The next time they have the opportunity, one of the right-wing influencers who now dominate the White House press corps should ask President Donald Trump if he happened to watch “House Full of Dynamite,” Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, when he was traveling this week. It’s a chilling movie about a nuclear strike on the United States, and since he seems to be suddenly concerned about America’s nuclear arsenal for no apparent reason, it would be fair to ask if the film was behind his startling announcement on his way back from Asia that he was ordering the immediate resumption of nuclear testing after a three decade moratorium.
Don’t laugh. It’s as plausible an explanation for his confusing order as anything else, because his stated reason — that other countries are testing their nuclear weapons — is simply not true. The only country to hold such tests in recent times is North Korea, where Kim Jong Un continued to evaluate his nuclear capability, despite all the happy talk and “love letters” between Trump and his good buddy. None of the nuclear powers have tested any weapons since the 1990s.
It’s possible that he got a look at last week’s footage of Russian President Vladimir Putin, dressed in military uniform and sitting alone at a big table, while facing two big screens that showed Defense Minister Andrey Belousov and his deputy, Valery Gerasimov, directing drills of the country’s strategic nuclear forces. Did Trump think they were actually testing nuclear weapons? Or maybe he just misunderstood the Oct. 26 announcement from the Russians: That they were testing a nuclear powered cruise missile, and he thought it was a weapon.
What matters is that Trump is the only person in the United States who can order a nuclear strike — and it’s clear he’s just as clueless about that existential threat as he is about most everything else.
Who knows. What matters is that Trump is the only person in the United States who can order a nuclear strike — and it’s clear he’s just as clueless about that existential threat as he is about most everything else.
Like everything else, Trump believes he is an expert on the subject. By now, everyone is familiar with the fact that his uncle, Dr. John G. Trump, was a physicist and engineer who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Trump has long contended that, because they share “good genes,” this familial connection proves his own brilliance. Any time a scientific subject comes up, he will mention his uncle as testament to his own expertise — particularly when it comes to the nuclear threat. As Trump explained on the campaign trail in July 2016, “Nuclear is so powerful, my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago.”
As with so many other issues, Trump’s beliefs were formed when he was a young man, and they appear to be based on a very shallow understanding of the subject. In November 1984, at the behest of his mentor Roy Cohn and just after Ronald Reagan’s reelection as president, Trump gave an interview to the Washington Post declaring his desire to negotiate an arms agreement with the Soviet Union. But importantly, he withheld specific plans because he didn’t want to tip his hand:
He could learn about missiles, quickly, [Trump] says. “It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles . . . I think I know most of it anyway. You’re talking about just getting updated on a situation . . . You know who really wants me to do this? Roy . . . I’d do it in a second.”
A few years later during a Playboy interview, Trump said, “I’ve always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it’s a very important element in my thought process… I believe the greatest of all stupidities is people’s believing it will never happen because everybody knows how destructive it will be, so nobody uses weapons. What bulls**t.”
When he ran for president in 2016, the issue came up several times. MSNBC reported that he had repeatedly asked his foreign policy advisers why the U.S. couldn’t use nuclear weapons. He told host Chris Matthews that he would consider using them, and when pressed on his comments, Trump asked, “Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?” (The U.S. doesn’t make any new nuclear weapons.) In a primary debate, he was asked about the nuclear triad and clearly had no idea what they were talking about, which suggested that he never did get around to studying up on the subject.
Most shockingly, during his first term it was reported that, when it was explained in a Pentagon briefing that the U.S. once had over 30,000 nuclear warheads and only had a tenth of that now, Trump apparently didn’t realize there had been successful arms control agreements going back 50 years. On more than one occasion he asked why he couldn’t have as many nuclear weapons as previous presidents had. It’s very sad that Uncle John Trump isn’t still alive so that he could give his nephew some more lessons in nuclear power, because he’s obviously forgotten his earlier ones.
In the early days of his first term, Trump used to let threats of nuclear annihilation fly with some frequency. Before they became pals, he taunted North Korean president Kim Jong Un for his missile tests with tweets declaring that he would rain down “fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen” and calling him “little rocket man” if he didn’t stop. (He didn’t stop.)
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Eight years later, the problem is that there’s no one around to school him anymore. Many of the people in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon are war-mongers who believe that nuclear weapons should be on the table. The current Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge A. Colby, conceived a new strategic posture during Trump’s first term that recommended a much looser nuclear policy — including their use in response to a cyber attack.
There is no need for nuclear tests. The United States has a sophisticated testing system that doesn’t require setting off explosions, and when it comes to deterrence, nobody in the world assumes that America’s arsenal is full of duds. But as Tom Nichols writes in The Atlantic, the weapons do serve a purpose that may appeal to Trump and his allies:
Nuclear tests don’t make much sense for U.S. national security, but they’re a great way to raise international tensions. During the Cold War, the superpowers sometimes engaged in nuclear tests as a way of signaling nerve and resolve. Unfortunately, these tests served mostly to put both East and West on edge, pollute parts of the United States and the former Soviet Union, and make a lot of people sick.
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If Trump really did get nervous about the nuclear arsenal after watching “House Full of Dynamite,” then he got the plot all wrong. It wasn’t a nuclear missile that failed to work, it was an interceptor. (The Pentagon has been furious at the film’s suggestions that such a situation could happen.) Considering how little he still knows about this subject, it wouldn’t be a surprise.
More disturbing for the general audience watching it, the film features a group of experienced people who take their jobs seriously. They know what they’re doing in this moment of existential threat. It’s very tense, a viewing experience that’s even more nerve-wracking if you momentarily contemplate the collection of yes-men the Trump administration has installed in the same roles. As for the top job? Donald Trump being the one to make the ultimate decision is simply terrifying.
