Trump Must Go
The world faces two existential threats: climate catastrophe and the prospect of nuclear annihilation. Since the election of Donald Trump as US President, these threats have grown and the prospects for our environment and survival as a species have diminished.
Trump did not invent climate change and his did not invent the bomb. These things existed before him and will continue to exist if, as we must all hope, he is jettisoned from the White House in a timely fashion. However, the policies he has pursued on both counts have made the world a much more dangerous place. Trump must go.
Let’s look specifically at the question of nuclear weapons. The 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review announced to the world that President Trump intended to use the threat of nuclear force to confront strategic rivals: Russia and China. The Review announced plans for new types of weaponry and new warheads.
Subsequently, Trump’s administration has systematically destroyed the INF Treaty, the JCPOA (Iran Deal), Open Skies Treaty and now New START looks under severe threat.
Threats have been combined with disastrous action. Another four years surely heralds more of the same. There has been much talk of another ‘Cold War’ against both Russia and China.
There is much in Trump’s actions that justifies such talk. However, the situation is much more dangerous than the ‘Cold War’ of the past. Accelerated technology, the breakdown of norms of diplomacy, the sharp contradictions developing in a ‘global economy’ mean, to quote Michael Klare, that “this isn’t your mothers’ Cold War”. Rather, we are experiencing a ‘global tinderbox’, where one false move could spell the end of it all.
Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg and other prominent US activists have called for a vote for Democrat candidate, Joe Biden, as the most immediate means to remove Trump from office. Such calls have been criticised by those who point to Biden’s record on a whole number of question. That there are some who cannot cast their vote for Biden for a whole variety of substantial and deeply felt reasons is just one indication of the political mess and the legacies of harm at the centre of US society (characteristics shared by other states). On balance, it looks like Chomsky, Ellsberg and others have it right. Four more years of Trump will be a disaster for humanity. Four years of Biden will not be an easy ride. This is the choice.