“I tell you, ye have still chaos in you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
On January 27, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the hands of its “doomsday clock” to eighty-five seconds before midnight. This unprecedented move signified that the world has never been closer to nuclear war. Ipso facto, there could be no more urgent metaphor for planet earth.
But even the Bulletin’s 2026 Doomsday Clock statement stopped short of drawing the most politically sensitive conclusion: For the first time in history, the principal threat of nuclear war is an American president. More precisely, during the continuously dissembling Trump presidency,[1] the immediate casus belli atomicum is apt to be presidential miscalculation, psychological breakdown, cognitive impairment (including transient dementia) or outright irrationality.
There are many pertinent details. Somehow, since the start of the Cold War, the notion that the constitutional commander-in-chief should be able to launch US nuclear weapons on his own authority has been widely accepted by Americans. This is the case even though any such presumed authority would be unconstitutional prima facie.
Legal issues aside, there are no convincing strategic arguments for assigning the president effectively unchecked nuclear command authority. Today, credible US nuclear deterrence lies less in “hair trigger” nuclear readiness than was the case during the Cold War. Now, at least with regard to expectedly-rational nuclear adversaries, the plausibility of an “assuredly destructive” US nuclear retaliation lies beyond any reasonable doubt.
There is more. At some point, if a no-longer defensible enlargement of presidential military authority were to remain in force, a triumvirate of Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller could have final say on both national and planetary survival.[2] Could such a scenario be anything less than a hideous caricature of American and human progress? A prophetic answer was supplied by the ancient Roman philosopher Tertullian: “Credo quia absurdum.” “I believe because it is absurd.”
What have been determinable trajectories? When Donald J. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, prospects for a nuclear war were increased. Since the start of “Trump II,” the president has announced plans to resume nuclear weapons testing and enlarge America’s nuclear forces. Regarding his “plan for peace” in Ukraine, his proposal turned out to be an abjectly lawless surrender of a victim state to a Russian aggressor. In essence, Trump’s self-adoring plan was to reward Vladimir Putin’s Nuremberg-category crimes[3] (crimes of war; crimes against peace; crimes against humanity). Significantly, as an utterly incontestable principle of law and justice, no US president (or any other head of state) has the right to support an aggressor state over a victim state.
In a world afflicted by multiple and intersecting existential threats, nothing is more urgent than nuclear war avoidance. Accordingly, it is the responsibility of capable scholars and strategists engaged in supporting this goal to raise appropriate questions.[4] How could such thinkers best meet this indispensable goal? The answer lies in reason-based replies to the following interrelated questions:
- What intolerable nuclear hazards could arise under President Trump?
- How might these hazards involve US foreign relations, international law, national survival and stable world futures?
Looking ahead three more years, the always-underlying nuclear danger will be an unqualified American president who conspicuously values presumed personal advantage over authentic national security.[5] At some point, this defiling hierarchy of preferences could be rendered existential by (1) a nuclear crisis contrived by Trump; or (2) a “naturally occurring” nuclear crisis mismanaged by the president. Foreseeably, US president Trump will maintain extraordinary personal powers to order nuclear weapons use, powers that could spawn almost limitless harms. In a once-unimaginable narrative, President Donald Trump could side actively with the Russian aggressor against the NATO-supported victim.
Credo quia absurdum: “I believe because it is absurd.”
There will be background issues to consider. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and United States embraced certain asymmetrical nuclear doctrines. For Moscow, the critical escalatory threshold did not distinguish conventional weapons from nuclear weapons, but separated tactical nuclear weapons from strategic nuclear ordnance. For Washington, on the other hand, the relevant firebreak was the one separating conventional weapons from nuclear weapons. Today, from the standpoint of Washington’s nuclear doctrine, any crossing of the nuclear threshold by Moscow would still represent the beginnings of a no-holds-barred (and hence unmanageable) nuclear conflict.
But during Trump II, an axiomatic truth of US-Russian relations is being transformed. Presently, with the altogether realistic prospect of Russia facing off against NATO without the United States, or with Trump actually siding with Moscow, neither side could have any verifiable sense of acceptable firebreaks. Here, unforeseen ambiguities could undermine once “immutable” foundations of nuclear deterrence.
On its face, all such military scenarios are unprecedented or sui generis. With Donald Trump at the helm, the United States now faces multiple nuclear threats in variously bewildering iterations. Most urgently, America’s law-based security concerns should focus on Russia-Ukraine hostilities and North Korea, India, Pakistan and China. But with which side would President Trump align the United States? It is only in the last few years that such a question could be taken seriously.
Concerning other specific geographies, there is the Middle East. Though set back tangibly by Israeli and US attacks in June 2025, Iran still poses a potentially nuclear hazard to Israel. Some potentially pertinent scenarios have generally been overlooked. Among other things, Tehran could sometime prod an Israeli escalation to consciously limited nuclear strikes.[6] Linguistically, this scenario would signify an “asymmetrical nuclear war,” and involve the United States in manifestly profound and unpredictable ways.
Sorely troubling and deeply ironic is that explicit Trump policies to strengthen Sunni Arab states as “countervailing” to Shiite Iran could backfire. To wit, as President Trump’s sale of American F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia could heighten the prospects for wider regional wars, it would simultaneously enlarge residual risks of a nuclear conflict. In this connection, a genuinely prudent American president would bear in mind that these are “uncharted waters.” Hic sunt dracones, noted the medieval maps, “Here be dragons.”
There is more. First and foremost, these are intellectual problems and will need to be approached accordingly. A primary “order of business” should be to determine an expected adversary’s ordering of preferences. By definition, only those adversaries who would value national survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences would be acting rationally. It will be vitally important for any US president to understand in advance of any specific crisis where each potential enemy stands on the question of decisional rationality.
Rationality and Irrationality
It will get complicated.[7] There will be significant nuances. For capable scholars and policy-makers, various subsidiary questions will need to be considered. But what will be the operational meanings of relevant terminologies and vocabularies?
In formal studies of international relations, international law and military strategy, decisional irrationality is never the same as madness. Still, attentive warnings about madness will warrant serious US policy consideration. At the outset, both “ordinary” irrationality and full-scale madness could exert more-or-less comparable effects on the examined country’s national security decision-making processes.
How should these critical effects be predicted and deciphered?
For the United States, understanding and anticipating such effects could assume existential importance. In such high-urgency considerations, words would matter. In normal strategic parlance, we ought to recall, “irrationality” identifies a decisional foundation wherein national self-preservation is not summa, i.e., where physical survival is not the highest or ultimate preference.
A prospectively irrational decision-maker in Moscow, Pyongyang or elsewhere need not be determinably “mad” in order to become a troubling issue for US policy judgments. Such an adversary would need “only” to be more concerned about certain discernible preferences or values than self-preservation. An example would be preferences that are expressed for outcomes other than national survival. Normally, any such revealed preferences would be unexpected and counter-intuitive, but still not be unprecedented or inconceivable. Identifying the specific criteria or correlates of such survival imperatives could prove irremediably subjective or incalculable.
What happens then?
Whether an examined American adversary were deemed irrational or “mad,” US military planners would have to input a generally similar decisional calculus. A credible analytic premise could be that the particular adversary “in play” might not be deterred from launching a military attack by Trump threats of retaliatory destruction even where such threats would be believable. Such a failure of US deterrence could include conventional and nuclear retaliatory threats, and/or concern Trump threats of “pretended irrationality.” During his first presidential campaign in 2016, candidate Trump mused openly (and counter-productively) about using such deceptions.
In fashioning America’s nuclear strategy vis-à-vis nuclear and not-yet-nuclear adversaries,[8] US military planners should include a mechanism to determine whether the designated adversary will more likely be rational or irrational. Operationally, this means ascertaining whether the identifiable foe would value its collective survival (whether as sovereign state or organized terror group) more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences. This early judgment would need to be based on defensibly sound analytic methodologies.
In principle, at least, such judgments ought never to be affected by what the analysts “want to believe.”[9] Any failure to recognize and understand this basic precept of logic and scientific method would represent a lethal retreat from critical Reason.[10] In matters of nuclear war avoidance, no such retreat could ever be purposeful.
A corollary US obligation, depending in large part on prior judgments of enemy rationality, would expect strategic planners to assess whether a properly nuanced posture of “pretended irrationality” could enhance America’s nuclear deterrence posture. On multiple occasions, it should be recalled, Donald Trump has praised the underlying premises of such an untested and whimsical strategic posture. Could this presidential praise be intellectually warranted and justified as tangible policy? To what extent could it become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
The answer must be a bewildering one. “It depends.” US enemies include both state and sub-state foes, whether considered singly or in assorted forms of collaboration. Additionally, such forms could be “hybridized” in different ways between state and sub-state adversaries.[11] In dealing with Washington, each recognizable class of enemies could sometime choose to feign or pretend irrationality.
Is the American president prepared to understand all this? Again, “it depends.” In principle, pretended irrationality could at some point represent a rational tactic for Donald Trump to “get a jump” on a designated adversary during competition for “escalation dominance.”[12] Still, any such calculated pretense could fail calamitously. It follows, whatever the crisis particulars, that cautionary US strategic behavior based on serious conceptual thinking should always be the presidential “order of the day.”[13] The plan must always be preparation, not (per President Trump’s declared preference for “attitude.”)
There is something else. Reciprocally, on occasion, designated American enemies could “decide,” whether consciously or unwittingly, to be irrational.[14] In such circumstances, it would become incumbent on American strategic planners to assess which basic form of irrationality – pretended or authentic – is in evidence. These planners would then need to respond with a dialectically orchestrated and optimally counterpoised set of possible reactions. In intellectual terms, this would present an uncommonly “tall order.”
For capable strategic thinkers, the term “dialectically” (drawn originally from ancient Greek thought, principally Plato’s dialogues) should be used with precisely assigned meanings. This is meant to propel a continuous or ongoing question-and-answer format of strategic reasoning. Also relevant and well-known is the special role of dialectic in legal reasoning. Jurisprudentially, US President Trump’s decision to stand with the Russian aggressor against the Ukrainian victim represents an unpardonable violation of international law.[15]
By definition, any instance of enemy irrationality would value certain specific preferences (e.g., presumed religious obligation or personal and/or regime safety) more highly than collective survival. For America, the grievously threatening prospect of facing an irrational nuclear adversary is prospectively most worrisome with regard to North Korea and (potentially) Iran.[16] Apropos of all such more-or-less credible apprehensions, it is unlikely they could be reduced by formal treaties or other law-based agreements.[17] Prima facie, they could never be reduced by Trump-inspired strategic thinking.
“I don’t need international law.”[18]
It’s an old story. It’s worth recalling seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ classic warning in Leviathan: “Covenants, without the sword, are but words….”[19] If this longstanding problem of global anarchy was not daunting enough for Trump-era American strategists, it’s now further complicated by the prospect of sudden or incremental transformations into “chaos.”
Chaos is not the same as anarchy. Chaos is “more than” anarchy. We have lived with anarchy or the absence of central government authority in world law since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,[20] but we have yet to descend into a genuine chaos.[21] As we may extrapolate from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, it is chaos in the individual human being (the “microcosm”) that produces chaos in world politics (the “macrocosm”).[22] The connection is intimate and decipherable, but only by extraordinary thinkers.
To update, we are concerned here with linkages between the dissembling Trump presidency and a potential nuclear crisis. How should the United States proceed to strategize and bargain in such worrisome circumstances, ones that include both more expressly belligerent Russian nuclear doctrine and growing European insecurity regarding US alliance reliability. At some point, ex hypothesi, the best security option would appear to be some sort of preemption, but certainly not against Russia. More credibly, this defensive non-nuclear first-strike would be directed against situationally appropriate North Korean or Iranian hard targets.[23] There are no circumstances in which an American preemption against Russian nuclear targets (ordnance and/or command/control centers) could ever be rational unless a Russian nuclear first strike was determinedly imminent or ascertainably underway.
Already, it is too late for ever launching any operationally cost-effective preemption against North Korea. Even if such a defensive strike could be defended in law as “anticipatory self-defense,”[24] any such action would come at a far too-substantial human cost. At the same time, seeking North Korea denuclearization by way of normal diplomatic means would prove futile under all conceivable circumstances.
In regard to any current and potentially-protracted US-Iran enmity, the American side should consider how its nuclear weapons could be leveraged gainfully against that adversary in any future war scenario. A rational answer here could never include the operational use of such weapons. The only pertinent questions for US planners, therefore, should concern the calculable extent to which an asymmetrical US threat of nuclear escalation (i.e., a threat when Iran was still determinably pre-nuclear) could at some point be rendered credible.[25]
By applying all available standards of ordinary reason and logic (there are, after all, no historical points of reference in such unprecedented situations), Washington could suitably determine that nuclear threats against Iran would serve American security interests only when Iranian military capacities (though non-nuclear) were still overwhelming. Any such scenario, though perhaps difficult to imagine, might nonetheless be realistic. This “strategic dialectic” would be most convincing if Tehran were judged willing to escalate to massive direct conventional attacks upon American territories or populations and/or to open use of biological warfare.
All this should now imply a primary obligation for the United States to focus continuously on incremental enhancements to its implicit nuclear deterrence posture and to develop a wide and nuanced range of nuclear retaliatory options. The specific rationale of such enhancements would be the counter-intuitive understanding that credibility of nuclear threats could at some point vary inversely with perceived destructiveness. In certain foreseeable circumstances, this means that successful nuclear deterrence could depend on nuclear weapons deemed aptly low-yield or short-range.
There is more. Irony can never diminish truth value or legal meaning. Sometimes, in fashioning a national nuclear deterrence posture, counter-intuitive strategic insight will be correctly “on the mark.” This is likely one of these analytically and jurisprudentially “multi-layered” times.[26]
Nuclear War as Pathology
During a military nuclear crisis, whatever its origins, Washington should bear in mind that any US nuclear posture needs to remain focused on prevention, not punishment. In any and all identifiable circumstances, using a portion of its available nuclear forces for vengeance rather than deterrence would entirely miss the point; this is, to fully-optimize US national security, irrespective of any contrary political pressures. Any American nuclear weapons use that was based on narrowly corrosive notions of revenge, even if only as a residual or default option, would be irrational. It would also be egregiously illegal under authoritative international law.
These are all complex intellectual and legal issues, not simple political ones. America’s many-sided nuclear deterrent must be backed up by recognizably robust systems of ballistic missile defense (BMD), especially if there should ever arise any determinable reasons to fear an irrational nuclear adversary. Though it is already well-known that no system of active defense could be “leak-proof” (the implicit presumptions of Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome”), there is good reason to suppose that certain BMD deployments could help safeguard both US civilian populations (soft targets) and American nuclear retaliatory forces (hard targets).[27] This means that technologically advanced anti-missile systems should remain indefinitely as a continuously modernizing component of United States nuclear deterrence. Among other elements of permissible self-defense, this suggests steadily-expanding US emphases on next-generation laser-based weapons.
While it may at first sound annoyingly obvious, it should still be borne in mind that in the increasingly complicated nuclear age, defensive strategies could be viewed by wary adversaries as offensive. This is because the secure foundation of any system of nuclear deterrence should always be some reasonable form of mutual vulnerability. “Everything is very simple in war” (remember Clausewitz’ On War), “but the simplest thing is still difficult.”
Ultimately, to progress in its most vital national security obligations, American military planners should more expressly identify the prioritized goals of US nuclear deterrence posture. Before any rational adversary could be deterred by an American nuclear deterrent, that enemy would first need to believe that Washington had managed to maintain the capacity to launch appropriate nuclear reprisals for calibrated forms of aggression (nuclear and biological/non-nuclear)[28] and the will[29] to undertake such firings. About the first belief criterion, it would almost certainly lie beyond any juristic standards of “reasonable doubt.”
The second expectation, however, could prove more problematic and could more-or-less “fatally” undermine US nuclear deterrence. In assorted ways that are not yet clearly understood, necessary national will could sometime be impacted by pandemic-related or pandemic-created factors.[30] Most assuredly, there will be future disease pandemics, and these could harbor hard-to-foresee interactions or synergies between US policy decision-making and the decisions of particular American adversaries.
In matters involving an expectedly irrational nuclear enemy,[31] successful US nuclear deterrence would need to be based on credible threats to enemy values other than national survival. Here, the prospect of enemy irrationality could be more-or-less related to pandemic factors. In extreme cases, disease could also play a determinative role in actually causing an enemy’s decisional irrationality.
Always, America will need to demonstrate the continuous invulnerability of its essential nuclear retaliatory forces to enemy first-strike aggressions. Inter alia, it will remain in America’s long-term survival interests to emphasize variegated submarine-basing nuclear options.[32] Otherwise, as is plain, America’s land-based strategic nuclear forces could appear to a strongly-determined existential enemy (e.g., North Korea) as “too-vulnerable.”
For the moment, this is not a palpably serious concern, though Washington will still want to stay focused on any further planned deployments of submarines by its Israeli ally. A point of this secondary focus would be to strengthen Israeli nuclear deterrence, which – in one way or another – would serve the overall strategic benefit of the United States.[33] Looking ahead to relevant “biological variables,” Israel’s nuclear deterrence could be affected by future pandemics, including some with largely indecipherable consequences for the United States.
Enhanced Nuclear Deterrence
More and more, America will have to rely on a broadly multi-faceted doctrine of nuclear deterrence.[34] In turn, like its already-nuclear Israeli ally,[35] specific elements of this “simple but difficult” doctrine could sometime need to become less “ambiguous.” This complex and finely-nuanced modification will require an even more determined focus on prospectively rational and irrational enemies, including both national and sub-national foes.
To deal successfully with presumptively irrational or non-rational enemies, the United States will need a continuously-updating strategic “playbook.” Again, it could become necessary for Washington to consider, at least on occasion, policies of feigned irrationality. In such analytically-challenging cases, it would be important for the American president not (1) to react to provocations in an ad hoc or “seat-of-the-pants” fashion, but (2) to derive specific policy reactions from a pre-fashioned and fully-comprehensive strategic nuclear doctrine. Without such a thoughtful doctrine as guide, “pretended irrationality” could become a double-edged sword, bringing more rather than fewer security harms to the United States.[36]
There is one more critical observation. It is improbable, but not inconceivable, that certain of America’s principal enemies would be neither rational nor irrational, but “mad.” While irrational decision-makers could already pose special problems for US nuclear deterrence – because these decision-makers would not value collective survival more highly than any other preference or combination of preferences – they might still be susceptible to variously alternate forms of deterrence.
Resembling rational decision-makers, non-rational adversaries could still maintain a fixed, determinable and “transitive” hierarchy of preferences. This means, at least in principle, that irrational enemies could still be successfully deterred. Such a dynamic is worth further analytic study, especially as US planners could need to confront potentially fearsome “simultaneities.” On the other hand, mad or “crazy” adversaries would have no such calculable hierarchy of preferences and might not be subject to any strategy of American nuclear deterrence. Though it would likely be far worse for the United States to have to face a mad nuclear enemy than “just” an irrational one, Washington would have no foreseeable choice in choosing its enemy. It follows that this country will need to maintain, perhaps even indefinitely, a “three track” system of nuclear deterrence and defense, one track for each of its still-identifiable foes that are presumptively (1) rational (2) irrational or (3) mad.
This will be a challenging task. It would not be amenable to the talents of a narrowly political or intellectually adverse US decision-maker. For the most radically unpredictable third track (i.e., a mad adversary), special plans will be needed for potentially indispensable preemptions and for overlapping efforts at missile defense.
Still, there could be no assurances that any one “track” would present exclusively of the others. This means that American decision-makers could at some point have to face deeply intersecting or interpenetrating tracks and that these simultaneities could be synergistic.[37]
There is one final observation. Even if America’s military planners could reasonably assume that all enemy leaderships were technically rational, this would say nothing about the accuracy of information used by these foes. Always, it ought never to be forgotten, rationality refers only to the intention of maximizing designated preferences. It says nothing about whether the information used is correct or incorrect.
During this Trump-inspired moment of US policy shift – a shift from Russia’s existential adversary to Russia’s de facto ally or surrogate – compensatory actions by NATO nuclear powers France and UK could trigger previously-unfathomable nuclear crises. Such once “absurd” scenarios should be sobering to America’s task-centered national security planners. For these disciplined and still-capable officials, this is the moment to finally disavow self-defeating inclinations to belligerent nationalism (“America First”) and courageously acknowledge that “everyone for himself” mantras could never prove gainful for the United States.[38]
Inconspicuous Perils from Rational Adversaries
America is not made safer by having rational adversaries. Among other things, even rational enemy leaderships could commit serious errors in calculation that lead them toward nuclear confrontation or nuclear/biological war. There are also related command and control issues that could impel a perfectly rational adversary or combination of rational adversaries (both state and sub-state) to embark on risky nuclear behaviors. It follows that even the most reassuringly “optimistic” assessments of enemy decision-making could never preclude catastrophic outcomes.[39]
For the United States, understanding that no scientifically-accurate judgments of probability can ever be made about unique events (by definition, any nuclear exchange would be a unique event), a key lesson for America’s president should be decisional prudence and personal humility. Of special interest here should be the always-erroneous presumption that having greater nuclear military power than an adversary somehow ensures future bargaining success. When Donald Trump announced during his first administration that he and Kim Jung Un both had a “nuclear button,” but that his button was “bigger,” the American president completely overstated the strategic advantages of this asymmetry.
There are additional explanatory particulars. The quantifiable amount of deliverable nuclear firepower required for deterrence is less than what would be required for “victory.”[40] This is a time for more nuanced and purposeful wisdom in US strategic planning, not for clichéd presidential thinking or rancorous fusillades of intellectually empty chatter.
For American decision-making in the unpracticed nuclear age, ancient literary warnings about excessive leadership pride are not only still relevant. They are more important and time-urgent than ever before. In mid-March 2025, Donald Trump said he was making plans to “reclaim the Panama Canal.” Though his visceral backers seemed unaware or unconcerned, no such plans could be defensible in law or strategy. To begin, these plans point to multiple violations of US treaty commitments, and treaties represent “the supreme law of the land” under Article VI (“the “Supremacy Clause”) of the US Constitution.[41] Similar illegalities and strategic misunderstandings surround President Trump’s attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats in several different seas, and his adrenalized warnings to Venezuela in late 2025. To this point, these warnings have resulted “only” in the illegal kidnapping of a foreign head of state.
Left unchecked in the Trump White House, hubris (excessive pride) could bring forth uncontrolled spasms of “retribution.”[42] Plainly, classical Greek tragedians were not yet called upon to reason about nuclear decision-making. None of this culminating foreign policy clarification is meant to build on America’s reasonable fears or apprehensions, but rather to remind that competent national security planning should always remain a complex struggle of “mind over mind.”[43]
A fundamentally intellectual struggle[44] requires meticulous analytic preparations,[45] not self-congratulatory “attitudes.”[46] For the United States, competent national security planning ought never to become just another superficially-calculable contest of “mind over matter;”[47] that is, a recorded comparison of weapons and presumed “orders of battle.” Unless this rudimentary point is more completely understood by senior US strategic policymakers, by the US Congress and by the president of the United States – and until these same policy-shapers can begin to see the wisdom of expanded global cooperation[48]/human “oneness”[49] – America could never render itself secure from a nuclear war.[50]
Wanted: A US President Who Would Favor Reason Over Anti-Reason
It’s time for culminating thoughts. Nuclear threats are “force multiplying” and pose a lethal hazard for the United States. To make this perilous simultaneity more manageable will require a president with more suitably intellectual moorings and inclinations.[51] Failing to meet this basic requirement could compel a once-promising nation to accept unsustainable risks of explosive collapse.[52] Recalling twentieth-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers, this failure would represent the triumph of murderous “magicians”[53] in the United States.[54] It would be a catastrophic triumph.
When Donald J. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the United States quickly found itself embroiled in a generalized crisis of decisional incoherence. Now, left to his own demonstrably anti-historical and anti-intellectual inclinations, US President Donald J. Trump could bring this unsteady nation to unprecedented periods of harm and lamentation. The specific urgency of such danger would depend on the extent to which Karl Jaspers’ “masses” would once again align themselves with a rambling and uncomprehending political “magician.” Currently, this urgency is most readily apparent in Trump’s de facto support for Russian aggression against Ukraine. Though still discussed sotto voce, in whispers, this sitting US president could effectively function as a Russian asset.[55]
An antecedent question should now be raised: Why do Americans remain subject to such unhidden presidential deception? For the most part, the US electorate lives on porous boundaries of what is needed for human understanding and planetary survival. French thinkers of the eighteenth-century Age of Reason often wrote of a siecle des lumieres, a “century of light,” but today’s Trump-era politics are continuously befouled by raucous celebrations of anti-reason.[56] In these United States, let us be candid, an elevated “life of the mind” has become a preposterous text.[57]
What should be concluded? Above all, both American national security and world legal order are being undermined by the visceral agitations of a whim-driven president. Left unobstructed in this condition, these agitations will interact in variously unknown and unknowable ways with international crises. From such once inconceivable interactions, there would likely be neither escape nor sanctuary. At that once-avoidable point of chaos, the hands of the Bulletin’s doomsday clock will have struck midnight.
Notes
[1] A recent example took place at Davos (World Economic Forum) in January 2026, when Donald Trump threatened to take Greenland and supported de facto criminal interests of Vladimir Putin over law-enforcing obligations of NATO. Looking ahead, inter alia, the American president continues to threaten Colombia and Cuba and make rabidly incoherent comments concerning Canada’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
[2] See by this writer, Professor Louis René Beres, at The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (August 2016): https://thebulletin.org/2016/08/what-if-you-dont-trust-the-judgment-of-the-president-whose-finger-is-over-the-nuclear-button/
[3] See PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED IN THE CHARTER AND JUDGMENT OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL. Report of the International Law Commission, 2nd session, 1950, U.N. G.A.O.R. 5th session, Supp. No. 12, A/1316, p. 11
[4] This is far too challenging a task for political leaders, even those with meaningful intellectual capabilities.
[5] Recall here the speech of Creon, King of Thebes, in Sophocles’ Antigone: “I hold despicable, and always have, anyone who puts his own popularity before his country.”
[6] See by this writer, Louis René Beres, at BESA (Israel): https://besacenter.org/limited-nuclear-war-and-israels-national-strategy/
[7] Recall Carl von Clausewitz (On War): “Everything is very simple in war, but even the simplest thing is still difficult.”
[8] For a timely analysis of deterring not-yet-nuclear adversaries in the case of Israel, see article co-authored by Professor Louis René Beres and (former Israeli Ambassador) Zalman Shoval at the Modern War Institute, West Point (Pentagon): https://mwi.usma.edu/creating-seamless-strategic-deterrent-israel-case-study/
[9] Recall here the classic statement of Julius Caesar: “Men as a rule believe what they want to believe.” See: Caesar’s Gallic War, Book III, Chapter 18.
[10] See, on these enduring issues, Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1952).
[11] This “hybrid” concept could also be applied to various pertinent ad hoc bilateral state collaborations against US strategic interests. Already during June 2019, Russia and China collaborated to block an American initiative aimed at halting fuel deliveries to North Korea. The US-led cap on North Korea’s fuel imports had intended to sanction any continuing North Korean nuclearization. Prima facie, this narrowly visceral plan was futile.
[12] On “escalation dominance,” see article by Professor Louis René Beres at The War Room, US Army War College, Pentagon: https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making-and-nuclear-war-an-urgent-american-problem/
[13] The seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal remarks prophetically in Pensées: “All our dignity consists in thought…It is upon this that we must depend…Let us labor then to think well: this is the foundation of morality.” Similar reasoning characterizes the writings of Baruch Spinoza, Pascal’s 17th-century contemporary. In Book II of his Ethics Spinoza considers the human mind, or the intellectual attributes, and – drawing further upon René Descartes – strives to define an essential theory of learning and knowledge.
[14] Sigmund Freud sought to “excavate” deeper meanings concerning irrational human behavior. He was a modern-day philosophe, a proud child of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, one who discovered profound analytic and therapeutic advantages in exploring arcane literary paths to psychological knowledge. Freud maintained an extensive personal collection of antiquities which suggested certain penetrating psychological insights to him. Some of his pertinent collection was placed directly on his work desk; reportedly, he would often touch and turn the artifacts while deeply engaged in variously challenging thoughts.
[15] This decision concerns the crime of genocide as well as the crime of aggression. Neither international law nor US law specifically advises particular penalties or sanctions for states that choose not to prevent or punish genocide committed by others. Nonetheless, all states, most notably “major powers” belonging to the UN Security Council, are bound, inter alia, by the peremptory obligation (defined at Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties) known as pacta sunt servanda, to act in continuous “good faith.” In turn, this pacta sunt servanda obligation is derived from an even more basic norm of world law. Commonly known as “mutual assistance,” this civilizing norm was most famously identified within the classical interstices of international jurisprudence, most notably by the eighteenth-century legal scholar, Emmerich de Vattel in The Law of Nations (1758) and by William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765).
[16] See, also by this author, Louis René Beres, at Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School): https://harvardnsj.org/2013/10/lessons-for-israel-from-ancient-chinese-military-thought-facing-iranian-nuclearization-with-sun-tzu/
[17] See, for example, by this author, at Yale: Louis René Beres, https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/nuclear-treaty-abrogation-imperils-global-security
[18] Comment by US President Donald Trump regarding his decision on whether or not to act against Greenland/Denmark.
[19] Regarding “covenants,” US decision-makers should nonetheless be continually attentive to relevant considerations of international law as well as strategy. More particularly, under authoritative law, states must judge every use of force twice: once with regard to the underlying right to wage war (jus ad bellum) and once with regard to the means used in conducting an actual war (jus in bello). Following the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 and the United Nations Charter (1945), there remains no defensible legal right to waging an aggressive war. However, the long-standing customary right of post-attack self-defense does remain codified at Article 51 of the UN Charter. Similarly, subject to conformance, inter alia, with jus in bello criteria, certain instances of humanitarian intervention and collective security operations may also be consistent with jus ad bellum standards. The law of war, the rules of jus in bello, comprise: (1) laws on weapons; (2) laws on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules. Codified primarily at The Hague and Geneva Conventions, these rules attempt to bring discrimination, proportionality and military necessity into all belligerent calculations.
[20] International law remains a “vigilante” or “Westphalian” system. See: Treaty of Peace of Munster, Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and Treaty of Peace of Osnabruck, Oct. 1648, 1., Consol. T.S. 119, Together, these two treaties comprise the Peace of Westphalia.
[21] Though composed in the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan may still offer us a prophetic vision of this prospective condition in modern world politics. During chaos, which is a “time of War,” says the English philosopher in Chapter XIII (“Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery.”): “… every man is Enemy to every man… and where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Still, at the actual time of writing Leviathan, Hobbes believed that the condition of “nature” in world politics was less chaotic than that same condition extant among individual human beings. This was because of what he had called the “dreadful equality” of individual men in nature concerning the ability to kill others. This once-relevant differentiation has effectively disappeared with the continuing manufacture and spread of nuclear weapons, a spread soon apt to be exacerbated by an already-nuclear North Korea, by a not-yet-nuclear Iran and by the largely unpredictable effects of an ongoing disease pandemic.
[22] “I tell you, ye have still chaos in you” (Zarathustra).
[23] The precise legal origins of such a strike as anticipatory self-defense lie in The Caroline, a case that concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. Following this case, the serious threat of armed attack has generally justified certain militarily defensive actions. In an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self-defense that did not require an antecedent attack. Here, the jurisprudential framework permitted a military response to a threat so long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” See: Beth M. Polebaum, “National Self-defense in International Law: An Emerging Standard for a Nuclear Age,” 59 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 187, 190-91 (1984) (noting that the Caroline case had transformed the right of self-defense from an excuse for armed intervention into a legal doctrine). Still earlier, see: Hugo Grotius, Of the Causes of War, and First of Self-Defense, and Defense of Our Property, reprinted in 2 Classics of International Law, 168-75 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1925) (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, The Right of Self-Protection and the Effects of the Sovereignty and Independence of Nations, reprinted in 3 Classics of International Law, 130 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1916) (1758). Also, Samuel Pufendorf, The Two Books on the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, 32 (Frank Gardner Moore., tr., 1927 (1682).
[24] For a pertinent Israeli example, by this author, see: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2017-09-06/10-years-later-israels-operation-orchard-offers-lessons-on-north-korea
[25] In regard to such questions, US strategic thinkers must inquire whether accepting a visible posture of limited nuclear war would merely exacerbate enemy nuclear intentions or whether it could enhance this country’s overall nuclear deterrence. Such questions have been raised by this author for many years, but usually in more explicit reference to broadly theoretical or generic nuclear threats. See, for example, Louis René Beres, The Management of World Power: A Theoretical Analysis (1972); Louis René Beres, Terrorism and Global Security: The Nuclear Threat (1979; second edition, 1987); Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order (1984); Louis René Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (1986); and Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (2016).
[26] Related legal issues concern the differential permissibility of reprisals. In law, the core problem of reprisal as rationale for the use of force by states is identified and explained in the U.N. Declaration of Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States (1970) (https://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/formidable/18/1970-Declaration-on-Principles-of-International-Law-Concerning-Friendly-Relations.pdf). Additionally, a possible prohibition of reprisals is deducible from the broad regulation of force expressed in the UN Charter at Article 2(4); the obligation to settle disputes peacefully at Article 2(3); and the general limiting of permissible force (codified and customary) by states to necessary self-defense.
[27] On the prospective shortcomings of Israeli BMD systems, from which certain authoritative extrapolations could be made about US systems, see earlier: Louis René Beres and (Major-General/IDF/ret.) Isaac Ben-Israel, “The Limits of Deterrence,” Washington Times, November 21, 2007; Professor Louis René Beres and M-G Isaac Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iran,” Washington Times, June 10, 2007; and Professor Louis René Beres and M-G Isaac Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iranian Nuclear Attack,” Washington Times, January 27, 2009.
[28]For the crime of aggression under international law, see: Resolution on the Definition of Aggression, adopted by the UN General Assembly, Dec. 14, 1974. U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 UN GAOR, Supp (No. 31), 142, UN Doc A/9631 (1975) reprinted in 13 I.L.M., 710 (1974).
[29] The modern philosophy origins of “will” lie in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Idea (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew freely upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Nietzsche drew just as freely and perhaps more importantly upon Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic twentieth-century work, The Revolt of the Masses (Le Rebelion de las Masas (1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s very grand essay, “In Search of Goethe from Within” (1932), written for Die Neue Rundschau of Berlin on the occasion of the centenary of Goethe’s death. It is reprinted in Ortega’s anthology, The Dehumanization of Art (1948), and is available from Princeton University Press (1968).
[30] A prospectively positive impact, however, could center on improved opportunities for world-wide cooperation. See, on this hopeful point, by this author, Louis René Beres, https://www.21global.ucsb.edu/global-e/march-2020/virulent-pathogens-and-global-solidarity-unseen-benefits-covid-19
[31] See, on deterring a prospectively irrational nuclear Iran, Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely deter a Nuclear Iran? The Atlantic, August 2012; and Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain, “Israel; and Iran at the Eleventh Hour,” Oxford University Press (OUP Blog), February 23, 2012. Though dealing with Israeli rather than American nuclear deterrence, these articles authoritatively clarify the common conceptual elements. General Chain was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC).
[32] On the Israeli sea-basing issue, see Louis René Beres and Admiral Leon “Bud” Edney, “Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: A Larger Role for Submarine-Basing,” The Jerusalem Post, August 17, 2014; and Professor Louis René Beres and Admiral Leon “Bud” Edney, “A Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent for Israel,” Washington Times, September 5, 2014. Admiral Edney was NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic (SACLANT).
[33] See, in this connection, by Professor Louis René Beres, with a postscript by General (USA/ret.) Barry R. McCaffrey, Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and America’s National Security; https://sectech.tau.ac.il/sites/sectech.tau.ac.il/files/PalmBeachBook.pdf
[34] On the primary importance of doctrine, by this author, see Louis René Beres, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/01/louis-beres-seeking-plausible-strategic-goals-iran/ See also, concerning US ally Israel: https://strategicassessment.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/antq/fe-676949421.pdf
[35] See, by this author (who was Chair of Project Daniel for Israeli PM Ariel Sharon): http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/03-ISSUE/daniel-3.htm See also: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-nuclear-ambiguity/ and https://www.idc.ac.il/he/research/ips/Documents/2013/%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA/LouisReneBeres.pdf
[36] This brings to mind the closing query of Agamemnon in The Oresteia by Aeschylus: “Where will it end? When will it all be lulled back into sleep, and cease, the bloody hatreds, the destruction”?
[37] See, for example, by this author, at Harvard National Security Journal: (Harvard Law School): https://harvardnsj.org/2015/06/core-synergies-in-israels-strategic-planning-when-the-adversarial-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/
[38] See by this writer at Princeton Political Review, Princeton University: Louis René Beres, https://www.princetonpoliticalreview.org/opinion-1/always-preparing-for-a-next-war-the-infinite-lethality-of-world-politics
[39] In this connection, expressions of decisional error (including mistakes by the United States) could take different and overlapping forms. These forms include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; an incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and internal dissonance generated by any authoritative structure of collective decision-making (e.g., the US National Security Council).
[40] See, by this author, at Oxford University Press: https://blog.oup.com/2011/10/war-winning/
[41]Treaties are also the principal source of authoritative international law, per Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.
[42]For much earlier similar warnings, by this author, see his October 1981 article at World Politics (Princeton): https://www.jstor.org/stable/2010149?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
[43] Clausewitzian friction refers to the unpredictable effects of errors in knowledge and information concerning strategic uncertainties; on presidential under-estimations or over-estimations of US relative power position; and on the unalterably vast and largely irremediable differences between theories of deterrence and enemy intent “as it actually is.” See: Carl von Clausewitz, “Uber das Leben und den Charakter von Scharnhorst,” Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, 1 (1832); cited in Barry D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War, McNair Paper No. 52, October, 1996, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University Washington, D.C. p. 9.
[44] This also brings to mind an apt warning by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, in The New Spirit and the Poets (1917): “It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms.” Today, when the United States is under the flagrantly anti-intellectual leadership of Donald J. Trump, the poet’s warning should have a clear and compelling resonance.
[45] Or “thorough study,” in the language of Sun-Tzu.
[46] The meaningless bifurcation of “attitude” and “preparation” was expressly invoked by Donald Trump before going off to his first summit meeting (Singapore Summit) with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. In that curious distinction, the US President openly favored the former.
[47] This vital reminder is also drawn from the strategic calculations of ancient Greece. See, for example, F.E. Adcock, The Greek and Macedonian Art of War (University of California, 1962).
international law, which is an integral part of the legal system of all states in world politics, already assumes a reciprocally common general obligation to supply benefits to one another, and to avoid war at all costs. This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity is known formally as a “peremptory” or jus cogens expectation, that is, one that is not even subject to question. It can be found already in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625) and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).
[48] On this indispensable wisdom, international law, which is an integral part of the legal system of all states in world politics, assumes a reciprocally general obligation to supply benefits to one another and to avoid war at all costs. This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity, which must apply especially to avoidance of a nuclear war, is a “peremptory” or jus cogens expectation, that is, one not subject to any question. It can be found, inter alia, at Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis; Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).
[49] We may learn from ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, “”You are a citizen of the universe.” A broader idea of such “oneness” followed the death of Alexander in 322 BCE; with it came a coinciding doctrine of “universality.” By the Middle Ages, this political and social doctrine had fused with the notion of a Respublica Christiana, a worldwide Christian commonwealth, and Thomas, John of Salisbury and Dante were looking at Europe as a single and unified Christian community. Below the level of God and his heavenly host, all the realm of humanity was to be considered as one. This is because all the world had been created for the same single and incontestable purpose; that is, to provide background for the necessary drama of human salvation. Only in its relationship to the universe itself was the world correctly considered as a part rather than a whole. Said Dante in De Monarchia: “The whole human race is a whole with reference to certain parts, and, with reference to another whole, it is a part. For it is a whole with reference to particular kingdoms and nations, as we have shown; and it is a part with reference to the whole universe, which is evident without argument.” Today, of course, the idea of human oneness can be justified and explained in more secular terms of analytic understanding.
[50] In this connection, says Thomas Hobbes in Chapter XXI of Leviathan, “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, then the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.”
[51] Inter alia, this means a leadership willing to reject “marching orders” from America’s “mass man.” This “mass-man,” as we were earlier warned by Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y’ Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses (1930) “has no attention to spare for reasoning; he learns only in his own flesh.”
[52] Sigmund Freud was always darkly pessimistic about the United States, which he felt was “lacking in soul” and a demeaning place of great psychological misery or “wretchedness.” In a letter to Ernest Jones, Freud declared unambiguously: “America is gigantic, but it is a gigantic mistake.” (See: Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man’s Soul (1983), p. 79.
[53] A similar metaphor is used by German Nobel laureate Thomas Mann in his novella, Mario and the Magician, a fictive warning against citizen capitulations leading to authoritarian domination.
[54] Ultimately, any such triumph could have discoverable roots in twisted individual associations of personal and national survival. In the nineteenth century, in his posthumously published lecture on Politics (1896), German historian Heinrich von Treitschke observed: “Individual man sees in his own country the realization of his earthly immortality.” Earlier, German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel opined, in his Philosophy of Right (1820), that the state represents “the march of God in the world.” The “deification” of Realpolitik, a transformation from mere principle of action to a sacred and sacrilizing end in itself, drew its originating strength from the doctrine of sovereignty advanced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Initially conceived as a principle of internal order, this doctrine underwent a specific metamorphosis, whence it became the formal or justifying rationale for international anarchy – that is, for the global “state of nature.” First established by Jean Bodin as a juristic concept in De Republica (1576), sovereignty came to be regarded as a power absolute and above the law. Understood in terms of modern international relations, this doctrine encouraged the notion that states lie above and beyond any form of legal regulation in their interactions.
[55] See statement by President of Portugal: https://www.portugalresident.com/trump-is-a-soviet-asset-and-my-presidency-hasnt-gone-the-way-id-hoped/
[56] The reader may think here of Nobel Literature laureate Hermann Hesse’s apt description of the false national leader. Wrote Hesse in The Glass Bead Game: “The dull-witted brute, blindly trampling around in the flower gardens of intellect and culture” (1943).
[57] Americans should also cease making themselves into what C.G. Jung calls a “quantité négligible,” a creature who is a “conscious, reflective being, gifted with speech, but still lacking all criteria for self-judgment.”
LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. His twelfth book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy. Beres’ principal strategic writings have appeared in JURIST; Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); International Security (Harvard University); Yale Global (Yale University); Oxford University Press (Oxford University); Oxford Yearbook of International Law (Oxford University Press); Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College (Pentagon); Special Warfare (Pentagon); Modern War Institute (Pentagon); Horasis (Zürich); The War Room (Pentagon); Modern Diplomacy; World Politics (Princeton); INSS (The Institute for National Security Studies; Tel Aviv); Israel Defense (Tel Aviv); Air-Space Operations Review (USAF); The American Political Science Review; Princeton Political Review; BESA Perspectives (Israel); International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; The Atlantic; Yale Global Online; The New York Times and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Professor Beres was born in Zürich at the end of World War II.
