{"id":261556,"date":"2016-08-13T11:29:53","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T11:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-nuclear-breakfast-menu\/"},"modified":"2016-08-13T11:29:53","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T11:29:53","slug":"the-nuclear-breakfast-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-nuclear-breakfast-menu\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nuclear Breakfast Menu"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Donald Trump is a reckless fool. But the U.S. defense establishment is M.A.D.<\/p>\n

And herein lies one of the darker problems with the Trump candidacy, and the
\n reason why so many establishment conservatives are awkwardly distancing themselves
\n from America\u2019s leading narcissist \u2013 if not running screaming into the night
\n in fear for their lives (and everyone else\u2019s).<\/p>\n

Trump as commander in chief? Trump with his finger on the button?<\/p>\n

When the subject of nukes has come up in interviews, he has come across as
\n creepily na\u00efve. For instance, according to MSNBC<\/em>\u2019s Joe
\n Scarborough<\/a>, Trump allegedly hounded a foreign policy expert with the question:
\n \u201cIf we have them, why can\u2019t we use them?\u201d <\/p>\n

And when Chris Matthews, in another interview, scolded Trump for even suggesting
\n that maybe \u2013 maybe \u2013 launching a nuclear attack might be necessary someday,
\n he shot back: \u201cThen why are we making them? Why do we make them?\u201d<\/p>\n

America, America. This is why we\u2019re great. A clueless billionaire TV personality
\n can get within screaming distance of the presidency and, in the process, push
\n all sorts of (non-nuclear) buttons with his politically incorrect questions,
\n implications and assertions. I have no doubt that a huge part of Trump\u2019s popularity
\n is due to his aggressive naivet\u00e9. He doesn\u2019t know any more about this than Joe
\n Sixpack does, so the questions he asks are Average American questions. In the
\n process, he yanks the geopolitics of nuclear deterrence \u2013 the embedded insanity,
\n you might say, of Mutually Assured Destruction \u2013 out of the clutches of the
\n deep state and its secret priesthood.<\/p>\n

The last thing I want to see is Trump gaining admittance to this realm. But
\n his banging at the door may serve a valuable purpose. At the very least, it
\n brings certain realities into the consciousness of the American mainstream.<\/p>\n

The planet has been trapped \u2013 for the entirety of my lifetime \u2013 in a nuclear
\n standoff among various world powers. Even though the Cold War ended 25 years
\n ago, some 16,000 nuclear weapons still infest the planet; the United States
\n and Russia still have 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president has basically unconstrained authority to use nuclear weapons,
\n a seemingly insane system that flows pretty logically from America\u2019s strategic
\n doctrine on nuclear weapons,\u201d Zack
\n Beauchamp<\/a> wrote recently at Vox<\/em>. \u201cThe US needs a system to launch
\n weapons fast for deterrence to work properly, which means one person needs to
\n be able to order the use of nukes basically unencumbered. The president is the
\n only possible choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beauchamp quotes Michael Dobbs, a former military aide to President Bill Clinton,
\n who describes the target options contained within the \u201cnuclear football\u201d that
\n a US president has access to as \u201ca \u2018Denny\u2019s breakfast menu,\u2019 allowing presidents…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump is a reckless fool. But the U.S. defense establishment is M.A.D. And herein lies one of the darker problems with the Trump candidacy, and the reason why so many establishment conservatives are awkwardly distancing themselves from America\u2019s leading narcissist \u2013 if not running screaming into the night in fear for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-261556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}