Is the United States a "Thermonuclear Monarchy?"

As we celebrated this July the severing of ties to the royal house of Great Britain in 1776, the truth is that we have come full circle and have since 1945 been living under a far more dangerous and absolute system than anything King George III could have contemplated in his wildest dreams, what author Elaine Scarry calls, “the Thermonuclear Monarchy.”

Scarry provides ample evidence to back up her thesis. During his 1974 impeachment hearings, President Richard Nixon told reporters, “I can go into my office, pick up the telephone and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” Nixon’s lawyer, when appearing before a federal court in relation to the Watergate investigation, opened his remarks with this astonishing statement: “The President, my client, wants me to argue that he is as absolute a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time.” Nixon’s sense that the country had endowed him with monarchic power was also expressed in his attempt to dress the White House guards in uniforms straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera.

While, as Scarry points out, Nixon’s somewhat unique combination of “candor and bad taste” shined a brief light on the Thermonuclear Monarchy, all presidents since Truman have held this awesome, unchecked power. Moreover, the use of nuclear weapons has been seriously contemplated far more times than most Americans realize. We've all at least heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis because President Kennedy chose to go public about it. But how many know that, according to Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara (who only revealed this 40 years after the president’s death) there were two more occasions when Kennedy came very close to using nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union? How many know that presidents Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon also all considered using nuclear weapons against either the Soviet Union, North Vietnam or China? How many know that in 1979 a computer error at NORAD led to full preparation for a non-existent Soviet first strike, that President Carter was given 3 to 7 minutes decide on whether to retaliate and that, luckily for the fate of humanity, the error was discovered within 7 minutes?

Scarry links this solitary presidential power over nuclear war with post World War II presidents' disdain for the constitutionally mandated congressional declaration of war. Since the invention of nuclear weapons, each new war has been carried out without such a declaration. In Scarry's words: “Since the president has such genocidal power at his personal disposal, obtaining Congressional permission for much lesser acts of injuring has often struck presidents as a needless bother.” Referring to the 1991 Gulf War, President George HW Bush boasted: “I didn’t have to get permission from some old goat in the Congress to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.” Scarry also contends that the loss of war powers has helped to "infantilize" Congress, leading to much of the dysfunction we see today.

Scarry forces us to confront our “willingness to speak in reverential, hushed tones of the awful responsibility of being president in a nuclear age." She cites a passage by Ted Sorenson, Kennedy’s speechwriter and advisor in his book, Decision-Making in the White House as being exemplary:

"[The President] alone is ultimately held accountable for the lives of 190 million citizens (the book was published in 1964), to more than 40 foreign allies and, in a very real sense - as custodian of the nuclear trigger - to all men and to all mankind."

How can it be, Scarry asks, that a man of Sorenson's intellect or more to the point, Kennedy himself could not have been revolted or indeed not have revolted against a system that allows one man such power? We might ask ourselves the very same question.

Scarry's prescriptions for restoring the pre-1945 republic are less certain. She believes the "tools" are to be found within the Constitution in Congress' power to declare war and the Second Amendment's right to bear arms, which she sees as "distributing to the entire adult population shared responsibility for use of the country's arsenal." It is her belief that these two provisions make the decision to go to war a collective responsibility, that nuclear weapons are incompatible with this and should therefore be discarded But are Congress and the American people really prepared to take back their war making power, to say nothing of dismantling our nuclear arsenal? The record is not promising. Even a cursory glance at U.S. history since World War II reveal that the apparatus and prerogatives of the "national security state" have become paramount over the letter of the Constitution. This situation went into overdrive after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and will no doubt get even worse if a similar tragedy occurs in the future, unless something is done to reverse the trend.

With 122 UN member nations voting to ban nuclear weapons also this July, perhaps this is as good a time as any to pick up a copy of Scarry's book – which is loaded with other terrifying tidbits of information such as the glacial, primitive pace of communication with a nuclear armed submarine operating at great depth and the fact that subs have the power to launch on their own in certain instances - and at least put the issue of the Thermonuclear Monarchy on the table for discussion.

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Steven D's picture

no pun intended.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Arrow's picture

the 'nuclear football' would be empty. What kind of monster could be capable of killing tens of millions out of hate and revenge? Hope to never find out.

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I want a Pony!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

I see nothing to contradict that claim. They all believe they are royalty, and everyone else is a serf. They are the law, we are subject to their laws.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

I have lived all my life with nukes, here and there.
Always the threat of it. Living like my efforts towards education, a better life, my loves, my possessions, my family, everything, could be vaporized in an instant.
Every single day of my life.
I wish I had been born in some other century.
I might have had a chance and been able to run and escape the Huns, so to speak.
I have no fear. Drop that nuke on my head.
Make it quick for me.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Pluto's Republic's picture

Congress' power to declare war and the Second Amendment's right to bear arms, which she sees as "distributing to the entire adult population shared responsibility for use of the country's arsenal." It is her belief that these two provisions make the decision to go to war a collective responsibility.

A child knows that. As a child, I was so relieved to know that Americans were the ones that held this power.

As a human of intellectual integrity, I know that America-as-a-whole is a dangerous mine-hive of rabid self-interest and can never be trusted to do the right thing. The leaders are insane with corruption and the people are feral toward the world outside. They would be more concerned about potential radioactive fallout than they would if their country found a way to annihilated the rest of the world.

It's the world's problem, not ours.

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Pricknick's picture

It's the world's problem, not ours.

It's a mad mad mad mad world.
[video:https://youtu.be/Sla845GW9YM]

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Big Al's picture

Is that what happened?
Funny how people just accept it now.

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@Big Al a fresh new war of words but I must say they will continue to do so (just accept it) for various reasons. Despite all evidence to the contrary, many can't even conceive of the notion that perhaps our own government had a part in it.

Even when past incidents were revealed to not be done by outside actors, some still want to give our government the benefit of doubt.

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Yaldabaoth, Saklas I'm calling you. Samael. You're not alone. I said, you're not alone, in your darkness. You're not alone, baby. You're not alone. "Original Sinsuality" Tori Amos

Big Al's picture

@Dark UltraValia to MK Ultra and the Church committee after the Vietnam war. Their dirty deeds were made public and yet somehow people have forgotten and think it's different now, or they choose to ignore the elephant in the room completely. Same with the Vietnam war, somehow it was a mistake not a planned massacre.
To me, when these so called terrorist incidents occur, the first thought should be the CIA, the U.S. government. But most people can't go there even when the evidence slaps them in the face.

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@Big Al our media is making sure we stay dumb.

Plus, they keep many of us too busy trying to pay the bills and keep food on the table to have any time to look up.

We c99'ers have time to dig truth out from under the garbage America is being fed. Everyone else is exhausted by what it takes to survive these days.

Perhaps I draw too much hope from millennials but they seem to intuit how wrong things are. We older folk had a process to go thru to get there. And it wasn't easy.

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@Dark UltraValia we are as expendable as those we bomb every day, is it? I think that's a big part of it too, Americans really WANT to believe they're special even to their own shitty leaders. Willfully naïve but maybe a survival mechanism of sorts for some too.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

My money is on the nukes. Folks who have been in government through the days of the first cold war are in agreement that this is worse. Used to be that there were boundaries and areas of influence. The US project to separate the Ukraine from their cousins in Russia is just one of those that would have been totally unacceptable. Now, perversely, the US wants to punish a very patient Russia. Both countries are now at the ready with nuclear arsenal. There isn't much time to launch after detection especially with nuclear cruise missiles. We are on a hair trigger of total annihilation. If you look at this from a million miles out in space the only conclusion that you can come to is that we are an insane species and should probably be wiped off of the face of the Earth for the good of life on this planet.

The good news is that if nuclear weapons don't do the job then the Climate Emergency will. Just past mid century temperatures in the Summer will be too hot to grow food crops in the US and Europe. That will leave Canada and Russia as the only large agriculturally viable nations. That probably means global thermonuclear war to finish the job.

It doesn't have to be like this. Both problems are completely solvable. This is the test for Homo Sapiens. If we pass it then life goes on with us, if we don't then the planet will recover in a few million years and life goes on, with a new set of dominant species.

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard that wipes out half or more of the population. Seems like that might be the only way to save both the planet and a remnant of humanity.

Awful , what we wish for in dire straits. Like the tortured who pray for death.

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1) making noise - banging on pots and pans in our own neighborhoods and then joining in our communities and taking it to the statehouses and on to dc from there.
2) boycotts - targeted or general
3) a huge tax revolt - maybe putting our taxes in a trust fund that can only be given to the government under certain conditions.

BUT we are too easily divided, distracted, intimidated to make any of those really stick. I was thinking = we have been waiting for a Savior. But I really think we only need a good vision and a good story. Rev. Barber is an example of what we need. Somebody who has a good bit of passion and compassion that can bring us together, give us good heart, give us a good vision and show us a path to follow. It doesn't have to be the whole road we are shown, We only need to know the next step and if we are sufficiently fired up we will take it.

What will it take for us to create a vision? I think it has been so hard because of "neo liberalism" myths and mythology, so taking care of each other is out, taking care of the planet is out, building toward a future is out (mainly because none of those lead to a profit!)

Bernie and the Pope and Barber all use the value system of 1) we are all children of God ( i.e. brothers and sisters), 2)all connected (what happens to one happens to all) 3)connected to the planet (what happens to the planet really truly does affect us duh!)

Maybe if we trash neo cons and libs alike and consign them to the dust bin, tell the "pro-life" folks they now have a full time job keeping us from going extinct like the dinos, tell the "christians" they need to resurrect the passion and compassion of what we might think of as "Christ". Tell the atheists they are responsible for keeping the message real and coherent and to alert us to pitfalls and such but to add value not venom.

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glitterscale

that could, if it were willing to do so, permanently stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. In that sense at least, the USA really is "the one exceptional nation". However instead of accepting this preemminent global responsibility, and exercising America's ability to prevent a nuclear war, its leaders have chosen to deliberately escalate the threat of one. They have chosen to define "disarmament" as a synonym for "weakness", and to set the nation on a path of perpetual warfare, by preferring domination to dialogue at every opportunity.

Adopting this aggressive posture has been a willful decision on the part of America's military leadership. It has not been some sort of inevitable historical consequence, nor has it been motivated by primarily defensive concerns. It has been, and still is motivated by an insatiable appetite for conquest, and by the perceived need to dominate all other nations.

This is why Russia and Iran are now both surrounded by rings of US nuclear missile sites. These installations have nothing whatsoever to do with defending and protecting America. Their purpose is to demonstrate an immanent threat, a threat that could not exist without the nuclear warheads that give it teeth.

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native