LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
A must read! This very thoughtful, accurate, and interesting story is from LLAW’s All Things Nuclear WEEKEND NEWS, Sunday, (01/26/2025). It’s about the Tuesday’s (tomorrow) “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) update of the “Doomsday Clock”, the “Cold War”, and the public impact (or lack of) the meaning of a potential nuclear war from a feminine-way perspective with an anti-nuclear point of view — a view that we all must place foremost in our lives and our vision of the future if we are to be sure of our survival.
Author Danaka Katovich understands implicitly why it is that so few of us today are worried about all things nuclear and nuclear war in particular. Since I began this blog, for the very same reasons as her own concerns, about two and a half years ago, I understand and absolutely empathize along with her that we have grown to ignore the threat of “armageddon” from nuclear war because we believe our government(s) have our best interests in mind and therefore they will do the right thing and take care of us — so why bother to worry about the impending threat of “Doom”?
My experience of the futile writing and posting every-day, sadly witnessing an enormous lack of concern for our future and our ultimate human destiny has been a rude awakening for me in the same way it has for Danaka and anyone else who has a sense of facing a possible merciless global nuclear war that threatens our collective reality of life versus a made-up pretentious politicized and militaristic government(s)-led world of forced “peace” through a few world-leaders’ nuclear threats, deterrence, and eventually a doomsday war. And so it is that the “doom” of avoiding nuclear self-destruction, as I’ve stated so many times before on this very blog, only we-the-people — the masses — can prevent our demise at the hands of one power-crazed world leader with a nuclear arsenal at his disposal. ~llaw
I interviewed three anti-nuke activists to understand the Doomsday Clock and how our society thinks about the very real threat of nuclear war.
“Dear young people who have never experienced war, ‘Wars begin covertly. If you sense it coming, it may be too late.’” -Takato Michishita, survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki.
On a rainy Saturday afternoon in the Catskill Mountains where New Yorkers went for the summer to escape the city heat, Alice Slater’s mother took her to go see a movie in town. It was late summer in 1945, and the second World War had just ended. Alice remembers parading around the Catskills town a few weeks earlier as everyone celebrated the end of the war. When I asked her when she first became aware of nuclear weapons, the first thing she thought to tell me was about her trip to the theater with her mom. Instead of trailers before the movies they used to show news reels. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima projected across the screen and Alice asked her mom, “What is that?”
“That’s a wonderful new weapon and now all the boys would come home,” her mom answered.
Between what they showed on the screen and what her mom had told her, at that moment Alice had no real idea what a nuclear bomb was, or what it did to the people it was used on. It was only a mushroom cloud, and the mushroom cloud meant the war was over.
Seventeen years later, Alice was a young mom who had moved to the suburbs of New York City. Her husband was working for CBS and one day he didn’t come home – he had to stay at work to deal with breaking news for a handful of days. The world had just found out that the Soviet Union, bringing us to the height of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow, put nukes just 90 miles off the coast of the United States in Cuba. Alice, even with close proximity to someone who worked in the news, had no idea what was happening. Americans didn’t know the US had nukes near the Russian border in Turkey, too. All they knew was that the communists were threatening them with nuclear bombs. We are far removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis now, but Alice said it was probably the most afraid she’s ever been. People really thought we were about to enter another war and send the entire world into a nuclear winter. Later people found out Kennedy had negotiated to move US nukes out of Turkey. But now they’re back, and scattered all over Europe.
Carol Gilbert, around the same week Alice’s husband didn’t come home from CBS, was at her aunt’s house in Michigan. She was around fifteen years old at the time and she remembered that it must have been during the school year – it was special that she got to go stay there that day, she loved spending time with her cousin. “I remember my mom calling my aunt and saying she was going to come pick us up because they were worried about the bomb,” Carole continued, “At some point I think we knew something bad was happening, but I don’t think I fully understood what was going on.”
On the other side of Lake Michigan from Carol, Kathy Kelly was in her home in Garfield Ridge, Chicago when her mother started putting stuff down in the basement on the day the news broke. Kathy’s parents lived in London during World War II, and tried every way they could to keep her sheltered from the trauma of war, but in the face of nuclear war – what are parents to do?
All three women recall the Cuban Missile Crisis as a time of uncertainty. Where people were freaked out and didn’t know what to do. Alice was afraid for her kids, and Carol’s and Kathy’s moms were clearly afraid for their children too. Then the missiles were taken out of Cuba, and the panic disappeared.
I chose Alice, Kathy, and Carol to interview on this topic because they are anti-war activists I deeply admire. I figured the concern over nuclear weapons amongst my peers may be less than older generations because of things like the Cuban Missile Crisis, or even becoming conscious in the years right after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the more elders I talked to, the more I realized how little it may have impacted their trajectory as activists. Alice didn’t become an anti-nuke activist after the missile crisis, and neither Carol nor Kathy mentioned it as a moment they remembered in the awakening of their conscience. Kathy was radicalized on the issue of nukes by the women who worked at the bookshop in downtown Chicago that she would stop into on her way to work as a teenager. Alice was pulled into the movement by the war in Vietnam.
On January 28th, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday Clock in 1947, will reveal how close we are to midnight, or “doom”. Since the clock was made, nukes have proliferated all over the world. First it was the US, and then US and Russia – now nine countries have a nuclear weapons stockpile. It would only take a fraction of that firepower to send us into a nuclear winter, wiping out all life as we know it. The Doomsday Clock was created as a warning – a warning that the most powerful people in the world are playing God. It’s not an exaggeration in the slightest, because of a handful of people, one political misstep or accident and our whole planet is destroyed along with every precious life on it. Governments continue to pour trillions of dollars into developing these weapons while people they are supposed to care about sleep out on the street.
With tensions between the US, Russia, China, and Iran at a high, we should all be putting things in the basement, picking our kids up from their playdates, and preparing for disaster. Instead, we walk around like a bomb was never dropped. Like hundreds of thousands of Japanese people didn’t have their lives taken or destroyed. With no reason to believe so, we act like our government would never do it again. While our leaders have bombed a dozen countries to oblivion since World War II ended, we still act like we are the civilians the world ought to care about, like we are untouchable. We aren’t. Mutually assured destruction might be useful if the people with their fingers on the buttons cared for the people they governed, but oftentimes they don’t.
I asked Carol why she thinks no one is really freaked out about nuclear weapons like they ought to be, whether they be my age or hers. She said, “We have too much.” She was talking specifically about Americans, whose lives are inherently made more comfortable because of the conquest and wars of our past and present. Whether we would like to admit it or not, the United States and the entire modern life it provides is built on war. When I asked Alice, specifically in relation to the Cuban Missile Crisis, if people were scared into becoming anti-nuke activists she said, “You’re asking me if I was scared…I just kept hoping that democracy would prevail in some way, I guess.”
Carol, a Roman Catholic sister, along with two other Dominican nuns were convicted of sabotage after pouring their blood into a Minuteman III missile loaded with a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb in Colorado. She spent two and a half years in federal prison for drawing attention to the real weapons of mass destruction while George W. Bush and Dick Cheney made up fake ones in Iraq. In the eighties, Kathy was greeted by four armed soldiers riding in a large military vehicle after she planted corn on top of a nuclear missile silo in Missouri. A soldier was left behind with Kathy while she was handcuffed, kneeling on the ground. “Do you think the corn will grow?” she asked him. “I don’t know ma’am,” he responded, but I sure hope so.” Following a trial, Kathy spent nine months in maximum security prison.
Whether or not the Doomsday Clock reveals we are inching closer to midnight or staying where we are, the fear around nuclear armageddon seems to freeze most of us in our tracks. If the whole world is going to be annihilated and suffering is imminent anyways, why think about it at all? We can cross that bridge to hell when we get there. If there wasn’t a nuclear stockpile that could end life at any moment, maybe people would feel more inspired. Afterall, preventing doom isn’t a particularly motivating notion. On the other side of doom is just life as we’ve been living it, which isn’t that great for a lot of people.
Alice, Carol and Kathy are all inspired activists. When you talk to them you don’t really ever get the sense that they will stop pushing ahead for what they believe in. I met Carol in the halls of Congress last February, despite being over fifty years older than me she was leaving me in the dust. After 12,000 steps on Capitol Hill, she walked with me to a vigil for Aaron Bushnell, an active duty airman who self-immolated over the genocide in Gaza. Never once in any of my conversations with them did I ever get the sense they did what they did out of fear – whether it be fear of war, nuclear winter, or overall doom. They all talk about a world that gives people what they need to survive and thrive. Kathy talked to me about international cooperation and laughed at the idea of borders, “When there’s a nuclear energy accident like Chernobyl or Fukushima, the poison that floats around in the air doesn’t care about your borders.” And she made note of the brilliant atomic scientists, and how quickly they’d figure out how to address the climate catastrophe if only we were to change our priorities. They talk at length about how the world ought to be, and their vision for a better future is what propels them ahead, not doom. Doom isn’t good enough to get us to where we need to go.
Planting corn over a nuclear silo, disrupting a weapons manufacturer, and creating a community of war resisters are steps we can take toward something much more impactful. A world that is mindful about nuclear weapons can push towards their elimination, and we absolutely must. If you’re not moved away from doom, be moved towards peace. At CODEPINK, we’ve created a Peace Clock to give us ways not to just move away from doom, but to bring us closer to the kind of world we want to see. It’s something that’s been within our sight a thousand times, we have to sprint towards it.
“Dear young people who have never experienced the horrors of war – I fear that some of you may be taking this hard-earned peace for granted.” Takato Michishita
Danaka Katovich is CODEPINK’s National Co-Director. Danaka graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science in November 2020.
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(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… all be speculation about investments that won’t eventually happen. Nuclear energy’s big challenge. It’s easy to speculate about AI’s need for nuclear …
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The news that NextEra Energy Resources, the owner of Iowa’s only nuclear power plant, is beginning the process to reopen the plant by 2028, mirrors a …
Trump’s idea that the Kremlin would run screaming due to his threats of tariffs is making the Russians chuckle. According to the mainstream propaganda …
In order to keep abreast of the weekend nuclear news, I will post Saturday and Sunday’s news, but without editorial comment. If a weekend story warrants a critical review, it will show up on Monday’s posts . . .
If you are not familiar with the weekday daily blog post, this is how the nuclear news post works . . . llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
We got to get hands on gas turbines,” he said. “If you take all those things together, when is gas really going to be able to contribute at scale? We’ …
… nuclear presence, focusing on reductions in nuclear forces after the Cold War. … threats blend nuclear and non-nuclear elements. By integrating hybrid …
See image description and credit in the following article from “The Nation”.
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
The Wednesday announcement by the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” will likely shorten their “Doomsday Clock” clock from the current “90 Seconds to Midnight” on January 28th. Much of the ticking off of a few more seconds, if any, will no doubt be attributed to the new 2nd presidency of Trump, who has made, during his previous 1st term, numerous regrettable and dangerously negatively threatening statements relative to nuclear war.
Learning how much time, if any, will come off the clock and the explanation for it will be very interesting . . . ~llaw
January 23, 2025
The Doomsday Clock Will Move Forward
So why is the grave threat of nuclear war virtually absent from our politics?
The Doomsday Clock set to 90 seconds to midnight at the National Press Club, in Washington, DC, Tuesday, January 24, 2023.(Patrick Semansky / AP Photo)
With Donald Trump’s inauguration, the lame-duck period has finally ended, but another unnerving countdown is upon us. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will update the Doomsday Clock—a metaphorical device to warn the public about our proximity to self-destruction, especially through the use of nuclear weapons—on January 28.
For the last couple of years, the hands of the clock have remained at 90 seconds to midnight, its most perilous position since its creation in 1947. The Bulletin has cited the emergence of artificial intelligence and bio-threats like bird flu as influencing its impending update. No doubt it has also taken note of an emboldened and expansionist Donald Trump, who is already threatening to invade Mexico, annex Canada, and seize the Panama Canal.
Though Trump’s surreal efforts to reignite American imperialism are rightfully making headlines, the grave threat of nuclear weapons is virtually absent from political attention. Might Trump’s parade of underqualified national security cabinet nominees bring renewed scrutiny to these threats? So, too, will an almost certain advancement of the Doomsday Clock. The challenge for the media and political movements and electeds will be to sustain that attention—and turn it into action.
Thirty years ago, the United States was dismantling warheads at a historic pace. But in 2002, John Bolton—then the undersecretary of state for arms control—persuaded George W. Bush to withdraw from the cornerstone of anti-nuclear scaffolding, the decades-long Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. Absent bilateral guarantees and incentives to the contrary, Russia has increasingly incorporated nuclear weapons into its military planning. That normalization culminated last year, when Vladimir Putin authorized using tactical nukes in response to nonnuclear attacks, perhaps the most hazardous military doctrine since the Cold War’s mutually assured destruction.
Unsurprisingly, the incoming administration has divulged no intentions for a detente. The New START Treaty, a continuation of a nuclear reduction strategy begun under Ronald Reagan, will expire next year, and it’s uncertain whether President “Fire and Fury” has any intention of renewing it. (The first Trump administration had the opportunity to renew the treaty in 2020, but reached a stalemate and left the Biden administration to extend it in 2021.)
Given the executive branch’s belligerence, the responsibility of raising this issue falls to an engaged media. Whether the corporate media understands the weight of that responsibility, however, remains totally unclear. Neither presidentialdebate featured a single question about nuclear weapons. Still, some publications have become more active in their coverage. The New York Times, for example, recently dedicated a 14-piece series to “the threat of nuclear weapons.” This examination may have been partly inspired by the recent surge of pop-culture interest in the atomic question, from the 2023 blockbuster film Oppenheimer to Annie Jacobsen’s 2024 bestseller, Nuclear War: A Scenario.
As public consciousness around this threat continues to swell, voters will inevitably begin to ask: What is the Democratic Party’s position on all of this? The 2024 Democratic National Convention didn’t provide solace or answers, with presidential nominee Kamala Harris pledging to make America’s military “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Other than a sculpture of a mushroom cloud at an off-site art installation, the convention—and the resulting party platform—offered few specifics about nuclear policy.
In contrast, a handful of Democratic politicians have used their bully pulpits for peace. Earlier this week, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) urged imposing guardrails on the executive authority to launch a nuclear strike, deeming it “terrifying, dangerous, and unconstitutional.” Markey, alongside the cochairs of the Congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, has also cautioned against overspending on nuclear modernization. A small group of representatives that includes Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rules Committee chairman James McGovern (D-MA) has gone further, calling on the US to join an international agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons altogether.
As we wait for more politicians and journalists to treat the prospect of nuclear annihilation with, well, gravity, this country’s most reliable driver of progress is already organizing: the American people. To name one effort, Back from the Brink is a national coalition of almost 500 organizations aiming to make nuclear weapons “a local issue.” In 2021, it convinced 300 state and local officials to write to President Biden urging action toward nuclear disarmament. Despite receiving too little attention, it inspired further engagement, like high schoolers successfully lobbying the mayor of Burbank to call for abolishing nuclear weapons.
Amid this activism, US nuclear bunker sales are also on the rise. That money and energy would be better invested in preventing the need for such a shelter in the first place. But this trend nonetheless reflects prevailing concerns. Pundits and candidates alike are fond of asking: “Should this person have the nuclear codes?” But that misses the more fundamental question: Should anyone have any nuclear codes at all? The longer we take to answer this quandary—or even begin to debate it—the closer the Doomsday Clock ticks to midnight.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.
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Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has long believed that independent journalism has the capacity to bring about a more democratic and equitable world.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The work of the IAEA was “at the centre” of debates at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this week, as the Director General joined global leaders to discuss pressing challenges. Read more →
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team based at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has heard frequent explosions from outside the site over the past week, further underlining persistent dangers to nuclear safety and security during the military conflict, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said today. Read more →
The IAEA’s training centre is dedicated to helping countries strengthen their nuclear security regimes, and offers practical hands-on training in areas ranging from the physical protection of nuclear facilities and materials to nuclear forensics and computer security. Read more →
The latest application of the IAEA’s Lise Meitner Programme is now officially open, offering career development and networking opportunities for women professionals in the nuclear field. Read more →
Hailing from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Carmen Kibonge has taken a path shaped by a passion for numbers, a supportive family and a commitment to make a difference, which eventually led her to the IAEA. Read more →
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES OF TOMORROW
This one-liner quote — that opens this very long article by By Prof. Louis René Beres for “Modern Diplomacy” hit home to me after posting 858 daily “LLAW’s All Things Nuclear” on this blog (that should now be followed by thousands instead of a few here and there), and then is, secondly hitting home, this paragraph, copied from well into the story, were all that I needed to hear ((read) to convince me about all the rest (I urge you to take the time to read and consider what Prof. Louis René Beres has to say about nuclear threat history, potential nuclear war, and Donald Trump:
The opening quotation: “The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the terrible news.”-Bertolt Brecht
The ultimate paragraph: The United States must finally take heed. By electing Donald J. Trump in 2024, Americans decided to abide a wittingly law-violating[34] and science-averse president. In essence, therefore, the “die is cast,” but the nation must still prepare for avoiding the worst. The correlative task is to quickly refine and clarify America’s nuclear command authority.[35] Ipso facto, to fail in this task[36] ought never to be considered rational or tolerable.
The background, including presidential or other related comparisons along with historical background and discussion here are more than just something to think about, ignore, or simply laugh about, but to consider, digest, speak out, and help rally us all to act on what needs to be done regarding responsible control and demolition of nuclear weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear power plants and nuclear waste) and avoiding any future use of “All Things Nuclear” forever . . . ~llaw
Reconsidering Nuclear Command Authority: America’s Most Urgent Obligation
It’s high time for candor. President Donald J. Trump has effectively unchecked nuclear command authority.
“The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the terrible news.”-Bertolt Brecht
It’s high time for candor. President Donald J. Trump has effectively unchecked nuclear command authority. Though once inconceivable, this president could sometime choose to order the use of nuclear weapons without adequate strategic or legal justification. It is also plausible he could act irrationally during existential crises, including nuclear policy maelstroms of his own making.
Even in Trump’s visceral strategic universe, truth matters. We have long passed the point where his foreign policy commentaries are just funny or eccentric. Earlier, when Trump asserted “the moon is part of Mars” and that “nuclear weapons could be used to fight hurricanes,” it seemed merely occasion for laughter. Today, however, as he threatens to re-name the Gulf of Mexico, take over Greenland and re-take the Panama Canal, such merriment is no longer defensible on any grounds. To the point, Trump 2.0 will quickly become an existential problem, not “just” for the United States, but also for the wider world.
What happens next? What should be done to protect the United States and this wider world from literally unprecedented peril? There can be no more urgent question.[1]
There is more. The question has many parts.[2] Several parts are not only intersecting; they are also synergistic. This means, portentously, that the “whole” of pertinent intersectional consequences is greater than the simple sum of constituent “parts.”[3] Such ascribed meaning is not logically contestable. It is true by definition.
Specific questions will rapidly accumulate. “In what specific nuclear policy directions should America now propel itself?” Looking ahead to more-or-less inevitable US nuclear crises with North Korea, China, Russia or (potentially) Iran,[4] variously grievous Trump errors or derelictions could bring existential or near-existential harms to the United States. For the moment, American strategic thinkers remain most visibly absorbed with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, but this Nuremberg-based[5] “crime against peace” (and also attendant “crimes against humanity[6]) could be sharply worsened by parallel crises involving North Korea and/or China.
Whatever happens in Ukraine, the always-unpredictable world of geopolitics will remain mired in a “state of nature.”[7] To survive within this corrosive system of geopolitics, the United States requires a president who can reliably meet the steep expectations of nuclear command authority. Together with his appropriate advisors, therefore, President Donald J. Trump must be capable of very intricate kinds of dialectical reasoning,[8] and, if necessary, to display such impressive capabilities in extremis atomicum.
The Intellectual Imperatives
There exist no reasonable ambiguities about Donald Trump’s lack of military nuclear understanding. On creating durably peaceful relations with North Korea, his prior “program” was never about reaching substantive forms of diplomatic understanding, but concerned “falling in love” with Kim Jung Un. How could such a caricatured presidential stance ever have been taken seriously in the US Congress and executive branch? It was, after all, the reductio ad absurdum of a president’s unambitious intellectual life.[9]
If America’s citizens have learned anything from the history of modern world politics – from the “balance of power”[10] that was originally put into place after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 – it is that any continuously unregulated system of win-at-all-costs thinking leads to war and civilizational breakdowns.[11] Though Donald Trump has proudly lauded “attitude” over “preparation,”[12] serious analytic thought continues to deserve a meaningful pride of place in the United States. To wit, the persistently unwinding “state of nature,” a global condition built upon intermittent aggression,[13] rancor and belligerent nationalism,[14] has never succeeded. Still more ominously, this Hobbesian “state of war” displays no signs of greater durability for the future.[15]
Understanding Decisional Hazards
Accumulating questions continue to stack up. What specific nuclear hazards present themselves to the United States? To begin, it should finally be recognized that an inappropriate or irrational nuclear command decision by an American president is neither science fiction nor apocalyptic delusion. Instead, it is integral to the authoritative “texts” of history, logic, science and mathematics.
Now, such a broadly-lethal decision is manifestly conceivable. Though nothing conclusive can be said about the precise mathematical probability of any such unprecedented scenario,[16] there do remain ample reasons for immediate concern.
There is more. In world politics, nothing happens ex nihilo. Americans should promptly inquire: “Might an unsteady, lawless or deluded US president become subject to lethal forms of personal dissemblance and/or psychological debility?” Leaving aside Donald J. Trump’s breathtaking preference for acrimonious human relations, there can be no credible assurances of this president’s capacity for difficult strategic calculation. A very similar doubt hangs over his chosen Secretary of Defense. As to uniformed active duty flag officers, their historically critical roles could be subordinated to the whims of servile presidential appointees.
Any US presidential order to use nuclear weapons carries the inherent expectation of witting compliance. While certain key figures along the operational chain of command could sometime choose to disobey such an order, any implicit disobedience could be deemed by Donald Trump as unlawful prima facie.To be sure, all soldiers of the United Sates are bound inter alia by post-Nuremberg obligations incorporated into American law, but there is little reason to believe that President Trump knows or cares about the Constitution’s Article 6 “Supremacy Clause.”
On September 16, 2021, authoritative testimony by then US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Miley, indicated how substantially law-violating Trump’s final days of his first administration had become.[17] Within 24 hours of being sworn in for a second administration in 2025, this US president physically removed General Miley’s portrait from the Pentagon. The venality of this gratuitous act was overshadowed only by its conspicuous irony.
. Regarding US nuclear command decisions, shouldPresident Donald J. Trump be granted extraordinary authority over uncountable human lives, a grant with implications that could never have been foreseen by the Founding Fathers?”[18] Could such a lopsided allocation of nuclear decision authority now faithfully represent what was originally intended by the American Constitution’s”separation of powers?” Can anyone reasonably believe that such unhindered existential power could ever have been favored by the “Fathers”? And what about the more general constraints of our wider global civilization?[19]
At a minimum, citizens and analysts can extrapolate from Articles I and II of the Constitutionthat the Founders displayed primary and palpable concern about expanding Presidential power long before nuclear weapons. Such codified concern predates any science-based imaginationsof apocalyptic possibility.[20] Today, in order to progress prudentially and sequentially on these issues, Americans should sincerely inquire: “How can we re-assess US nuclear command authority?”
A Scholar’s Personal Intellectual Odyssey
It’s a question long pondered by the present writer. For me, it has long represented a personal but analytic question. As academic scholar and policy-centered nuclear strategist, I have remained involved with these core security issues (Israeli and American) for over fifty years. Some highlights of this half-century involvement may help clarify relevant elements of US nuclear command policy.
On 14 March 1976, in response to my direct query concerning United States nuclear weapons launching authority, I received a letter from General (USA/ret.) Maxwell Taylor, a former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. The principal focus of this hand-written letter (attached hereto) concerned ascertainable nuclear risks of presidential irrationality.[21] Most noteworthy, in this communication, was the straightforward warning contained in General Taylor’s closing paragraph.
Ideally, Taylor cautioned wisely, presidential irrationality – an inherently grave problem – should be dealt with during an election process and not in the bewildering throes of any decisional crisis. At that point, the general understood, it could already be too late. He wisely concluded: “…. the best protection (against presidential irrationality) is not to elect one…”
By extrapolation, regarding America’s now enhanced presidential nuclear command problem, this conclusion was not accepted by American voters in 2024. Accordingly, American must now inquire with un-deflected focus: “What are the currently governing safeguards regarding US nuclear command authority?” The operational specifics of any such query are tightly held, of course, but could citizens at least be properly reassured that variously redundant safeguards are built into any presidential order to use nuclear weapons?
In any event, virtually all sensible and reinforcing safeguards would stop working “at the water’s edge.” They could become operative only at lower or sub-presidential nuclear command levels. Expressly stated, these safeguards do not apply to the American Commander-in-Chief.
Seemingly (though incorrectly), there existno permissible legal grounds to disobey a presidential order regarding the use of nuclear weapons. In principle, perhaps, certain senior individuals in the designated military chain of command could still sometime choose to invoke authoritative “Nuremberg Obligations,”[22] but any such last-minute invocation would almost certainly yield to more easily recognizable considerations of U.S. domestic law.[23]
Looking for Suitable Nuclear Policy Directions
Going forward, plausible and reasonable scenarios of nuclear war should be systematically postulated and expertly examined. For the moment, at least, should an incumbent American president operating within a chaos of his own making issue an irrational or seemingly irrational nuclear command, the only way for the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the National Security Adviser and several authoritative others to obstruct this wrongful order would be “illegal” ipso facto. Under the best of circumstances, informal correctives might manage to work for a short time, but any too blithe acceptance of a “best case scenario” could hardly be judged “realistic.”
Going forward, US strategic analysts now ought to inquire about more suitably predictable and promising institutional safeguards. These structural barriers could better shield Americans from a prospectively debilitated or otherwise compromised US president. “The worst,” says Friedrich Durrenmatt instructively, “does sometimes happen.”
The Swiss playwright’s assertion is unassailable.
Under President Donald J. Trump, the US is navigating in “uncharted waters.” Though President John F. Kennedy engaged in personal nuclear brinkmanship with the Soviet Union back in October 1962, he calculated the odds of a consequent nuclear war as “between one out of three and even.” This crazily precise calculation (one unwarranted by peremptory rules of logic and mathematics) was corroborated by JFK biographer Theodore Sorensen, and also by my own private conversations with former JCS Chair Admiral Arleigh Burke (my lecture colleague and roommate at the US Naval Academy’s Foreign Affairs Conference(NAFAC) of 1977) suggests that President Kennedy was either (1) technically irrational in imposing his Cuban “quarantine;”or (2) wittingly acting out variously untested principles of “pretended irrationality.”
In stark contrast to Donald J. Trump, JFK was operating with serious and intellectually capable strategic and legal advisors. He did not choose Adlai Stevenson to represent the United States at the United Nations because he was “glamorous” or “loyal.” Stevenson was selected because he was educationally prepared and diplomatically skilled.
The most urgent threat of a mistaken or irrational U.S. presidential order to use nuclear weapons would flow not from any “bolt-from-the-blue” nuclear attack[24] – whether Russian, North Korean, Chinese or (expressed as a preemption) American – but from sequentially uncontrollable escalatory processes. Back in 1962, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev “blinked” early on in the “game,” thereby preventing irrecoverable nuclear harms. Now, considering any seat-of-the-pants escalatory initiatives that could be undertaken by President Donald Trump, Americans ought never discount potentially intolerable nuclear decision-making consequences.
“Escalation Dominance” and Nuclear War
The newly re-installed American president should be made to understand the grave risks of being locked into a stubborn or refractory escalatory dynamic with an adversarial state. Here, the only available decisional options could be a presumptively abject American capitulation or presently-unpredictable form of nuclear warfighting. Though Trump could sometime be well advised to seek “escalation dominance”[25] in selected crisis circumstances, he would still need to avoid any catastrophic miscalculations. Moreover, this overriding need would not necessarily factor in potentially intersecting problems of hacking intrusion, nuclear accident or intellectual limitation/impairment.[26]
For the immediate future, imperatives concerning miscalculation avoidance would likely apply most directly to plausible one-upmanship narratives involving North Korea’s Kim Jung Un.[27] In such narratives, much would depend upon more-or-less foreseeable “synergies” between Washington and Pyongyang and on various difficult-to- control penetrations of cyber-conflict or cyber-war. American decision-makers might have to acknowledge the out-of-control interference of cyber-mercenaries, unprincipled third parties working exclusively for personal or corporate compensations.
Whether Americans like it or not, at one time or another, nuclear strategy represents a challenging “game” that Donald J. Trump will have to play. This will not be a contest for intellectual amateurs or for rancorous leaders lacking in requisite understandings of “will.”[28] To best ensure that a too-easily-distracted president’s strategic moves would remain determinedly rational, thoughtful and cumulatively cost-effective, it could first become necessary to enhance the formal decisional authority of his most senior military-defense subordinates.
There are pertinent particulars. At a minimum, the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Advisor and one or two others in appropriate nuclear command positions would need to prepare competently in advance. These figures would need to prepare to assume more broadly collaborative and secure judgments in extremis atomicum.[29]
Responsibilities of “The People”
Any proposed widening of nuclear authority could never be “guaranteed.” In the end, following General Maxwell Taylor’s letter to me of 14 March 1976, the best protection is still “not to elect” a president who is discernibly unfit for nuclear command responsibilities. But when that protection is no longer an option, viable decisional safeguards must be erected whatever the political costs. “The safety of the people,” asserted Cicero long before the nuclear age, “is the highest law.”[30]
There is something else. From the standpoint of correctly defining all relevant dangers, it is important to bear in mind that “irrational” does not necessarily mean “crazy” or “mad.” More specifically, prospectively fateful expressions of US presidential irrationality could take different and variously subtle forms.[31] These forms, which could remain indecipherable or latent for a long time, would include (a) a disorderly or inconsistent value system; (b) computational errors in calculation; (c) an incapacity to communicate correctly or efficiently; (d) random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of strategic decisions; and (e) internal dissonance generated by some structure of collective decision-making (i.e., assemblies of authoritative individuals who lack identical value systems and/or whose organizational arrangements impact their willing capacity to act as unitary national decision maker).
From the singularly critical standpoint of US nuclear weapon control issues (problematic issues[32] that could be be worsened by continuous American strategic postures of “First Use” and/or “Launch on Warning,”), legitimate reasons to worry about the Trump presidency do not hinge on any expectations of “madness.” Rather, looking over the above list of five representative traits, there is already good reason not for worry per se (worry itself could never represent a rational or purposeful US presidential reaction), but for non-partisan analytic objectivity and consistently calculable prudence. It won’t be easy to make tangible progress along this particular front, and it won’t necessarily succeed longer-term by electing a different president next time around.[33] But for now, for the Trump-led United States, there are no sensible alternatives.
For the indefinite future, US national security and US survival will require the prompt and law-based restraint of any flawed American president. It follows further that the security benefits of such needed restraints would confer corresponding security benefits on the world as a whole. In principle, at least, the full importance of any such corollary or “spillover” benefit could prove overwhelming.
The United States must finally take heed. By electing Donald J. Trump in 2024, Americans decided to abide a wittingly law-violating[34] and science-averse president. In essence, therefore, the “die is cast,” but the nation must still prepare for avoiding the worst. The correlative task is to quickly refine and clarify America’s nuclear command authority.[35]Ipso facto, to fail in this task[36] ought never to be considered rational or tolerable.
Playwright Bertolt Brecht would have understood. Though many might still “laugh” at the idea of an irrational or incompetent American president in charge of nuclear weapons, these doubters deserve a prompt and informed response: We “simply have not yet heard the horrible news.”
[1] The Devil in George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman observes correctly that “Man’s heart is in his weapons….in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself…. when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanisms that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies….”
[2] The first Trump presidency expressed generalized “criminal intent” or mens rea. There are meaningful comparisons with earlier perversions of basic law in the Third Reich. Said Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1934: “”Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state.” In 2019, even before his January 2021 insurrection, Donald Trump echoed this dark sentiment: “I have the support of the street, of the police, of the military, the support of Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough – until they go to a certain point and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
[4] For an analysis of deterring not-yet-nuclear adversaries in the case of Israel, see article co-authored by Professor Louis René Beres and (former Israeli Ambassador) Zalman Shoval at the Modern War Institute, West Point (Pentagon): https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/ Though not apt to represent a US nuclear crisis per se, any future hostilities between India and Pakistan could suddenly or incrementally draw in the United States. This is especially the case if China and/or Russia were involved.
[5]See AGREEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS OF THE EUROPEAN AXIS POWERS AND CHARTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL. Done at London, August 8, 1945. Entered into force, August 8, 1945. For the United States, Sept. 10, 1945. 59 Stat. 1544, 82 U.N.T.S. 279. The principles of international law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the judgment of the Tribunal were affirmed by the U.N. General Assembly as AFFIRMATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED BY THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL. Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, Dec. 11, 1946. U.N.G.A. Res. 95 (I), U.N. Doc. A/236 (1946), at 1144. This AFFIRMATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED BY THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL (1946) was followed by General Assembly Resolution 177 (II), adopted November 21, 1947, directing the U.N. International Law Commission to “(a) Formulate the principles of international law recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the judgment of the Tribunal, and (b) Prepare a draft code of offenses against the peace and security of mankind….” (See U.N. Doc. A/519, p. 112). The principles formulated are known as the PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED IN THE CHARTER AND JUDGMENT OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL. Report of the International Law Commission, 2nd session, 1950, U.N. G.A.O.R. 5th session, Supp. No. 12, A/1316, p. 11.
[6] Crimes against humanity are defined formally as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population before or during a war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated….” See Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Aug. 8, 1945, Art. 6(c), 59 Stat. 1544, 1547, 82 U.N.T.S. 279, 288.
[7] Thomas Hobbes, the 17th- century English philosopher, argues that the “state of nations” is the only true “state of nature,” that is, the only such “state” that actually exists in the world. In Chapter XIII of Leviathan (“Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery”), Hobbes says famously: “But though there had never been any time, wherein particular men were in a condition of war, one against the other, yet in all times, kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independence, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is their forts, garrisons, and guns upon the frontiers of their kingdoms, and continual spies upon their neighbors, which is a posture of war.”
[8] Dialectical thinking originated in Fifth Century BCE Athens, as Zeno, author of the Paradoxes, had been acknowledged by Aristotle as its inventor. In the middle dialogues of Plato, dialectic emerges as the supreme form of philosophic/analytic method. The dialectician, says Plato, is the “special one” who knows how to ask and then answer vital questions. From the standpoint of necessary refinements in US nuclear command authority, this knowledge ought never be taken for granted.
[9] “Intellect rots the brain” shrieked Joseph Goebbels at a Nuremberg Germany rally in 1935. “I love the poorly educated” echoed then American presidential candidate Donald Trump at a 2016 rally in the United States. Perhaps to authenticate his flaunted anti-intellectualism, Trump went on to propose household bleach as a Covid-19 treatment; urge the use of nuclear weapons against hurricanes; and praise American revolutionary armies in the 18th century for “gaining control of all national airports.”
[10] Since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, the idea of a law-based balance of power – an idea of which the nuclear-age balance of terror represents a current variant – has never been more than a facile metaphor. Treaty language notwithstanding, this idea has never had anything to do with ascertaining or maintaining any “true and just equilibrium.” As any such balance must be a matter of individual subjective perceptions, adversarial states can never be sufficiently confident that strategic circumstances of the moment are legally “balanced” in their favor. As each side must fear perpetually that it will be “left behind,” the corresponding search for balance can only produce ever-widening patterns of disequilibrium. History, of course, confirms such logic.
[11] On the plausible consequences of a nuclear war by this author, excluding any now pertinent synergies with a disease pandemic, see: Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1984); Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1986); and Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).
[12] This intellectually barren sentiment was first made explicit by Mr. Trump immediately prior to his June 12, 2018 Singapore Summit with Kim Jung Un.
[13] On aggression as a specific crime under international law, see RESOLUTION ON THE DEFINITION OF AGGRESSION, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31) 142, U.N. Doc. A/9631, 1975, reprinted in 13 I.L.M. 710, 1974; and CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Art. 51. Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993, Bevans 1153, 1976, Y.B.U.N. 1043.
[14] United States law, as it was founded upon the learned jurisprudence of Sir William Blackstone, acknowledges, inter alia, a ubiquitous obligation of all states to help one another. More precisely, according to Blackstone, each state is expected “to aid and enforce the law of nations, as part of the common law, by inflicting an adequate punishment upon offenses against that universal law….” See: 2 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 4, “Of Public Wrongs.” Lest anyone ask about the significance of Blackstone for current US national security decision-making, one need only remind that the Commentaries were an original and core foundation of the laws of American law. To be sure, this plain fact remained altogether unknown to former US President Donald Trump and his less than learned counselors. Trump’s force-based policies of “America First” (illustrative of the fallacy known as argumentum ad bacculum) represented the diametric opposite of what Blackstone would have expected.
[15] We may consider here the timeless insight of French Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in The Phenomenon of Man (1959): “The egocentric ideal of a future reserved for those who have managed to attain egoistically the extremity of `everyone-for-himself’ is false and against nature.” Originally published in French as Le Phénomene Humain (1955), Paris.
[16] This is because (1) any statement of authentic probability must be based upon the determinable frequency of pertinent past events and in this present case (2) there are no pertinent past events.
[17] See by this writer, Louis René Beres: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2021/08/13/looking-back-at-the-trump-presidency-an-informed-retrospective/
[18] Significantly, the Founding Fathers of the United States were intellectuals. As explained by American historian Richard Hofstadter: “The Founding Fathers were sages, scientists, men of broad cultivation, many of them apt in classical learning, who used their wide reading in history, politics and law to solve the exigent problems of their time.” See Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), p. 145.
[19] Dostoyevsky asks the most pertinent question: “What is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I’d say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened…Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.” See: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground 108 (Andrew R. MacAndrew, trans., New American Library, 1961) (1862).
[20] One of this author’s earliest books was (Louis René Beres) Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (The University of Chicago Press, 1980).
[21] Recalling philosopher Karl Jaspers: “The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it.” (See Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time, 1952).
[22] See Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal; 2 August 1950.
[23] As the Constitution represents the conspicuous bedrock of US domestic law, and because that document stipulates that only Congress can declare war, designated military decision-makers could argue credibly that their considered interference with certain Presidential nuclear commands would be law-enforcing.
[24] Nuclear strategic theorist Herman Kahn once introduced a subtle distinction between a surprise attack that is more-or-less unexpected and one that arrives “out of the blue.” The former, he counseled, “…is likely to take place during a period of tension that is not so intense that the offender is essentially prepared for nuclear war….” A total surprise attack, however, would be one without any immediately recognizable tension or warning signal. This particular subset of a surprise attack scenario could be difficult to operationalize for tangible national security policy benefit. See: Herman Kahn, Thinking About theUnthinkable in the 1980s (Simon & Schuster, 1984).
[26] Anticipating 20th century Spanish thinker Jose Ortega y’Gasset (cited above), the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal remarks prophetically in Pensées: “All our dignity consists in thought…It is upon this that we must depend…Let us labor then to think well: this is the foundation of morality.” Similar reasoning characterizes the writings of Baruch Spinoza, Pascal’s 17th-century contemporary. In Book II of his Ethics Spinoza considers the human mind, or the intellectual attributes, and – drawing further upon René Descartes – strives to define an essential theory of learning and knowledge.
[28] The modern philosophic origins of “will” are discoverable in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Idea (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew freely upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Friedrich Nietzsche drew just as freely and perhaps more importantly upon Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic twentieth-century work, The Revolt of the Masses (Le Rebelion de las Masas;1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s very grand essay, “In Search of Goethe from Within” (1932), written for Die Neue Rundschau of Berlin on the centenary of Goethe’s death (Goethe died in 1832), It is reprinted in Ortega’s illuminating anthology, The Dehumanization of Art (1948) and is available from Princeton University Press (1968).
[29] This assumes, of course, that these “chain-of-command” presidential subordinates will prove equal to their extraordinary responsibilities.
[31] In authoritative studies of world politics, rationality and irrationality have now taken on very precise meanings. In this regard, a state is presumed to be rational to the extent that its leadership always values national survival more highly than any other conceivable preference or combination of preferences. Conversely, an irrational state is one that would not always display such a markedly specific preference ordering. On expressly pragmatic or operational grounds, ascertaining whether a particular state adversary such as Iran would be rational or irrational could become a problematic and even daunting task.
[32] The overarching issue here is inadvertent or accidental nuclear war. While an accidental nuclear war would also be inadvertent, there are forms of inadvertent nuclear war that would not necessarily be caused by mechanical, electrical or computer accident. These forms of unintentional nuclear conflict would be the unexpected result of misjudgment or miscalculation, whether created as a singular error by one or both sides to a particular (two-party) nuclear crisis escalation or by certain unforeseen “synergies” arising between any such singular miscalculations.
[33] Observed Sigmund Freud, in a lesser-known work on Woodrow Wilson: “Fools, visionaries, sufferers from delusions, neurotics and lunatics have played great roles at all times in the history of mankind, and not merely when the accident of birth had bequeathed them sovereignty. Usually, they have wreaked havoc.”
[34] In this context, law refers to both international and domestic law. These normative regulations are interpenetrating and mutually reinforcing. Recalling words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Paquete Habana, “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination. For this purpose, where there is no treaty, and no controlling executive or legislative act or judicial decision, resort must be had to the customs and usages of civilized nations.” See The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677, 678-79 (1900). See also: The Lola, 175 U.S. 677 (1900); Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F. 2d 774, 781, 788 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (per curiam) (Edwards, J. concurring) (dismissing the action, but making several references to domestic jurisdiction over extraterritorial offenses), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1003 (1985) (“concept of extraordinary judicial jurisdiction over acts in violation of significant international standards…embodied in the principle of `universal violations of international law.’”).
[35] At the same time, to act in proper conformance with pertinent international law (which is a part of US domestic or municipal law), any US president must continuously bear in mind the following: States are obliged to judge every use of force twice; once with regard to the underlying right to wage war (jus ad bellum) and once with regard to the means used in actually conducting a war (jus in bello). Following the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 and the United Nations Charter (1945) there can be no plausible right to wage an aggressive war. However, the long-standing customary right of post-attack self-defense remains codified at Article 51 of the UN Charter. Similarly, subject to conformance, inter alia, with jus in bello criteria, certain instances of humanitarian intervention and collective security operations may also be consistent with jus ad bellum. The law of war, the rules of jus in bello, comprise: (1) laws on weapons; (2) laws on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules. Codified primarily at The Hague and Geneva Conventions, these rules attempt to bring discrimination, proportionality and military necessity into belligerent calculations.
[36] “The devil must lie in the details” in any such task, and the most plausible details should concern a cautiously thoughtful expansion of authoritative US nuclear decision-makers.
LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. His twelfth and most recent book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (2016) (2nd ed., 2018) https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy Some of his principal strategic writings have appeared in Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard University); Yale Global Online (Yale University); Oxford University Press (Oxford University); Oxford Yearbook of International Law (Oxford University Press); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon); Special Warfare (Pentagon); Modern War Institute (Pentagon); The War Room (Pentagon); World Politics (Princeton); INSS (The Institute for National Security Studies)(Tel Aviv); Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); BESA Perspectives (Israel); International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; The Atlantic; The New York Times and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
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Basic Nuclear Fuel (uranium) cycle from mining to Nuclear Reactor to Nuclear Waste
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES OF TOMORROW
To me, adequate and affordable production of uranium is the most important and far reaching question(s) concerning the sustainable life of nuclear power. Uranium, by the way, is the radioactive fuel that makes nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons of mass destruction so unforgivingly and universally dangerous. I get that and clearly understand the potential of nuclear power and it cousin nuclear war to “make or break” our future. The odds are highly in favor of the latter.
We have failed to keep in mind that what is often called economically recoverable uranium is extremely expensive to produce and is subject to depletion. Even uranium mixed with a plentiful supply of the perhaps sustainable low-grade element thorium is, like other fossil or earth-fuels requiring mining, processing, and an adequate supply just as does natural gas, coal, and oil.
I left the industry in 1980 after the 3-Mile Island nuclear accident, and even then the supply of available and financially affordable available uranium was becoming rare in the United States. Our reliance on countries like Russia, which are not our allies in anything, including war, make the idea of a massive recovery of nuclear energy a “luck of the draw” in a contentious game of poker.
This upcoming CSIS sponsored program on January 29, 2025 • 9:30 – 10:15 am EST will hopefully convey to the nuclear industry as a whole that the task to create a safe and adequate supply of uranium for the future will be sufficient to even get to 1st base rather than dismally striking out at home plate. I
I will respond with my thoughts after the conference subjects and details are made available sometime next week. ~llaw
Uranium is one of the most consequential elements of the modern era, fueling the nuclear energy that underpins today’s economy and is key to propelling future growth. Nuclear power generates around 20 percent of the United States’ electricity – a figure expected to rise as the country expands power generation to meet the growing demand from heavy manufacturing and artificial intelligence. However, this growth hinges on the United States’ ability to secure a reliable uranium supply. Once the world’s leading uranium producer from 1953 to the 1980s, the United States now heavily depends on imports of both raw and enriched uranium from countries like Kazakhstan and Russia. This reliance poses a major challenge to maintaining U.S. nuclear leadership.
Please join the CSIS Critical Minerals Security Program for a conversation on the future of uranium security to meet nuclear power demand. Miriam D’Onofrio, Acting Senior Director for Energy and Investment at the White House National Security Council, will join Gracelin Baskaran, Director of the CSIS Critical Minerals Security Program, to discuss strategies for reducing U.S. dependence on Russian uranium, revitalizing the domestic uranium industry, and establishing an international order book for advanced nuclear reactors.
This event is made possible by general funding to CSIS and the CSIS Critical Minerals Security Program.
The Future of Uranium to Jumpstart Nuclear Power in the 21st Century: A Fireside Conversation with Miriam D’Onofrio
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The DPRK’s statement at a Conference on Disarmament meeting in Geneva came in response to calls by the EU for North Korea to comply with international …
More for You … What Would Happen If Yellowstone’s Supervolcano Erupted? … Escape and unwind with Early 2025 Deals. … Escape and unwind with Early 2025 …
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES OF TOMORROW
Today we began living an even more threatening way of life under a Trump’s evil and obvious concept of brutal unamerican authoritarianism. We brought it on ourselves through our complacency, apathy, and a mass lack of care and ignorance of how the Worlds’ work. I have spent the last two and a half years trying to relate my own point of view, using some six or more media outlets, so that’s how I know that there has been little interest in the average human’s thoughts about saving his own skin. I pity other professional and commercial outlets who stay afloat through virtually deaf ears as well, relying on advertising to try to awaken a World of blind deafness.
I have, for many years, warned and pleaded through my website about our predominately sad human habit of apathetic ignorance, which is what “politicians”, including Donald J. Trump thrive on. As Albert Einstein and other insightful, but honest and aware, insightful world leaders have told us over and over, curiosity and imagination are more important than education and intelligence. But we are too limited in those qualities to learn from these two simple day-to-day areas of wakefulness. We brought it all — our future I mean — on ourselves. Following is a description of my own mythical hope for a better way of life from what I long ago grew to understand about a better future for our human ways of life by facing the tangled web of how it works in its multiple ways, and finding a way to separate the wheat from the chaff:
Lloyd Albert Williams-Pendergraft’s multi-faceted website is a dank and dark, partly cloudy, but hopeful, pre-dystopian liberalist feministic opinion place dedicated to advocating today for a better, more environmentally and socially friendly, multi-world of global peace, freedom, and unity instead of the obvious alternative.
For about two and a half years, I have posted here (and elsewhere) daily about the terrible doomsday to come courtesy of a multi-World full of nuclear holocaust weapons of mass destruction that may decimate humanity and other life as we now know it on planet Earth.
We’ve had our chance to make it right, but I fear this election and swearing in of a faux-American leader on January 20th— a despicable man whom a caring Parallel World of us have long despised — has brought humanity all around the Parallel Worlds of our Moon to our knees and the ultimate price will be paid soon . . . (I can only hope for all of us that I am wrong.) ~llaw
Today we began living an even more threatening way of life under a Trump’s evil and obvious concept of brutal unamerican authoritarianism. We brought it on ourselves through our complacency, apathy, and a mass lack of care and ignorance of how the Worlds’ work. I have spent the last two and a half years trying to relate my own point of view, using some six or more media outlets, so that’s how I know that there has been little interest in the average human’s thoughts about saving his own skin. I pity other professional and commercial outlets who stay afloat through virtually deaf ears as well, relying on advertising to try to awaken a World of blind deafness.
I have, for many years, warned and pleaded through my website about our predominately sad human habit of apathetic ignorance, which is what “politicians”, including Donald J. Trump thrive on. As Albert Einstein and other insightful, but honest and aware, insightful world leaders have told us over and over, curiosity and imagination are more important than education and intelligence. But we are too limited in those qualities to learn from these two simple day-to-day areas of wakefulness. We brought it all — our future I mean — on ourselves. Following is a description of my own mythical hope for a better way of life from what I long ago grew to understand about a better future for our human ways of life by facing the tangled web of how it works in its multiple ways, and finding a way to separate the wheat from the chaff:
Lloyd Albert Williams-Pendergraft’s multi-faceted website is a dank and dark, partly cloudy, but hopeful, pre-dystopian liberalist feministic opinion place dedicated to advocating today for a better, more environmentally and socially friendly, multi-world of global peace, freedom, and unity instead of the obvious alternative.
For about two and a half years, I have posted here (and elsewhere) daily about the terrible doomsday to come courtesy of a multi-World full of nuclear holocaust weapons of mass destruction that may decimate humanity and other life as we now know it on planet Earth.
We’ve had our chance to make it right, but I fear this election and swearing in of a faux-American leader on January 20th— a despicable man whom a caring Parallel World of us have long despised — has brought humanity all around the Parallel Worlds of our Moon to our knees and the ultimate price will be paid soon . . . (I can only hope for all of us that I am wrong.) ~llaw
The following “Truthout” stories are both brief and to-the-point.
President Donald Trump leaves after attending a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, May 28, 2017. Two military aides carrying two “nuclear footballs” can be seen walking behind and to the right of Trump.
Brigitte N. Brantley / Department of Defense
The global security landscape has changed dramatically since Donald Trump’s first term, but one thing that remains constant is U.S. presidential authority to use nuclear weapons. From the moment he takes the oath of office until the moment his successor assumes the presidency, Trump has the authority and the means to order a nuclear attack at any moment and for any reason if he chooses to do so.
Dating back to the Eisenhower administration, the system that gives U.S. presidents the ability to launch a nuclear strike at a moment’s notice revolves around what is known as the “nuclear football.” The “football” (formally called the presidential emergency satchel) is carried by a military aide who accompanies the president wherever he goes. As a backup, a second aide carrying another “football” follows the vice president.
The bulky, black, leather-bound 45-lb.-aluminum satchel is believed to contain laminated sheets printed with dozens of nuclear war plans and options, instructions on communicating with the public during a national emergency, and a secure satellite phone — all intentionally low-tech and offline to avoid vulnerability to hacking or technical glitches.
At all times, the president and vice president also carry sealed plastic cards, roughly the size of credit cards, informally called “biscuits” for their resemblance to cookies in a foil wrapper. Officially called the sealed authenticator system, the “biscuit” contains alphanumeric authentication codes to be used by the president to verify their identity.
For the duration of their term, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance will be accompanied by the tools necessary to launch a nuclear attack. “Wherever they go, whatever they’re doing, there will always be a military aide with them with the satchel, just in case,” Stephen Schwartz, a nonresident fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, told Truthout.
. . . and then there is this . . .
Trump’s Inauguration Speech Threatened New Depths of State Cruelty
President Donald Trump gives his inaugural address after being sworn in at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson – Pool / Getty Images
Trump’s Inauguration Speech Threatened New Depths of State Cruelty
In his 2017 speech, Trump pretended to stand with “struggling families.” This time, the emphasis was solely on cruelty.
Today we began living an even more threatening way of life under a Trump’s evil and obvious concept of brutal unamerican authoritarianism. We brought it on ourselves through our complacency, apathy, and a mass lack of care and ignorance of how the Worlds’ work. I have spent the last two and a half years trying to relate my own point of view, using some six or more media outlets, so that’s how I know that there has been little interest in the average human’s thoughts about saving his own skin. I pity other professional and commercial outlets who stay afloat through virtually deaf ears as well, relying on advertising to try to awaken a World of blind deafness.
I have, for many years, warned and pleaded through my website about our predominately sad human habit of apathetic ignorance, which is what “politicians”, including Donald J. Trump thrive on. As Albert Einstein and other insightful, but honest and aware, insightful world leaders have told us over and over, curiosity and imagination are more important than education and intelligence. But we are too limited in those qualities to learn from these two simple day-to-day areas of wakefulness. We brought it all — our future I mean — on ourselves. Following is a description of my own mythical hope for a better way of life from what I long ago grew to understand about a better future for our human ways of life by facing the tangled web of how it works in its multiple ways, and finding a way to separate the wheat from the chaff:
Lloyd Albert Williams-Pendergraft’s multi-faceted website is a dank and dark, partly cloudy, but hopeful, pre-dystopian liberalist feministic opinion place dedicated to advocating today for a better, more environmentally and socially friendly, multi-world of global peace, freedom, and unity instead of the obvious alternative.
For about two and a half years, I have posted here (and elsewhere) daily about the terrible doomsday to come courtesy of a multi-World full of nuclear holocaust weapons of mass destruction that may decimate humanity and other life as we now know it on planet Earth.
We’ve had our chance to make it right, but I fear this election and swearing in of a faux-American leader on January 20th— a despicable man whom a caring Parallel World of us have long despised — has brought humanity all around the Parallel Worlds of our Moon to our knees and the ultimate price will be paid soon . . . (I can only hope for all of us that I am wrong.) ~llaw
The following “Truthout” stories, both brief and to-the-point are from “Truthout”,
In his 2017 speech, Trump pretended to stand with “struggling families.” This time, the emphasis was solely on cruelty.
It matters what presidents say in their inauguration speeches. The words set the tone for what follows. They do so, whether the president succeeds or fails.
Go back to Barack Obama’s first inauguration speech, and what you notice now is language itself breaking under the pressure that president placed on it. He encouraged Americans to believe that theirs was still a land of opportunity, that journeys like his own could endlessly be repeated. Obama noted what he’d achieved, by winning the election, so that “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served in a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.” Obama needed words to act like magic. All his elegant phrases had an intended purpose. A nod toward the financial crisis as “a consequence of greed and irresponsibility” was an attempt to prompt humility in how the rich and powerful ruled the U.S. and the world. The plan seems quixotic now — why should the rich care about being nice, if they might instead be ever greedier, ever more powerful, ever more dominant in relation to the rest of us?
In Donald Trump’s first inauguration speech, the message was sinister. Notably, the 2017 speech repeatedly implies his supporters are the new poor, the new wretched of the Earth. This is the Republican Party of 2017 we are talking about, after all; still the party of the WASPs, of old money and Wall Street influence, and a voting base which was still significantly more affluent than its Democratic counterpart. Nonetheless, Trump called his supporters “the people,” “struggling families” and “American workers.”
That first move led him to a second deceit. Why were the workers poor? His answer was the Democrats. “A small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government,” Trump told his audience. As an argument, it made no sense — the likes of Tim Walz or even Nancy Pelosi aren’t struggling, but their wealth isn’t a tenth of Donald Trump’s. Whatever they have gained from collaborating in workers’ exploitation, he has taken many times more. Trump didn’t need his inauguration speech to be accurate or logical. What he wanted was something else. “Washington flourished,” he said, “but the people did not share in its wealth … while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.” Trump had already set himself the goal of building a private movement, one that would be loyal to him personally, and go wherever he led it. He and his speechwriters were setting in place the rhetorical strategies that would culminate four years later with Trump promising to “fight like hell,” as his supporters attacked Capitol Hill.
Compare Trump’s two inauguration speeches, and some of the biggest differences are in the context. In 2017, Trump announced no more than two executive orders on the day of his inauguration, and one of them was a policy he hated — keeping the Affordable Care Act going. Eight years later, Trump used his speech to announce, supposedly, 200 executive orders. He promised to “declare a national emergency at our southern border,” a mechanism, in other words, to create a near future in which those who travel for work are not just deported, but are treated as outside the law, so that any amount of violence against them is legitimate.
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The Yellowstone Caldera is a supervolcano that formed thousands of years ago and its thermal beginnings were spurred by heat in the earth’s core. This …
The Make America Great Again slogan is at the core of the U.S. rhetorics of refusal. (See Credits in the Asian Times article)
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with THE RISKS & CONSEQUENCES OF TOMORROW
As Donald J. Trump and his agenda becomes reality today, this is the last of my consecutive articles questioning his personal as well as his forthcoming administration’s future ability to do the right thing for the U.S. and the world. It, of course, will also be the last post on this particular subject before we begin to see what I sadly think of as the beginning of the end. All you really have to do is read the final paragraph of the story and you will know how the world defines and despises America’s “colonial” policy that creates isolation, animosity, hatred and/or occupation of other human characteristics and other countries.
Better still, I will post that last paragraph for you right here and now. It says a lot about our world-view and our own political and military policies:
“The United States boasts the world’s strongest military establishment. The dominant rhetoric in the United States casts everything it does as self-defense necessitated by foreign enemies.”
But I recommend that you read the rest of this short but meaningful article. It clearly explains why Trump’s purpose is all about using America to conquer the world and make himself “The King”. ~llaw
Rhetorics of refusal deny America’s deep decline
Deliberate denial of societal ills and problems displaces navigating the contradictions that cause and perpetuate them
‘Make America Great Again’ slogan is at the core of US rhetorics of refusal. Image: X Screengrab
Societies survive and grow when they successfully navigate their contradictions. Eventually, however, accumulating contradictions overwhelm existing means of navigating them.
Then social problems arise that persist or worsen inside such societies because they are unsuccessfully navigated or go unattended. Sometimes, the dominant conscious reaction to such social problems is denial, a refusal to see them.
Denial of internal social problems displaces navigating the contradictions that cause them. The resulting social decline, like the set of internal contradictions it reflects, is denied and ignored. Instead, narratives or rhetorics can arise that position such societies as victims of abuse by foreigners.
The United States in 2025 illustrates this process: its rhetorics of refusal aim to end its victimization.
In today’s United States, one such rhetoric refuses to allow continued abuse by foreigners “threatening our national security.” This rhetoric blames bad US political leadership for its failure to put America first and thereby make it great again.
Another rhetoric demands that “we” refuse to allow “our democracy” to be destroyed by foreign enemies (and their domestic equivalents): people who are said to hate, not understand, or undervalue “our democracy.”
Still another rhetoric of refusal sees foreigners “cheating” the United States in trade and migration processes. Most Americans embrace one or more of such rhetorics. Yet, as we propose to show here, such rhetorics are ever less effective.
One reactionary rhetoric, Trump’s, gestures toward former greatness by literally renewing American imperialism. He threatens to retake the Panama Canal, change Canada into the 51st of the United States, conquer Greenland from Denmark, and possibly invade Mexico.
All those foreigners are said to threaten national security or else “cheat” the United States. Trump’s typical bloviating aside, this is remarkable expansionism. Such repeated colonialist gestures feed broader notions of making America greater again.
Colonialism repeatedly helped European capitalism navigate its internal contradictions (temporarily escaping the social problems it caused). Eventually, however, it could no longer do so. After World War II, anti-colonialism limited that escape.
The subsequent European neo-colonialisms and the informal colonialism of the American empire had shorter life spans. China and the rest of the BRICS countries are now everywhere closing that escape. Hence the frustrated rage of Trump’s insistence on refusing that ending by deliberately reopening the idea of an escape hatch of colonial expansions.
It resembles Netanyahu’s idea (if not yet his violence) in trying to reopen that hatch for Israel by driving Palestinians out of Gaza. United States support for Netanyahu likewise associates the US with colonialist violence in a world overwhelmingly committed to end colonialism and its unwanted legacy.
The United States boasts the world’s strongest military establishment. The dominant rhetoric in the United States casts everything it does as self-defense necessitated by foreign enemies.
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
(Please note that the Sunday and Saturday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, following Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
US-based Clean Core Thorium Energy, or CCTE, is seeking approvals for its fuel technology, which pairs the radioactive metal with enriched uranium and …
… caldera — a gigantic volcanic crater naturally created hundreds of thousands of years ago. … What Would Happen If Yellowstone’s Supervolcano Erupted?
In order to keep abreast of the weekend nuclear news, I will post Saturday and Sunday’s news, but without editorial comment. If a weekend story warrants a critical review, it will show up on Monday’s posts . . .
If you are not familiar with the weekday daily blog post, this is how the nuclear news post works . . . llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… about nuclear power and willingness to improve relations with the United States. … Why Cameco, Oklo, and Nano Nuclear Were All Soaring Today. Shares …
The problem for the U.S. arises when it comes to turning all that crude oil production into usable gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. There are about 130 …
On Jan. 17, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP), Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), and U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Company announced that …
In the early 1990s, I worked at Commonwealth Edison in Chicago. At that time, the company operated the Zion Nuclear Power Station, the second-largest …
Amazing Device Lights Up Dark Countertops and Fixes Dark Kitchens · Ad. “There Will Be Eruptions”: Concerns Mount as Yellowstone Supervolcano Activity …
In order to keep abreast of the weekend nuclear news, I will post Saturday and Sunday’s news, but without editorial comment. If a weekend story warrants a critical review, it will show up on Monday’s posts . . .
If you are not familiar with the weekday daily blog post, this is how the nuclear news post works . . . llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… Statehouse News BureauTM. Menu. WKSU HD1. The World. WKSU HD1. The World. Next Up: 4:00 PM All Things Considered. 0:00. 0:00. The World. WKSU HD1. 0: …
In many countries large-scale nuclear reactors have provided the baseload – the 24/7 supply of electricity we all have relied on for five decades. To …
