Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and at one time an important backer of Trump, the candidate, once said that Trump could set the nation “on the path to World War 3”.

I would surmise, even though I have no polling evidence, that an overwhelming majority of the world would not accept the use by the US of nuclear weapons in any circumstances, even if they believe in what I think is the false notion of “deterrence”. In Europe I doubt if more than 5% do.

But in America it is another matter. According to a survey carried out in the US and analysed at length in Harvard University’s “International Security” some 50% of American adults believe that their use would be justified, especially if it saved the lives of 20,000 American soldiers. (Which is less than the 38,000 US soldiers stationed in South Korea today).

It’s the same conviction that led President Harry Truman to justify the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In order to protect the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who were fighting their way from the south of Japan to Tokyo the bombs had to be used, he reasoned. In fact, we now know from well-regarded historians that this was not the most important argument that persuaded Truman to give the order to bomb. It was the fear that the US ally, the Soviet Union, invading from the north, would get to Tokyo first if the US didn’t immediately intimidate Japan to surrender. (If the US forces had been given the option they would have taken Tokyo by conventional means in a week or two.) 2023’s Oscar winning film “Oppenheimer”, on the construction of the first bomb, failed to mention this, ruining the otherwise authenticity of the film.)

In August, 1945, 85% of Americans told pollsters they approved of Truman’s decision. Support for that decision has declined over the years. A poll in 2015 said that only 46% thought it was justified, but even that is a lot. Hence the false idea that Americans consider the further use of nuclear weapons a taboo. John Hersey’s popular book that sold millions of copies, “Hiroshima”, did much to build up the sense of taboo, but over time it wasn’t sufficient. All Americans were not, and are not, inoculated against future use

At the time of the last Korean War in 1953-55 Truman again nearly used nuclear weapons to halt the Chinese coming to the aid of the North, but was dissuaded by Winston Churchill. Advisors to President John F. Kennedy including his (later pacifist-inclined) secretary of defence, Robert McNamara, considered their use against the Soviet Union during the Cuban crisis and were mentally prepared in extremis to use them. In the end a deal trading the dismantling of US missiles based in Turkey with the shipping home of Soviet nuclear rockets based in Cuba diffused the crisis- an obvious trade which was obfuscated by a rarefied macho debate on the American side.) During the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, thought seriously about using nuclear weapons against the North. During the Cold War Georgi Arbatov, an advisor to the Soviet president, Leonard Brezhnev, confided to me at the time that there had been two or three occasions when the generals had argued to Brezhnev that they should be considered for use in a surprise strike against the US. If Donald Trump feels unconstrained to use them he won’t be the first president to think the unthinkable.

A sophisticated poll by YouGov in 2015 examined how America would react if Iran was caught violating the 2015 Agreement that sharply reduced world sanctions in return for Iran giving up its nuclear research program. YouGov asked its sample what would they think if Iran then attacked an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf killing over 2,000 military personnel and then the US retaliated with airstrikes and a ground invasion. A 56 % majority of those polled agreed that if Iran did not then surrender a nuclear strike was OK. Even women did not think differently. The taboo is no longer all-encompassing.

We don’t have such a detailed and careful poll of American attitudes to a possible nuclear strike on North Korea or Iran. But one can guess. If Trump decided to, he might have the support of a good half of the population. They should go and see Bigelow’s film.