Trump relights the Cold War

On Wednesday evening, Donald Trump brought back another part of that 1950s golden age that his followers hold so dear — the nuclear arms race.

Everything about this post is wrong. Russia actually has more nuclear weapons (4,309) than the United States (3,700). If Trump is talking about active and deployed weapons, the U.S. does have a slight edge (1,770 vs. 1,718), but if he is talking about deployed weapons, China isn't third. It's well behind both France and the U.K.

But the numbers are the least of the issues with Trump's statement. His claim that he will have the Department of Defense–or War, in Trump parlance–start testing on "an equal basis" with other nations makes absolutely no sense.

No nation other than North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon in this century. Not Russia, not China, not the U.K., France, India, Pakistan, or everyone-pretends-not-to-know-but-we-know Israel. Russia declared a testing moratorium in 1990, two years before the last U.S. test. China announced it was ending its nuclear test program after a final explosion in 1996. India and Pakistan ended their testing programs in 1998.

Only Trump's pen pal Kim Jong Un has conducted a test this century. Even then, the last North Korean nuclear test was over eight years ago.

Conducting nuclear tests "on an equal basis" with other countries would mean no nuclear tests. But, speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump made it clear that he didn't know that.

"It had to do with others—they seemed to all be nuclear testing. We have more nuclear weapons than anybody. We don’t do testing. We halted it many years ago, but with others doing testing, I think it’s appropriate that we do also."

On one hand, this statement seems to be similar to all the other delusions that Trump routinely spews and that the press roundly fails to question. On the other hand, this is nothing like that. Because it's nukes.

Trump's announcement appears to be in response to a claim by Vladimir Putin that Russia successfully tested two weapons systems last week.

The first of these was a Poseidon "super torpedo," which the Russian dictator described as a weapon capable of causing a "tsunami." That torpedo is reportedly more of a nuclear-powered mini-sub, capable of relatively high speeds (for a sub) and traveling long distances to deliver a nuclear warhead.

There are a lot of questions. Many military experts doubt the Poseidon, formerly known under the codename "Status-6," is as capable as Putin claims. Others point out that Poseidon may have limited value in an actual conflict. Others question whether it exists at all.

The second of Putin's announced "super weapons tests" was of a Burevestnik cruise missile, which NATO has dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.

This missile reportedly uses a nuclear engine similar to those which the United States developed and discarded in the 1960s. If so, then the successful flight of the Burevestnik is a technical achievement. However, it doesn't mean that this missile automatically enjoys a faster speed or longer range than more conventional systems. Thermonuclear engines are heavy, and they are still constrained by the need for some gas that can be expelled to create propulsion. At best, they have a theoretical efficiency about two times that of conventional rockets, which may not be enough to offset the increased weight of the nuclear core and other components.

Despite Putin's claims and the rote recitation of many media outlets, this missile does not have "unlimited range," and it can not hover in the sky indefinitely waiting to strike. A nuclear engine is not magic.

Putin is obviously exaggerating the puissance of these systems. Russia has long depended on claims about its nuclear arsenal to get away with bloody mass murder. Putin has certainly waved the nuclear flag over and over as he has crushed towns and cities in Ukraine. This test announcement is just more of the same.

Critically, in neither of these tests did Russia actually explode a nuclear weapon. These may (or may not) have been nuclear-powered vehicles, but this was not a nuclear weapons test.

Trump may not understand that. Or he may simply be longing to order up a big boom boom for his pleasure.

It wouldn't be the first time. Trump also proposed a nuclear weapons test during his first term, as The Washington Post reported in 2020. That proposal drew a response that still holds true.

“It would be an invitation for other nuclear-armed countries to follow suit,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “It would be the starting gun to an unprecedented nuclear arms race."

In 1985, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons mounted on missiles, planes, and submarines ready to be fired at a moment's notice. Through forty years of the most difficult and delicate negotiations imaginable, there are now around 12,300 nuclear weapons in existence, with fewer than 4,000 actually deployed for use.

This is still a horrendous number; more than sufficient to see the effective end of human civilization if not the human species. Currently, this number is rising, not falling, as many nations, including China, are either adding to their arsenal or considering ways to acquire such weapons.

However, the reason for the recent increase is precisely the way that Russia has been allowed to bully Ukraine without interference by repeatedly bringing up the specter of nuclear war. Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons following the fall of the U.S.S.R. Russia then invaded and used its weapons to hold Ukraine's potential allies at bay.

That lesson hasn't gone unnoticed.

In addition, the New START treaty that sets a limit on both U.S. and Russian stockpiles is set to expire in February. Without diligent negotiation to extend this treaty, a reversal of 40 years of progress seems inevitable. A new generation of nuclear weapons could rapidly push the numbers back to where they were in the 1980s.

Trump's desire to backtrack into the land of duck and cover may be primarily fueled by a toddler's urge to break things, but it doesn't help that many of his most adamant supporters and advisers are accelerationists. They believe in a particularly toxic form of white supremacy that finds the current world just too messy and ... diverse. For them, the sooner we can bring on civilizational collapse, the sooner they can rule over the lily-white feudal post-apocalypse.

It's absolutely no coincidence that the same tech-bro billionaires who are propping up Trump and filling social media with the sickening scent of fascism are getting their doom bunkers ready to go. Zuckerberg is building massive batcaves in both Hawaii and California. Peter Thiel is digging his hole under New Zealand. Elon Musk is ready to crumple up this world and go elsewhere with his robots—assuming he can bring along enough breeding stock. Billionaires at other tech and investment firms have turned bunker size and opulence into the latest measure of wealth.

It's part of what writer Douglass Rushkoff calls "the Mindset."

Never before have our society’s most powerful players assumed that the primary impact of their own conquests would be to render the world itself unliveable for everyone else. Nor have they ever before had the technologies through which to programme their sensibilities into the very fabric of our society. The landscape is alive with algorithms and intelligences actively encouraging these selfish and isolationist outlooks. Those sociopathic enough to embrace them are rewarded with cash and control over the rest of us. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This is new.

Many of these tech billionaires seem to believe that the AI they are investing in so heavily will give them the destruction they want. But if they have to settle for the old-fashioned kind that comes with mushroom clouds, they'll take it.

They are agents of destruction. Trump is an agent of destruction. Equality, democracy, and peace are their targets.