President Reagan’s Advice to Mr. Trump on Nuclear Threats to Russia

What Mr. Trump does not understand about his juvenile social messaging spewing of taunts followed by ordering US nuclear submarines closer to Russia (Russia may only have 3-4 minutes to decide if US subs have attacked)—is his ignorance of how Russia thinks. He should read President Reagan’s memoir, in which he wrote:

“Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. In fact, I had difficulty accepting my own conclusion at first.”

He said he felt that, “it must be clear to anyone” that Americans were a moral people who, since the founding of the nation, “had always used our power only as a force for good in the world.” (This was before America engaged in wars of aggression based on lies in Afghanistan and Iraq. Clearly, from the Russian perspective, America is less trustworthy than during Reagan’s period.)

“During my first years in Washington,” Reagan said:

“I think many of us in the administration took it for granted that the Russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them. But the more experience I had with the Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike; because of this, and perhaps because of a sense of insecurity and paranoia with roots reaching back to the invasions of Russia by Napoleon and Hitler, they had aimed a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons at us.”

Both the US and Russia have admitted adopting “Doomsday Machines” which are still active These are computer run systems mandating all-out nuke launches by either nation should their capital cities be nuked–guaranteeing everybody dies if the elites die by nuke. This is some indicator of how the coming “Statesmanship by AI“ will function if computers are put in charge of weapons of mass destruction.

Reagan was shocked to learn he had 4-5 minutes to decide what to do if Russian nuke subs off the east coast of America launched at DC. Now Moscow has less with Trump moving American nuke subs closer. They may be Ohio class subs each carrying 24 missiles with 20 independently targetable nuke bombs able to strike 480 targets in Russia. Too bad Trump has not learned what Reagan did–Russians fear first strikes because they have been attacked by first strikes many a time over centuries, unlike America.

America has little experience with such first strike attacks, but recollecting the vicious response of America to the 9-11 attack (relatively minor compared to what Russia has experienced), it makes sense given its history that Russia harbors a heightened fear of such threats. Pre-emptive self-defense, a doctrine metastasizing across nations these days, may be regarded by Russia as a necessary response to Trump’s threat.

Perhaps now is the time to end the nuclear dictatorship in America, under which a single person decides whether to launch nuclear war? The unconstitutional delegation of the war-making power from Congress to America’s own Nuclear Dictator seems to have seriously undermined the values of the Republic itself, weakening and eroding the rule of law erected on the Constitution, checks and balances, and replacing it with a form of governance eerily reminiscent of that the Russian people suffer under Putin, the Russian Nuclear Dictator.

One cannot help but recall Pogo’s classic declaration: “We have met the enemy, and he is us!” If America apes its enemy to oppose it, by becoming the enemy, defeat has already occurred without a shot being fired.

Perhaps recognition of this can be the foundation for negotiating nuclear arms reductions and ending the nuclear sword of Damocles all nuclear dictatorships hang over all the peoples of the earth? Such a move by America, starting nuclear arms reduction talks, would demonstrate a moral leadership sadly lacking for several decades.

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