Donald Trump knows exactly fuck all about nuclear weapons policy or deterrence theory. Unfortunately, he’s hardly alone in his ignorance.
While a number of nuclear weapons and weapon delivery systems such as the BGM-109 Ground Launched Cruise Missile, the UGM-96 ‘Trident C-4’ SLBM, the and the LGM-25C ‘Titan II’, LGM-30F ‘Minuteman II’ and LGM-118A ‘Peacekeeper’ ICBMs have been retired since the end of the Cold War, the United States maintains an active stockpile of gravity bombs (B-61), SLBMs (UGM-133 ‘Trident D-5’), and ICBMs (LGM-30G ‘Minuteman III’), all of which can be deployed rapidly upon executive order. The United States also maintains an OPLAN for deployment or response from an attack which is updated periodically, the details of which are classified but address the known security threats and responses. (BTW, the reduction in nuclear arsenals has less to do with the real or perceived need for such weapons and more about the extreme cost of having to maintain and upgrade the weapons and delivery systmes.)
Nuclear weapons are not intended to be ‘used’ in the sense of ever having to launch them. They are, instead, ostensibly deterrence weapons (e.g. they prevent an opponent from escallating warfare too extensively), but also function as political chits in order to gain attention and favorable treatment under duress from other powers, a lesson that China, and more recently, North Korea have learned very well. Because of the scale of damage of these weapons and the lack of consideration or effort to deploy them, they are different from any conventional weapon. The danger isn’t so much that a rational actor (e.g. a legitimate head of government) will knowingly and wilfully instigate nuclear conflict, but rather that either sabotage or misinformation in the ‘fog of war’ will result in an unintended launch and use of weapons by one state against another, precipitating a large scale response and all that comes with it.
There is also the potential for a non-state actor to acquire and use nuclear weapons. Fortunately, weapons developed by the US, the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and (presuambly) the Peoples Republic of China and India have sophsticated interlocks (generally referred to as Permissive Action Links) that prevent an unauthorized user from effecting detonation of a weapon. (It is possible to get partial detonation by sabotage but the result will only be a low grade fizzle or disperal of nuclear material with no energetic fission yield.). Weapons developed by nascent nuclear powers such as Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, et cetera may not have these controls and be more vulnerable to capture and use by rogue factions of a nation’s military or private actors. (BTW, the claim that there are unaccounted for weapons from the former Soviet arsenal is untrue, and even if it were several components in the detonation systems and fission boost injection systems would be aged out in any case.).
However, again, possession of such weapons is more useful than the actual application of them, even for “crazy” regimes like North Korea. This isn’t to say that some organization hell bent on nuclear terrorism couldn’t deploy and use such a device, but the threat of wide scale attack is, at this point, slim, except for the possibility of a false positive indication of imminent attack. This is not a hypothetical; both the United States and the former Soviet Union/Russia have seen instances where early warning systems indicated an attack where none was in progress, and as other nations build up arsenals and warning capability, safeguards against false positives indications should be a part of nuclear surity planning, especially in the case of ‘launch on warning’ status for deterrence theory.
As for the effects of nuclear weapons, there are plenty of resources online including a book published by the Department of Energy and later the National Nuclear Security Agency with that title, the Federation of American Scientists website, and MissileThreat.com addressing nuclear weapon delivery systems and effects. The worst apocalypic fears of a world rendered sterile from a global nuclear exchange, and the persistance of the “nuclear winter” effect are both overstated, but the degree to which even a limited nuclear exchange could damage the world economy and result in extensive mortality and morbidity beyond the direct effects of blast, ionizing radiation, and fallout should not be downplayed by anyone who is evaluating the impact that a nuclear exchange would have. A single high altitude nuclear blast above the continental United States optimized for x-ray yield could effectively destroy much of the communications and power transmission infrastructure that we rely upon, and it would take at least a decade or more to rebuild this from scratch notwithstading the ancillary effects on our economic ability to preservere in such a scenario. A few well placed blasts just east of the Rocky Mountains, salted with fissionable actinides could spread enough persistant fallout across the Midwest to render the “Breadbasket of America” unusable for years until topsoil is removed and replaced. A single attack in Midtown Manhattan or San Francisco would destroy trillions of dollars in real estate and financial institutions. We would survive, but the cost is almost incalculable, and worse yet is the sense of vulnerability this would create.
Trump is blathering on, and even if he were sincere in his intentions, it would take more than two presidential administrations to design, develop, and deploy new generations of nuclear weapons and modern delivery systems, especially since most of the facilities used in the production of weapon-grade nuclear material in the United States (primarily the Savanah River and Hanford Sites) have been deactivated and are currently in the process of being remediated. Just re-establishing this capability, even assuming no effective political opposition, would be the work of a decade or more.
Stranger