On Friday, a leading national security analyst warned that President Donald Trump’s recent behavior suggests his intention to commit “nuclear genocide.” This is according to former State Department and House Armed Services Committee advisor Joe Cirincione, who argues that as Trump becomes increasingly desperate to break his stalemate with Iran, his willingness to use nuclear weapons has grown.
“For the first time in history, a U.S. leader unambiguously threatened genocide at the United Nations,” writes Cirincione. “It was not a euphemism. When he addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 22, President Donald Trump was absolutely clear that he was threatening to kill every man, woman and child in Iran. All 92 million of them. ‘Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly?’ he asked, posturing as an absolute monarch with the power to destroy a nation on a whim. ‘Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?’”
According to Cirincione, who is one of the world’s leading figures in the anti-nuclear proliferation movement, “The only way to do this ‘quickly’ is by using nuclear weapons. There is simply no other way to kill that many people. Horrifyingly, Trump actually has the ability to do this. As president, he has the sole, unfettered ability to launch nuclear weapons whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wants. In the archaic system established by past presidents during the Cold War, Trump can pick up the phone, issue an order and in five minutes missiles would be flying.” As Cirincione notes, Trump has made this threat before, posting in April, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” And now, with the unpopular war dragging on and hammering the economy, Trump is even more desperate to break the impasse.
“This would be nuclear genocide,” Tara Drozdenko, director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists said about Trump’s latest threats. “Though it may be tempting to write this off as just another bombastic speech, the public must read President Trump’s words, and consider their true meaning and the real human impacts of nuclear war,” she added.
As Cirincione notes, the UN Charter explicitly requires that member states “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Now Trump is “openly, casually, insanely threatening genocide,” which is “in itself, a war crime.” While “many may think that Trump’s threats are empty,” writes Cirincione, “we can’t be sure. He is stuck in a repeating pattern with Iran” and “has blundered into a war for which he has no strategy. He cannot win the war — in fact, it’s clear to most observers that he has lost his war with Iran — but he cannot retreat. Simply walking away would be a huge political humiliation for him. The one thing his father drummed into him all those years ago was: Never be a loser. Or even appear to be a loser. So he’s stuck. And so are we. Trump is still president, still has his finger on the nuclear button, still delivers a daily stream of threats, lies and hallucinations.”
While the American public and even some Republicans have made it clear they don’t support the war, as Trump and the GOP’s polling numbers plunge into “political death sentence” territory, the president is only becoming more frantic for what he considers a win. “With Trump, there is no ambiguity,” asserts Cirincione. “When he threatens genocide, he means it.” Cirincione predicts that “the next few weeks before the elections will likely see an escalation of insane threats, as Trump tries desperately to salvage his sinking political fortunes.” Some may hope that he’s bluffing or that major midterm losses can stop him, “but with Trump,” concludes Cirincione, “nothing is certain. His megalomania, his insatiable lust for power and wealth, his increasingly obvious instability and delusions of imperial grandeur threaten not just the future of this war, or of the United States, but of the entire global order. We cannot ignore the madness Trump increasingly displays.”