Tag Archives: nuclear risk

the nuclear football – Trump at least as insane as Nixon, without the courageous people around him willing to protect the rest of us

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This is a statement by 36 doctors (by my count, but I only counted once) from the April 30, 2026 U.S. Senate Congressional Record. Sure, it’s political, did I mention this is the SENATE?

Objectively observable signs of serious medical concern include…Escalating violence that threatens national and global stability. As Commander in-Chief of our military—more than 5,000 nuclear warheads in inter-continental missile silos, on submarines, and in bombers around the world, are ready for launch solely upon his order, and no one now has the authority to countermand his order.

On August 7, 1974, as President Richard Nixon’s impeachment loomed, White House Chief of Staff, General Alexander Haig, was so alarmed by Nixon’s wandering the halls of the White House at night, sleepless, distraught, and heavily intoxicated, talking out loud to portraits of past presidents on the walls, that he alerted Defense Secretary James Schlesinger. Equally alarmed, Schlesinger directed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General George S. Brown, that any military orders from Nixon—especially nuclear ones—first be cleared through him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It has been reported that the nuclear ‘‘football’’ that contains the codes for a nuclear launch was then quietly removed from Nixon’s control.

The public and those with the power to address such potentially catastrophic conditions must ask themselves if they—and we— are confident that officials such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio would do the same.

Well, my first thought is this may have technically been a military coup. My second thought is that no single person should have the power to order a violent attack, nuclear or otherwise. Ideally, you’d like a Congressional vote. Realistically, there have to be some sort of emergency provisions for a quick decision. Granted, the decision might need to happen fast, but there should be ways in the modern age for say at least three people to confer quickly and make a decision. I suppose the decision makers should probably be elected civilians. Our current system puts us at the mercy of Mad King Donald with his finger on the trigger (although on the subject of the playground name calling our political discourse has devolved to, I am warming to Lame Duck Donald or Lame Donald Duck).

This might be taken down by the time you got a chance to read this post… I would like to see the Democrats recruit an actor or comedian who can do an entire debate in the persona of Donald Duck. If we aren’t going to be informed, we might as well be entertained. Then again, I find this just a bit too insane and mean spirited to be truly funny.

the new nuclear risk

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The biggest risk of nuclear war at the moment is probably not the use of city-busting “strategic” weapons, like we were all terrified of from the 1960s to the 1980s, but a decision by some party that the use of smaller “tactical” weapons on the “battlefield” is worth the risk. The U.S., Israel, Russia, and European NATO allies all seem like possible perpetrators. Their use wouldn’t necessarily be a civilization-threatening event, just a really big bang. And that is the risk – that these weapons erode the nuclear taboo, taking a nuclear attack from something thinkable to something that might be considered a viable strategy. And once we let this genie out of the bottle, it could escalate to more frequent use by more parties and more powerful weapons from there. So let’s not. Maybe international nuclear disarmament is too much to hope for at this point, but maybe an international no-first-use agreement could be something to shoot for, when and if current tensions in the Middle East and Europe finally die down.

This analysis is from something called the “Reality Based Analysis Group“, which is not a professional journalistic outlet but does not seem to have a political axe to grind.

…nuclear weapons are more likely to be used than not. Russian deterrence failed, and these attacks have led to escalation, which many have argued was precisely the objective. Every attack above [referring to Ukrainian attacks inside Russia’s borders], as well as many more, was met with a firm and at times overwhelming conventional response, including new and innovative weapons systems such as the jet-powered Geran-4 drones (based on the original Iranian Shaheds) and the still somewhat mysterious Oreshnik. However, possession of the world’s greatest nuclear arsenal did not prevent these attacks and did not produce a nuclear response. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that a nuclear deterrent deters regime change operations but nothing more, and even here deterrence has failed. Strategic weapons have become too powerful and mutually assured destruction has set the stakes too high, thus if everyone knows that a country is unlikely to end life as we know it, the weapons fail to deter anything but the end of the world. Unless, of course, smaller, tactical nuclear weapons are brought into the equation and normalized for use. Which is exactly what is happening now…

States rarely move swiftly and the change was a long time coming. Publicly, it originated with Dr. Sergei Karaganov, professor and honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, and his June 2023 article “A Difficult but Necessary Decision.” In this Karaganov explained that the existential fear of nuclear weapons had dissipated since the end of the Cold War and that the decades following the dissolution of the Soviet Union had resulted in a steady strategic carelessness which, to Karaganov, proved that nuclear weapons were no longer deterring the behavior they were designed to deter. His reasoning was compelling but his conclusion was swiftly rejected, with President Putin publicly distancing himself, and thus the State, from Karaganov’s suggestion: in order to restore deterrence, Russia should lower its threshold for nuclear weapons usage and demonstrate clear willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons against European and NATO targets. The distance between President Putin’s 2023 public stance and Russia’s current policy has been shrinking steadily ever since Karaganov’s paper, in large part due to the abovementioned steady escalation of Ukrainian/NATO strikes against Russian territory and strategic targets.

In early August 2026, the United States moved publicly in the same direction. Remorselessly coinciding with the 81st anniversary of the US atomic attack on civilian Hiroshima, Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s “Under Secretary of War for Policy,” revealed a new potential strategy for nuclear weapons, shifting the emphasis to shorter-range, regional use rather than large-scale strategic launches. While refraining from using the word “tactical,” the logic was explained that deterrence required an adversary to believe that nuclear weapons could and would be used, which is not the case with the larger “strategic” arsenal and doctrine. Basically, if a country’s use of nuclear weapons ensures the destruction of that country’s cities, an adversary knows that they will not be used for anything other than a truly existential threat. Thus, strategic nuclear weapons (those which destroy a city) are not a deterrent in regional conflicts, however serious. Lower-yield weapons (tactical weapons) which can obliterate an airport, a military base, or a neighborhood, on the other hand, are very easy for an adversary to envisage being used. As such, tactical nuclear weapons are a threat an enemy can believe in and thus wish to avoid. Hence, their possible use renews the nuclear deterrent. It also makes their usage much more likely, irrespective of the human cost or the Law of War. Thirty years ago, in 1996, the International Court of Justice found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons was contrary to the Law of War, with one possible exception on which it declined to rule: the case of extreme self-defense in which “the very survival of a State would be at stake.” Tactical nuclear weapons, normalized for regional conflict, obviate this legal finding and undo at a stroke the legal limitations put in place since the Second World War.

Meanwhile, China has been making…entirely reasonable public statements pointing out how insane all of this is. Once again, they seem to be the grownup in the room at the moment.

Conflicts to Watch in 2026

The Council on Foreign Relations has a list of conflicts to watch. I’ll highlight a few below:

  • “U.S. military operations targeting transnational criminal groups escalate to direct strikes in Venezuela, destabilizing the Maduro government” – marked “probably or highly likely to occur in 2026” when this was written in December 2025. It took three days.
  • high likelihood, high impact: conflict over (clearly illegal under international law) Israeli settlements in the West Bank; “renewed fighting in the Gaza strip” is also listed as depressingly “likely to occur” [I find this deeply tragic and a human rights catastrophe for everyone involved. I am not sure I find it hugely consequential for global war and peace. I think it is more politically correct for the U.S. media to treat it as such. There are other human rights catastrophes going on in the world which will not get equal media or political attention.]
  • “An intensification of the Russia-Ukraine war, caused by expanding attacks on each side’s critical infrastructure and population centers” – also listed as “probable or likely to occur” – so they don’t see this one dying down in 2026 either
  • “Renewed armed conflict between Iran and Israel” – they mark this one as “an even chance of occurring in 2026”
  • “A state or nonstate entity undertakes a highly disruptive, artificial intelligence–enabled cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure” – also marked as an even chance, and I find this one deeply disturbing
  • “Intensified military, economic, and political pressure by China on Taiwan precipitates a severe cross-strait crisis involving other countries in the region and the United States” – also marked as 50% likely to happen in 2026
  • “Armed clashes between Russia and one or more NATO member countries, precipitated by increasing Russian provocations toward European states” – 50% likely
  • “A resumption of North Korean nuclear weapons tests heightens tensions on the Korean Peninsula, triggering an armed confrontation involving other regional powers and the United States” – 50% likely

So the cyberattack we need to be ready for – are we? Not to worry, I am sure the tech companies that created the technology underlying the weapons also have massive government contracts to create counter-measures. Let’s hope the power stays on.

So if we were to gamble (which I guess we can on the futures sites), we would put even money on armed conflict breaking out in at least 2 of these 4 situations, and we should not expect to get through the year without at least one of them: (1) between Iran and Israel, with the U.S. pretending to be reluctantly dragged in [3 NUCLEAR STATES], (2) between China and Taiwan/U.S./Japan [2 NUCLEAR STATES, 1 THRESHOLD NUCLEAR STATE, 1 AMBIGUOUS THRESHOLD NUCLEAR CITY-STATELET], (3) Russia and NATO [4 NUCLEAR STATES], (4) North Korea and South Korea/U.S. [2 NUCLEAR STATES, 1 THRESHOLD NUCLEAR STATES].

There are a couple things they say are low likelihood, so at least we have these: a U.S. armed attack on Mexico, and a China/U.S. armed conflict over the Philippines.

terrible news on nuclear risk

The New York Times makes a very scary claim here.

The second big change arises from China’s nuclear ambitions. The country’s nuclear expansion is running at an even faster pace than American intelligence officials anticipated two years ago, driven by President Xi Jinping’s determination to scrap the decades-long strategy of maintaining a “minimum deterrent” to reach or exceed the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex is now the fastest growing in the world.

This is awful news. The U.S. and Russia certainly have no moral high ground here. They could have proposed to reduce their arsenals to a minimum credible deterrent in exchange for China not expanding theirs. I am not a person of vast intelligence, but I can see that this would benefit the world. You would have to “trust but verify” with a heavy international inspection regime of course, but there is plenty of Cold War precedence and experience with that.

I don’t trust the New York Times (or rather, the spies on their staff masquerading as professional journalists and thereby undermining all credibility of their actual professional journalists), and the paragraph above is not even the main point of the story. The main point of the story is supposedly the U.S. preparing for the possibility of a coordinated attack by both China and Russia. The way this was leaked to the press has a whiff of propaganda to me, but the possibility of three planet-ending nuclear arsenals rather than two is terrible news for the world’s overall nuclear risk whatever the sneaky intentions of this particular article.