Photo Source David Shankbone | CC BY 2.0
The frightening letter from a senior official in the Trump administration that appeared in the New York Times begs questions about the possibility of additional “misguided impulses” from the President that cannot be blocked. Unfortunately, there is a terrible precedent from the Nixon administration in 1973 during the October War, when President Richard M. Nixon was incapacitated and national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger recklessly and unnecessarily upgraded the nuclear alert to Defense Condition III.
Let’s review the bidding: the month of October occasioned the surprise Egyptian-Syrian attack against Israel as well as increasing evidence that President Nixon had obstructed justice in his effort to hide the crimes of Watergate. Nixon was preoccupied with the threat of impeachment, according to both Kissinger and the president’s military aide, General Alexander Haig.
In his memoirs, Kissinger maintained that he needed to send a significant military signal to the Soviet Union because of a “threatening” note from Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev during the late stages of the war. In fact, the note was neither a threat nor an ultimatum, and was similar to Brezhnev’s note to the Johnson administration during the Six-Day War of 1967. In 1967 and 1973, the Soviets were restrained and trying to get an end to the fighting, particularly in view of Israeli violations of a cease-fire that Washington and…