Donald Trump, faced with the temptation of a war to show who is the boss in the world

On January 20, hours before assuming the presidency of the United States, Joe Biden you will receive the instructions and the means to destroy the world, a sober and Dantesque ritual that he knows well. He will once again have in his possession the golden codes and the black case that will allow him to launch a nuclear attack. He already had them as vice president, but now he will be commander-in-chief and today’s world is a little more dangerous than it was four years ago.

Biden will arrive at this crucial moment without the information necessary to defend the United States against threats that may emerge from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Trump denies secret military intelligence reports and diplomatic to which he is entitled as elected president.

In any transfer of power, the most sensitive part is always that which refers to state secrets, this information which allows the leader to anticipate and counter his strategic rivals.

This lack of cooperation between the Trump administration and the Biden team increases weakness It is very likely that Moscow, Beijing, Tehran or Pyongyang will try to take advantage of it.

Additionally, last week Trump sacked the Defense Secretary and placed four civilian commanders in the Pentagon loyal to Trumpism, supporters of forcing regime change in Iran and to withdraw troops from Afghanistan before Christmas against the advice of the military hierarchy. This purge, which could be extended to the CIA in the coming days, promotes both the withdrawal from Afghanistan and a confrontation with Iran in the last two months of the Trump presidency.

Timing is also critical because U.S. diplomatic relations with Russia and China severely damaged. The relationship with Russia was not at its lowest point since the end of the Cold War, while trade, ideological and strategic tensions with China are the worst since Nixon and Kissinger visited Mao in 1972.

When Biden enters the Oval Office, Washington, Moscow and Beijing will wear four years of accelerated arms race and one of the first decisions he will have to make is what to do with the New Start Treaty, the latest that somewhat slows down the nuclear rearmament of the United States and Russia. It expires on February 5 and the American staff considers that it is no longer of much use.

In light of the pandemic, democratic degeneration, the decline of liberal order, and growing economic inequality, the nuclear apocalypse looks like a 20th century legend, a dystopia we will not suffer from. After all, of the 70,000 nuclear weapons that threatened the world at the height of the Cold War, we have gone down to about 14,000.

Complex scenarios

Moreover, the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear offensive guarantee a priori strategic stability. Mutual destruction is assured. No matter how powerful the first gunner’s attack is, the enemy’s response will be just as devastating. Faced with this certainty, the United States and the Soviet Union, instead of accelerating the nuclear escalation, they looked for a way to reduce the chances of confrontation. This strategy was maintained after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Today, however, 75 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, things have changed. Deterrence, as Erin Connoli, a security expert at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, points out, “is re-founded on powerful arsenals, on the idea that atomic bombs on Japan ended the Second World war and peace. The argument that nuclear weapons are weapons of peace makes their reduction difficult ”.

Russia and the United States own 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenal and for four years they have been working on its expansion and modernization. The Kremlin is developing underwater drones and hypersonic systems to launch atomic warheads thousands of miles away, while the Pentagon has raised $ 1.2 trillion to update its nuclear strategy.

The scenarios in which Washington and Moscow would be willing to use atomic weapons have also been expanded to include cyber attacks.

Pentagon generals who worked under Trump believe that it is impossible to regain strategic stability of the cold war. China, Iran and North Korea complicate prevention and deterrence.

There are new cybernetic and biological technologies capable of causing an impact similar to that of a nuclear attack.

Russia, the United States, China and other countries have offensive strategies that combine several fronts: nuclear, conventional, cybernetic, the biochemical and the spatial. A nuclear arsenal alone is no longer a deterrent.

“The deployment of 1,500 strategic warheads under New Start conditions does not deter our adversaries,” admitted Pentagon General John Hyton, deputy chief of staff and former head of the atomic arsenal.

Managing the uncertainty of an attack it has always been the most difficult task in Washington and Moscow, as evidenced by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Now the unknowns are multiplying. “We are entering an era of strategic instability,” said Elisabeth Sherwood-Randall, a nuclear weapons expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology who was deputy energy minister in the Obama administration.

Iran, for example, has also made great strides in its atomic program under President Donald Trump. In March, it had enough enriched uranium for an atomic bomb, but in July an explosion, probably caused by Israeli agents, damaged the Natanz nuclear complex.

Today, there is no international forum, no diplomatic initiative to prevent atomic proliferation. The 2015 deal with Iran has been dead paper since Trump denounced it. Biden talks about going back to square one, but his own strategists consider it too late. The Iranians will not accept it, nor will they want to limit their rocket program or support for various Shiite militias, starting with Hezbollah in Lebanon. They say the United States is breaking its word. Neither do they. Today, they have ten times more enriched uranium which they can store under the conditions of the nuclear pact.

North Korea, despite handshakes between Trump and Kim Jong Un, continued to improve ICBMs, but they are not able to resist re-entry into the atmosphere. More evidence is lacking and Kim may order some before Trump leaves. It will also improve your negotiation skills with Biden.

As confidence in deterrence wanes, the possibility of limited atomic warfare increases. The pumps are compressed and the means of targeting are more precise. A Princeton University study, however, guarantees that tactical nuclear wars are not possible. A confrontation between Russia and the United States that would make 90 million dead and injured in a few hours.

When the time has come to decide on a military intervention, and even more so if it is nuclear, what is always lacking is information and time. To the difficulty of making a decision under enormous pressure, Biden will have to add the complexity of the new threats. As Elisabeth Sherwood-Randall points out, “Today we are faced with new and abundant tools of war of strategic significance. The risks of nuclear disasters are increasing, whether by accident, misunderstanding or error caused by stress. “

Trump exacerbates these risks further by denying Biden the information he will need to overcome them.

Xavier Mas de Xaxás. The avant-garde