edelsont | Nuclear problem solved. What's next? (Reply)

In my last entry in this journal (http://edelsont.dreamwidth.org/2160.html, which was posted on October 18), I called for Congress to pass a law restricting the president's authority to order nuclear attacks. Specifically, I suggested a "no first use" law: the president would no longer be permitted to order a nuclear attack on any country unless at least one of the following two things was true:

the attack was in response to a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies; and/or
Congress had authorized the attack, for example by declaring war.

Imagine my surprise, then, when The New York Times published an editorial, about a week later, which endorsed [almost] exactly the same idea. You can find it at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/26/opinion/trump-nuclear-arsenal.html, under the title "Trump’s Nuclear Arsenal," and the date October 26, 2017.

Why do I say "almost" exactly the same? Well, to get one thing out of the way: "no first use" was explicitly the main subject of my journal entry, but not of The Times' editorial. Its main topic was the size of the US nuclear arsenal: it argued that, even though the number of warheads maintained as operational by the United States has been considerably reduced, it should be reduced further.

One paragraph in the editorial, though, did explicitly call for a "no first use" law. Here's that paragraph in its entirety:

Every effort must be made to avoid the use of nuclear weapons. Reducing the nuclear stockpile is one important step. But legislators can go even further by requiring the president to seek a declaration of war from Congress before launching a first nuclear strike, as Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Ted Lieu of California, both Democrats, have proposed.

So relatively little of The Times' editorial was on the same subject as my journal entry. There are also further differences in how the two pieces addressed that subject.

One important thing that The Times did, I and didn't: they went further toward identifying a specific bill that has already been introduced, by naming the senator and representative who have "proposed" it. This would be useful information to the reader, should you feel led to write to your own Congressbeing on the subject.

I will also [im]modestly claim that my journal entry made some useful contributions to the discussion of the subject, not all of which were duplicated in The Times' editorial. In this entry, I will bring up only one of them again. Before explicitly propounding that difference between my work and theirs, it is necessary first to mention one of the similarities between them.

Clearly -- though they don't say so in so many words -- the authors of the editorial believe that this is a matter of added urgency, given the nature of the man who occupies the White House at the current moment. I believe that they are referring to the bluster and bombast of President Trump's rhetoric, and to the doubt (perceived, in some quarters, at least) that he can be trusted to make the soundest possible decisions, especially in a life-and-megadeath matter such as this one. I share this concern.

I did make that point -- more explicitly than they did, in fact. I did so in order to make another point, which they did not make: that in principle, the need for a "no first use" law is not "about" Mr. Trump at all. In other words, I want to say that, had the question been raised, it would have been a good idea to enact the same law during the previous administration ... or indeed, during the term of any president since the nuclear age began. The qualifications, or lack of same, of President Trump are relevant to this issue for only one reason: because they have led him to do us the favor of bringing the matter to our attention.

I further claim that this is an important point to make, for two reasons. One reason is that it is always better, when possible, to make laws which are appropriate in the general case, rather than being tailored to a particular personnel situation.

The other reason is purely political, in this sense: making this point (that the bill is not really about Trump) is likely to be helpful in getting the thing passed. It can provide "cover" (as I put it in the previous entry) for any member of Congress who may wish to vote for this bill, but not wish to be seen as implying that we cannot, in general, trust our current president.

That concludes my effort to compare and contrast my work with that of the editorial board of The New York Times. In closing, I want to try to explain the subject line of the current entry, that is, "Nuclear problem solved. What's next?"

That was at least partly a joke, and not a very good one. I'll even admit that it is in questionable taste, given that "the nuclear problem" is most assuredly not solved: not in general, and not with respect to our current situation vis-a-vis those deplorable people north of the 38th parallel. (I mean, of course, the Koreans. Not the ones who have created their own widely-enjoyed genre of pop music; the other ones.)

What I meant by "nuclear problem solved" -- to the limited extent that I meant anything serious at all -- was a piece of shorthand. You could unpack it as follows: I raised the issue of a "no first use" law; then that issue was taken up by The New York Times, which has a somewhat wider readership than I have; so my own work, with respect to this issue, is done.

Okay; what did I mean by "What's next?" That was a foreshadowing of what I'm going to do now: to pretend to believe a ridiculous theory, and then to ponder the implications of that theory. The theory: that my journal entry somehow caused The New York Times to write about the same subject ... "about a week later," as I mock-portentously said above.

The implications: this reveals that I have a hitherto-unsuspected superpower. If I write about something, then The Times will write about it, too; and that, as we all know, will make that topic officially part of the National Conversation (TM).

In turn, that takes a question which I need to decide anyway, and reveals that question to be of far greater importance than I had realized. That question, of course, is "What shall I write about next?"

(Pregnant pause while I contemplate this awesome responsibility ....)

Oh, I know! I should write something about impeachment!