{"id":102930,"date":"2017-12-04T12:01:09","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T12:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=102930"},"modified":"2017-12-04T10:53:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T10:53:26","slug":"decoding-donald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/12\/decoding-donald\/","title":{"rendered":"Decoding Donald"},"content":{"rendered":"

The future of the world and of humanity is at the mercy of a lunatic.\u00a0 His name is Donald Trump, and he alone has access to the U.S. nuclear codes.\u00a0 Before he does something rash and irreversible with those codes, it is imperative to decode Donald, taking the necessary steps to remove this power from him.<\/p>\n

Trump tweeted on December 16, 2016: \u201cThe United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.\u201d<\/p>\n

What good would a greatly strengthened and expanded nuclear capability do for the U.S.?\u00a0 We can already end civilization and most life on the planet with the use of our nuclear arsenal.\u00a0 The U.S. has nearly 7,000 nuclear weapons, with more than 1,500 of them deployed and ready for use.\u00a0 By comparison, North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-un, the subject of much of Trump\u2019s venom, have only 10 to 15 nuclear weapons.\u00a0 But those have Trump worried enough to go to the United Nations and threaten to totally destroy North Korea should that country threaten the U.S.<\/p>\n

How many more nuclear weapons does Trump think are needed to keep Kim Jong-un at bay?\u00a0 The truth is that the U.S. already has more than enough nuclear weapons to deter North Korea, assuming they need to be deterred at all. \u00a0What North Korea actually appears to want is a small nuclear arsenal capable of deterring the U.S. from invading its country, overthrowing its regime, and killing its leaders.\u00a0 Since North Korean leaders believe they face an existential threat from the U.S., a greatly expanded U.S. nuclear arsenal won\u2019t change the current equation.<\/p>\n

Nor will more and strengthened nuclear weapons change the equation between the U.S. and Russia, China, or any other nuclear-armed country.\u00a0 It will just start a new nuclear arms race, which will benefit only the arms merchants while making the world far more dangerous.\u00a0 Trump doesn\u2019t seem to understand this.\u00a0 His ignorance about foreign and nuclear policy is appalling and frightening.<\/p>\n

Further, the world won\u2019t come to its senses about nuclear weapons on its own and without leadership.\u00a0 Earlier this year, in July, 122 non-nuclear weapons countries adopted a new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.\u00a0 It was a great step forward.\u00a0 But, unfortunately, none of the nine nuclear-armed countries participated, and the U.S., UK and France issued a joint statement saying they would never sign, ratify or ever become parties to the treaty.\u00a0 Such is Trump\u2019s leadership, moving the world toward doomsday. These countries, led by the U.S., appear to love their nuclear weapons and treat them as a security blanket, despite the fact that these weapons provide no security to their possessors.\u00a0 In fact, nuclear weapons paint a bull\u2019s eye target on the citizens of countries possessing nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Trump is exactly the type of person who should not be anywhere near the nuclear codes.\u00a0 He is not calm, thoughtful, deliberate, cautious, or well-informed.\u00a0 Rather, he is erratic, thin-skinned, narcissistic and self-absorbed.\u00a0 He takes slights personally and likes to punch back hard.\u00a0 He could be insulted and backed into a corner, and decide that nuclear weapons are the solution to what he takes to be taunting behavior.\u00a0 He could be awakened at 3:00 a.m., and make a hasty decision to launch the U.S. nuclear arsenal instead of a tweet.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s best hope is that the military men surrounding Trump, particularly Secretary of Defense Mattis, would recognize any order from Trump to launch nuclear weapons as an illegal order and refuse to carry it out.\u00a0 In addition, it should be recognized by Congress that Trump is mentally unstable and unfit for office, and that they must take the necessary steps to remove him from the presidency before it is too late.\u00a0 Impeachment would be the best way to decode Donald.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>David Krieger is founder and president of the <\/em>Nuclear Age Peace Foundation<\/em>, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment<\/a>. <\/em>Amongst several of his wide-spanning leadership endeavors in global peacebuilding, he is a founder and a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000, councilor on the World Future Council, and is the chair of the Executive Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility. Dr. Krieger is the author of many books and studies of peace in the Nuclear Age. He has written or edited more than 20 books and hundreds of articles and book chapters. He is a recipient of several awards and honors, including the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology Peace Writing Award for Poetry (2010)<\/em>. He<\/em> has a new collection of poems entitled <\/em>Wake Up.\u00a0 For more visit the <\/em>Nuclear Age Peace Foundation website: www.wagingpeace.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world\u2019s best hope is that the military men surrounding Trump, particularly Secretary of Defense Mattis, would recognize any order from Trump to launch nuclear weapons as an illegal order and refuse to carry it out. In addition, it should be recognized by Congress that Trump is mentally unstable and unfit for office, and that they must take the necessary steps to remove him from the presidency before it is too late. Impeachment would be the best way to decode Donald.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":62651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}