Donald Trump has made the world go nuclear

Donald Trump has always believed himself to be an expert at what he calls “nuclear,” due to the fact that his uncle, John Trump, was a physicist who taught at MIT. The president has made it clear on numerous occasions that his uncle’s expertise transferred to him due to the Trump family’s superior genes. 

It’s too bad Dr. Trump died in 1985, because the president could use a refresher course on the subject. He certainly hasn’t learned anything new by virtue of the Oval Office. 

We may never fully know what led Trump to start his war with Iran, which has been going on for nearly six months. Whether he was feeling his oats after the successful kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro or by Israel’s assurances that the Iranian regime was so weak it would crumble quickly under American bombardment, Trump decided to make the move on impulse without having a specific goal or strategy other than “winning.” 

As the war has dragged on, Trump’s stated motives for the offensive have also changed. First, the administration claimed he wanted to liberate the Iranian people. Then it became regime change, then removing Iran’s capability to threaten its neighbors and finally, almost as an afterthought, the president said it was to prevent them from developing a nuclear weapon. Understandably, the administration was reluctant to use that rationale at first since Trump had already declared that along with Israel, he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program following joint airstrikes in 2025. But as the war has progressed into a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, through which oil was flowing freely before it began, the issue of nuclear weapons is all they have left to explain the debacle. 

Trump and administration officials have taken to declaring that the economic sacrifices Americans are making for his war are patriotic gestures to ensure that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon — a pledge that had already been successfully obtained through the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated under President Barack Obama, which Trump tore up upon taking office the first time, and then supposedly obtained again through the force of several bunker-buster bombs in 2025. According to the polls, most Americans aren’t buying that claim. 

At the same time, still sulking that U.S. allies didn’t rush to jump into his Iran quagmire, Trump has decided to pick up where he left off in 2020 with his alleged good pal Kim Jong Un and punish America’s longtime ally South Korea by canceling some military exercises after the country, in his words, “refus[ed] to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Anyone else would have seen how insensitive such a comment would be to a country that has been forced to stand by as the unhinged, totalitarian dictatorship to its north built up a nuclear arsenal aimed at them and their allies, all while the U.S. brayed about “denuclearization.” 

In 2006 it was confirmed that North Korea had successfully conducted an underground nuclear test and was on its way to building a bomb. By the time Trump took office in 2017, according to estimates, the country had enough fissile material for 60 weapons and they were rapidly developing a ballistic missile program. At first Trump did his usual insult-and-threat routine, and he then hit upon the idea that he could personally talk Kim out of the program. The famous bromance began.

When Trump held his first summit with the North Korean leader, giving him the international prestige he had always wanted while getting nothing in return, the president was asked how long he thought it would take for North Korea to denuclearize. “Well, I don’t know, when you say a long time,” he said. “I think we will do it as fast as it can be done scientifically, as fast as it can be done mechanically . . . It’s a 15-year process. Assuming you wanted to do it quickly, I don’t believe that . . . You’re talking about a very complex subject. It’s not just like, ‘Oh, gee. Let’s get rid of the nukes.’”

He also mentioned his Uncle John. 

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For all the “beautiful letters” Trump exchanged with Kim, by the end of his first term, North Korea had kept enriching plutonium at a rapid pace, developing short-range missiles thought to be meant for tactical weapons purposes, and in October 2020, it unveiled a massive intercontinental ballistic missile designed to carry multiple warheads that could theoretically overwhelm U.S. defenses. There was no word on whether Kim sent Trump a nice note telling him about it.

Today, North Korea and Russia have formed a strategic partnership in which the North Koreans supply soldiers and arms against Ukraine and Russia provides food aid and advanced technology in return. They have become vital allies. As we know, Trump thinks he is very close with both leaders, so there is no threat from either that he needs to worry about. At this point, he just wants to punish allies he believes have not followed his orders, and he has shown a willingness to use whatever levers he has. 

In some ways, the situation is reminiscent of an argument that raged in the 1950s over “who lost China.” The idea was that the left, and specifically the Truman administration, had allowed the country’s communist revolution to prevail, a notion that fed into the red-baiting Cold War rhetoric that dominated the national discourse for decades. In fact, the escalation in Vietnam and the subsequent quagmire that resulted could largely be attributed to the Democratic Party’s fear of being blamed for “losing Vietnam.”

We now find ourselves in a similar situation at the hands of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, and the stakes are high. It can be argued, as it was with China, that there is no single action that could have prevented North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons. Despite great efforts to use the diplomatic and economic route to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it’s supposedly been made clear now that any president can simply come in and abrogate them, so what’s the point? 

The problem stems from the contrast between the way Trump — in contrast to all other presidents — has treated the North Korean leadership and the way he has gone about dealing with Iran. His cloying deference to Pyongyang and his crude antagonism toward Tehran have sent one very strong message to every country on the planet: Get a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible if you want the United States to treat you with respect. 

There’s a question historians will one day ask of this era: Who started the global nuclear arms race? The answer to that is complicated, but one name will always rise to the top of any list: Donald Trump.