Curtail Trump’s power on nukes

The following is an excerpt from an editorial in the New York Times:

The broad debate over U.S. President Donald Trump’s fitness for the difficult and demanding office he holds has recently been reframed in a more pointed and urgent way: Does he understand, and can he responsibly manage, the most destructive nuclear arsenal on Earth?

The question arises for several reasons. He has threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. He has reportedly pressed for a massive buildup in the American nuclear arsenal, which already contains too many — 4,000 — warheads. And soon he will decide whether to sustain or set a course to possibly unravel the immensely important Iran nuclear deal.

Doubts about his competency were reinforced this week by Sen. Bob Corker, who charged that Trump was treating his office like “a reality show” with reckless threats that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

Further, NBC News now reports that Tillerson judged Trump a “moron” after a July 20 meeting in which Trump, apparently distressed that the arsenal has declined since the Cold War, said he wanted a nearly tenfold increase in weapons.

Trump’s policy pronouncements during the campaign betrayed either profound ignorance or dangerous nonchalance: At one point, he wondered why America had nuclear weapons if it didn’t use them; at another, he suggested that Japan and South Korea, which have long lived under the American security umbrella, should develop their own nuclear weapons. But nothing he said has been quite as unsettling as his recent tweetstorms about North Korea, his warnings of “fire and fury” and his quip about “the calm before the storm.”

Congress has been sufficiently alarmed to consider legislation that would bar the president from launching a first nuclear strike without a declaration of war by Congress.

That’s a sound idea. As things stand now, (he) could unleash the apocalyptic force of the American nuclear arsenal by his word alone, and within minutes.