The Threat of Nuclear Destruction

Under President Clinton, the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) wrote a white paper titled “Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence.” STRATCOM wrote, “Nuclear weapons are our most potent tool of deterrence.” STRATCOM continued, “It hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool-headed… That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries.”

Irrationality and vindictiveness is the policy of US nuclear deterrence. The State Department wrote, “According to H.R. Haldeman, the President’s Assistant, Nixon intentionally planned to signal to Moscow and Hanoi that he was a ‘madman’ capable of any irrational deed… including using nuclear weapons.” President Nixon said, “I call it the Madman Theory.” STRATCOM elaborated, “Nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict in which the US is engaged,” and “the threat of use of nuclear weapons will continue to be our top military strategy.”

Former head of STRATCOM, General Lee Butler, said, “We escaped the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust by… divine intervention,” and human intervention. The Guardian wrote, “If you were born before 27 October 1962,” Soviet submarine brigade chief of staff Vasili Arkhipov, “saved your life.” That day of the Cuban Missile Crisis “was the most dangerous day in history.” Arkiphov was “The Man Who Saved the World”. He avoided “making the potentially catastrophic decision to launch a nuclear attack.”

President Reagan admitted, “Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike.” In 1983, the US and NATO “launched a nuclear war against its nemesis, the Warsaw Pact,” called “Able Archer 83.” The National Security Agency described Able Archer 83 as “the most dangerous Soviet-American confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Stanislav Petrov became the second man who “Saved the World”. The Arms Control Association wrote that Petrov “detected what appeared to be five approaching U.S. nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.” Petrov dismissed the false alarm.

Last Wednesday was the 80th anniversary of when the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. Three days later, “Fat Man” detonated over Nagasaki. The Nation wrote, “The lives of 135,000 to 300,000 mostly Japanese women, children, and old people were sacrificed.” Truman’s chief of staff, William Leahy, said that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated.” We “adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.” Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower, said, “The Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein said the threat of nuclear destruction was “stark and dreadful, and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race: or shall mankind renounce war?” Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump’s answer was: we shall put an end to the human race.

Anton Porcari

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