Nuclear war shouldn’t come down to just one person — especially when it’s Trump

Trump’s attack on Iran and his proposal to resume U.S. nuclear weapons testing has jolted Americans back to a darker era of Cold War brinkmanship, when impulsive decisions could push the world toward catastrophe.

Trump’s insanity and veiled nuclear threats should make it perfectly clear that this war is not Israel just leading him around like a puppet. Trump is the leader of a nuclear armed superpower and he has made his own choices. Of course Israel wanted this war too but Trump is the one driving this train, bombing civilians, threatening genocide. If you can’t draw the line at the genocide in Gaza, you can’t draw it anywhere else. Moral failure, on a mass and collective scale, brought us here.

It’s a stark reminder that one person can, at any moment, order the use of nuclear weapons with almost no oversight. The Nuclear First-Strike Security Act, would establish safeguards to prevent an impulsive or reckless first strike, without weakening U.S. ability to defend.

Any president currently has the authority to start a nuclear war solely on his or her word, with little to no consultation. This bill requires certification by the secretary of Defense that a presidential order for a nuclear first strike is valid and legal. The U.S. is not a serious superpower any more, in the sense of not being capable of serious statecraft. Instead, we’re in the looting and pillaging stage of late American capitalism, at home and abroad. That’s Trump’s business model – smash things, cause chaos, extract profit.

Some will argue that this legislation ties the president’s hands in a crisis. Others will criticize its launch-on-warning exception as weakening it too much. Both are valid points that reflect the real tension between speed and restraint in nuclear decision-making. But there is no way to limit the very dangerous sole authority of a president to launch a nuclear war, while still giving him unlimited ability to respond to a national security crisis.

There is a trade-off between those two risks, and the Nuclear First-Strike Security Act is a good first step. It only requires the concurrence of the secretary of Defense, who will almost certainly be reachable during a crisis. It’s not an onerous hurdle, but a basic safeguard.

Others argue that this bill is only a half step that distracts from an even greater goal: nuclear disarmament. Nuclear disarmament, advanced by some, may well be part of the solution, but there is currently no global consensus on how to achieve that goal. The expiration of the New START Treaty — the last remaining bilateral treaty constraining Russian and U.S. nuclear forces — and the ongoing growth in China’s nuclear arsenal indicate that nuclear disarmament is not a realistic near-term goal.

A dangerous decision-making system in Washington means Congress must act to provide certainty that the U.S. will remain a responsible and reliable nuclear power.

Multiple members of Congress have introduced proposals that advance this goal. In addition to “Nuclear First Strike Security Act of 2025,” These proposals include Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu’s (D-Calif.) “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2025,” and Rep. Dina Titus’s (D-Nev.) “Restrain Act.” These bills would reassert Congress’s constitutionally mandated power, prevent the first use of nuclear weapons, and strengthen arms control and congressional oversight. This level of congressional interest provides hope that Congress can take a leading role on the issue.

Americans vest their elected representatives in the White House, Senate and House of Representatives with the power to make decisions on their behalf in the service of the public good. It’s time for Congress to honor its responsibility by passing laws that instill Americans with the faith that their government will not recklessly employ nuclear weapons.

The world remains a volatile, unpredictable and threatening place. Last year brought heightened tensions in the Middle East and continued illegal Russian aggression in Ukraine. Recently the administration captured a foreign leader, which should remind elected members and the public how quickly decisions of national security can occur. Congress cannot remain on the sidelines while a single person holds the power to trigger nuclear catastrophe without oversight or accountability.

It is estimated that a child born today has about even odds of living out his or her natural life without experiencing or being killed in a major nuclear war. Nuclear weapons are the original human-created threat to our existence. But biological weapons threaten civilization, with climate change and artificial intelligence possibly doing the same. None of those problems will be solved in the current world environment. A more cooperative world is needed to solve all of them.

From a U.S.-Russia arms control treaty lapsing to sudden military actions in Iran and Venezuela, the risks of impulsive or unilateral decisions are real and immediate. The time to act is now. This bill is ready to pass and would create a simple but vital check on the most dangerous authority any president holds.

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If you feel powerless to help Gaza, you still has a choice: donate. When so much of what exists is false, authenticity is a powerful weapon we can wield that the state never could. So if you feel lost, hopeless, depressed, angry and afraid, I implore you to return - again - again - and again - to the feeling of love that exists within you that brought you here in the first place. It is only through this that we can remake the world. To redress Gaza’s famine, displacement, and destruction, independent and impartial humanitarian organizations - UN agencies, international and national NGOs - must be allowed to deliver relief at scale. To salvage Gaza’s people from the devastation inflicted by Israel, it must be unified with the West Bank to form an independent and sovereign Palestinian State, not to be parceled and colonized by the former.

Meanwhile, children continue to be shredded by US bombs, and the starvation reaches new depths of hellish collective punishment. If both parties are going to continue to support an ongoing genocide, at least they can both be honest about doing so, rather than having one openly bloodthirsty party, and another—unconvincingly—playing the role of powerless, bumbling humanitarian.

Please keep donate Gaza especially if you, as reader, has [background] International Relation [whatever universities]. IR Graduate means [you must, at least] get some semester [about] studying Middle East [in macro, not specifically Gaza].

We need more people to share fundraisers instead of only talking about Gaza. Some people think that those in Gaza don’t need money but that’s wrong. Almost everyone lost their source of income while essentials, food & medicine get sold for astronomical prices. So I put my attempt in all social media as I can, in twitter / X, in substack [since October 2023 I put link donation], in bluesky or bsky, in threads, in instagram.

Link to donate World Food Programme - Palestine appeal: click here

[Daniel Brühl]

link to donate

Most campaign shared or circulated in social media are for REAL people in Gaza. They’re legit. There are a lot of small campaigns for struggling families. This is their only lifeline. By donating & sharing, you are literally making history and alleviating part of their pain

Please do not rely on me alone for sharing your campaign. I’m only 1 person and sometimes I’m not online which is unreliable. I never ignore anybody on purpose but I have a very limited capacity & very little energy and time.

[Refaat Rafiq Alareer IF I MUST DIE] Refaat Rafiq Alareer was extremely hungry, November 2023, days before Refaat killed by Israel airstrike. If November 2023 already [one-by-one Gazan] extremely famine, extremely hungry, imagine November 2025 or more than 2 years Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.

[RENEW] 455 Languages IF I MUST DIE of Refaat Rafiq Alareer [by 6100+ Translators, Social Media Users]

Prada

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December 20, 2023

Dec 9th, 2023, New York City, 4.10am —- with update total languages to be 310 as of July 1st, 2024, 3.52am New York City, and then, to be 350 languages as of July 28th, 2024, 1.37am ====== newest update as of July, 3rd, 2025 already 384 languages, and October 8th, 2025 reaches 455 languages across the globe.

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