【By Observer Net Columnist Zhou Deyu】
Just before the U.S.-China meeting yesterday, Trump came up with another idea, saying he wants to restart nuclear tests that have not been conducted for over 30 years.
Of course, Trump did not explain the reason for restarting nuclear tests clearly, only stating that China and Russia's nuclear weapons are catching up with the United States, and the U.S. cannot fall behind. But it is likely that he was triggered by the news of Russia testing a new nuclear-powered missile two days ago, which activated his most common reflex: if others have it, I must have it too, and even bigger and more beautiful, preferably with gold inside.
It is hard to see any consistent ideas from Trump regarding nuclear weapons, except repeating what was done during the Cold War. For example, he has thought about reviving tactical nuclear weapons, withdrawing from nuclear treaties, and recently promoting the "Golden Dome" missile defense system intensively... After all, Trump grew up watching these things, and he can't escape the thinking patterns of his childhood.
But in a way, Trump's fondness for fiddling with nuclear toys is not entirely his personal preference, but reflects the renewed awareness of American politicians and the public on nuclear issues in recent years.
After the Cold War, both official and civilian interest in nuclear war between major powers significantly decreased. During this time, the U.S. was unchallenged, and it was difficult to imagine who could match the U.S. in strength, let alone escalate to a nuclear war between major powers. There were many American movies during the Cold War discussing the threat of nuclear war, but after the Cold War ended, such stories became rare. Terrorists threatening via hacking or using biological weapons became the most common theme.
However, in recent years, with the resurgence of Russia and the rise of China, the concept of great power wars, and nuclear wars driven by such conflicts, has gradually returned to the consciousness of Americans.
For example, just these days, the U.S. Department of Defense, oh no, now called the War Department, criticized a newly released movie. The film is titled "A House of Dynamite," which discusses how the U.S. would respond when facing a nuclear war threat.
Watching this movie in 2025 feels very out of place, as the film was clearly initiated during the Democratic administration. So you will see the film sets a Black president, a group of professional officials with diverse ethnic backgrounds rather than TV anchors, government officials hold meetings in encrypted channels instead of mobile chat groups... and the U.S. Department of Defense is still called the Department of Defense and hasn't renamed it to the "War Department"—this isn't the fault of the filmmakers, who could hardly have predicted so many events later.
The plot of "A House of Dynamite" is very simple: an intercontinental ballistic missile suddenly flies toward Chicago, and the U.S. government departments are mobilized to deal with the threat. In the movie, Americans don't know who launched the missile, where it came from, and they fail to intercept it. Finally, diplomatic efforts also fail because everyone doesn't trust each other.
In this situation, the U.S. is forced to prepare a large-scale nuclear retaliation plan within minutes to prevent other countries from taking advantage... but the movie ends abruptly without revealing what happened to the missile in Chicago, whether it was actually a nuclear weapon, or whether the U.S. intended to retaliate, leaving all the most important endings blank.
Of course, it's not really a blank, but rather that no one knows the answer to this question, just like the U.S.'s nuclear strategy over the years. Although everyone talks about nuclear strategy, no one really thinks about how to fight a real nuclear war.
The Pentagon definitely didn't like this movie, and in a memo stated: "The film shows that deterrence strategies might fail, indicating we need to strengthen active homeland missile defense systems, but the fictional depiction in the film greatly underestimated the capabilities of the United States..." In short, the Pentagon's statement is that Americans can rest assured, the government's nuclear deterrence is effective, missiles can be intercepted, and there won't be a chaotic situation like in the movie.
This makes one think of a famous film decades ago—Dr. Strangelove. The movie tells the story of an American general going mad and triggering an automatic nuclear retaliation system between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, leading the world into a nuclear war. After the movie was released, the U.S. Department of Defense was furious, saying it was all nonsense, and that the U.S. nuclear weapons were strictly controlled and wouldn't be taken over by a mad soldier.
But after the Cold War archives were declassified, people found that many basic logic in Dr. Strangelove was correct, and both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were indeed researching some automatic nuclear retaliation systems. Moreover, the U.S. government's control over nuclear weapons was actually not as high as claimed, giving many frontline soldiers opportunities to use nuclear weapons on their own.
Objectively speaking, this movie "A House of Dynamite" has many flaws, both from the perspective of cinema and politics. However, the production consulted many American experts and officials, and it reflects some of the thoughts and practices of American government officials.
Although for dramatic effect, the movie portrays America's missile defense system as very makeshift, unable to detect the source of the missile, and even failing to intercept a basic intercontinental missile without maneuverability, multiple warheads, or decoys. It's understandable that the Pentagon is dissatisfied with such a plot, but overall, if you're familiar with how the U.S. government operates and the history of its nuclear strategy, you'll find that the movie has already been quite idealized.
For example, the movie depicts the deployment of B2 bombers as the ultimate response to nuclear deterrence, meaning that launching them signifies a nuclear war. However, this year, Trump deployed several B2 bombers to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, and the results were unsatisfactory. Also, in the movie, the interception rate of the U.S. missile defense system is set at 61%, which the screenwriters consider low. But considering the poor performance of the U.S. system against ordinary ballistic missiles in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the Israel-Iran conflict, this interception rate might need to be even lower.
Of course, the most important thing is that every government department in the movie is operating at full capacity, and every government official is providing professional opinions. However, after the mass purges and layoffs in the Trump administration this year, many departments featured in the movie should either have been cut or marginalized.
The intention of the movie "A House of Dynamite" is clearly to say that even if the government functions well and decision-makers are rational and humane, an accident is enough to trigger a nuclear crisis and bring humanity to the brink of extinction, without needing to assume someone went mad, as in "Dr. Strangelove," and the entire system failed, leading to the end of the world.
But the current U.S. nuclear strategy may be closer to the imagination of the Cold War era, and this system is almost malfunctioning, and the people in the system don't have much thought. This is due to the decline of American society and politics in recent years, as well as the fact that Americans haven't figured out how to win a nuclear war for decades.
In a way, this is good for world peace, because if the Americans truly understood how to win a nuclear war, the already suffering world would suffer even more. However, on the other hand, if the Americans don't understand how to win a nuclear war, but still believe they will win, that will bring big problems to the world.
From the Cold War to now, the underlying logic of nuclear strategy hasn't changed, which is known as "Mutually Assured Destruction," or a "Deterrence" strategy. Under this logic, as long as both sides have the ability to destroy each other, especially the ability to survive the first strike and conduct a second strike, both sides will fear the other's retaliation, thus being deterred from launching a nuclear war first.
From a counterintuitive perspective, under the "deterrence" logic, maintaining a certain level of mutual transparency is actually beneficial. Because no one can gain a first-strike advantage through secret actions, the other side will always have the ability to retaliate, so maintaining a certain level of communication and transparency to prevent miscalculations is necessary. Of course, this applies to major powers; small countries have different nuclear strategic logics.
Although this strategy has been questioned by many since its inception, it was given the nickname "MAD" (Mutual Assured Destruction) by its opponents. However, this strategy was actually effective for most of the Cold War period. Although we know that this deterrence didn't stop the U.S. and the Soviet Union from competing in various fields, it ultimately didn't escalate into a real nuclear war.
If we look back at the history of various crises during the Cold War, we will find that humanity was on the brink of nuclear war on many occasions. However, in each crisis, whether it was the highest-level leaders or subordinates, there were enough people who considered the nuclear apocalypse caused by the other party's retaliation, thus preventing the escalation of the crisis in time.
But from another perspective, although nuclear deterrence didn't lead to the worst outcome, neither side gained anything from it. You won't face the result of losing a nuclear war and being destroyed, but you also can't win, because all the preparations you made for a nuclear war are aimed at preventing it from happening.
For Americans, they cannot accept a war they can't win. Therefore, the U.S. has been continuously trying to revise the nuclear deterrence strategy in recent decades, seeking a place to "win."
In the early stages, the opponents of the deterrence strategy came up with a strategy called "Defense" (Defense). This strategy is simple: if the U.S. can shoot down the enemy's nuclear weapons, while the enemy can't defend against the U.S. nuclear strikes, then the U.S. would be invincible in a nuclear war.
But theory is simple, practice is difficult. The biggest supporters of the defense strategy were Reagan, so he came up with the famous "Star Wars" program, wanting to establish a tight missile interception system. But this strategy never took off in the end, because the Soviet Union quickly collapsed, and the defense strategy lost its target. The U.S. faced threats from terrorists and small countries, and their threats were difficult to defend against through traditional means.
On the other hand, the fundamental difficulty of the defense strategy is that you can't achieve 100% interception. Whether it's the advancement of nuclear weapons making interception difficult, or the attacker using a saturation attack to overload the interception system, or the interception technology itself can't guarantee perfection, "defense" is a difficult task in a nuclear war. Even if you can achieve an interception rate of over 90%, a few missed nukes would be enough to cause massive damage, making the defense itself meaningless. In this situation, an interception rate of 61% is not much different from 91% or even 99%.
Moreover, in the end, even if there is an absolute defense system, no defense system can be built from scratch, and the opponent will not sit idly by while you build a defense system. They can always use nuclear weapons before your defense system is completed.
Therefore, after the Cold War, the U.S. began to emphasize the so-called "Preemption" (Preemption) strategy. After all, the opponent is no longer a major power of equal level, but some small countries or non-state entities. The U.S., with its superior strength, may be able to eliminate the opponent's ability to acquire weapons in advance, thus completely eliminating the threat.
This strategy reached its peak with Powell's "soap" and the subsequent Iraq War. The harm this war brought to the U.S. was probably greater than the actual existence of large-scale weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Ultimately, this strategy has little to do with real nuclear strategy, it's just an excuse for the U.S. to expand and invade.
Moreover, for some slightly capable opponents, preemption is simply not feasible. Don't even consider real major powers, just look at Iran, a medium-sized country. In this year's Iran-Israel conflict, even though Iran was infiltrated by Israel like a sieve and had a lot of personnel and weapons destroyed in advance, it still retained enough retaliatory capability to allow many missiles to break through the U.S. interception system and hit Israeli targets. As for the U.S. deploying B2 bombers to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, if there were really any effects, you wouldn't see those honest American officials being fired by the Trump administration in anger.
Therefore, in recent years, the U.S. nuclear strategy has basically been relying on the old capital of the Cold War, constantly bumping into walls, and then going back to the old paths that were already walked during the Cold War and not intended to be walked again, pretending that history never happened. You can take their reports seriously and expect to analyze something, but what you can really read is their dual confusion in material and ideological aspects. Each government has its own rhetoric, but no one really does anything, and when they really want to do something, it probably makes the situation worse.
When the Americans won the Cold War, they thought their security could be based on doing whatever they wanted, but the result was that the U.S. became less safe in every sense.
The attitude of the Trump administration towards nuclear weapons is not only dangerous to the world, but also dangerous to the U.S. itself. Because they don't understand the significance of nuclear weapons, nor do they understand the system engineering required for their use and development, which is far from the current U.S.
When the Trump administration is eager to return to the Cold War era for arms races, wanting to develop new nuclear weapons, or establish the so-called "Golden Dome" defense system, it not only puts the world back into a dangerous arms race, but also means that the U.S. needs to manage and maintain old nuclear weapons and nuclear facilities that are not getting enough attention. Continuing along this path, letting irresponsible governments control neglected nuclear weapons, the final result is unlikely to be good.
And these things don't matter to the Trump administration. They just see nuclear weapons as a toy that can be used to "win."
But the basic concept of nuclear strategy has never been about winning. The history of the U.S. in recent years has fully shown that the more you want to win a so-called nuclear war, the more you will invest your resources and strategies in the wrong places, thereby weakening your own security.
Americans need to care not only about the development of China's nuclear weapons, but also to understand China's nuclear weapons philosophy, understand why China repeatedly emphasizes "nuclear war cannot be won and cannot be fought," and why it has the confidence to commit to "not using nuclear weapons first."
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Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7567182758276022799/
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