CURRENT REAL DANGERS OF NUCLEAR WAR

Donald Trump has Effectively Ended All Nuclear Agreements

I wish I did not have to do titles in all bold—but we have arrived at this point in so many domains! Even as day-to-day matters are consuming us, I have emphasized the need to respond proactively and to understand deeply, so as to prevent things getting out of hand. This includes matters related to the future welfare of our country, our world, ourselves, and our families—no person can afford to ignore what is happening. As nuclear weapons have proliferated tremendously, increasing the magnitude of their destructive power and the speed at which they can be employed, not to mention their metastasizing types, we have become psychologically inured to their presence. This is a huge, quite possibly fatal, mistake to let happen. There are very good reasons Albert Einstein and his colleagues tried to bring to our consciousness this potential through “the Doomsday Clock”—soon after they quickly realized that their scientific discoveries had changed the human condition—which now counts down in seconds rather than minutes.

Especially in the new political, economic, and military situation we are now in, we need to urgently bring our focus to de-escalation, not only of the weapons but of the ways we think about the weapons and about how we are conducting international affairs.

This week, just minutes before Donald Trump was scheduled to meet with Xi Jinping of China, he declared that the U.S. would resume nuclear testing—for the first time since 1992. With this statement, he has, in effect, effectively ended all nuclear agreements.

In my recent interview with Ralph Nader, I stated that, even without a mentally-impaired U.S. president, we would be in a critical situation of nuclear danger—that this has been my life’s work, far before Donald Trump.

Yet, there is no doubt that, with Donald Trump, the dangers have magnified a millionfold. In 2018, he unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal. In 2019, he withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, paving the way for Russia and the U.S. to explore new missile systems. In 2020, he ended the Open Skies Treaty, causing Russia to withdraw in response in 2021. In 2021, he allowed the New START Treaty, which limited deployment of strategic nuclear warheads and launchers, to expire. Then there is the shattering of international norms when he defunded or disengaged from nonproliferation forums, such as the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs; rejected participation in talks on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and blocked U.S. ratification efforts; accelerated nuclear modernization, signaling a shift away from arms reduction.

Since April 2017, when we psychiatrists gathered for our initial major conference at Yale School of Medicine, soon after Donald Trump became president, I stated that he would naturally gravitate toward nuclear weapons and their use. Our primary concern was about the immediate dangers of having a commander-in-chief, whom we had already determined to be mentally and medically unfit, have “the nuclear football” by his side at all times—and the slower but more certain dangers of his having the power to destabilize our already fragile climate even further (and, like the many nuclear agreements, in 2017 he would unilaterally pull out of the Paris Climate Accord). As psychiatrists, we were acutely aware of the severe dangers that could result when Trump has the power, the weapons, and the authority that persons of his impairments should never have. Since the very beginning, we recognized that the dangers of such a person making decisions that could lead to nuclear war were not theoretical, but real.

Now, a new film has been released on the issue. There is no mention of Donald Trump, or of current events. However, whether or not filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow intended to use her capabilities for similar reasons as when we came forward, I am struck by its review: “‘A House of Dynamite’ is Absurd—and Frighteningly True to Life.” Zeeshan Aleem writes:

While in the film the U.S. president is hinted at as an Obama-like reasonable leader who could possibly be trusted to behave as prudently as possible, not every president is. Atop our nuclear monarchy today, for example, stands an impulsive, incurious man who has demonstrated no interest in long-term consequences or for the well-being of people he considers to be not on his team. To have him contemplate how to operate in a nuclear emergency is simply unthinkable.

Even the New York Times, which does so many things wrong but also does some things right, seems to have realized the extreme dangers of our current predicament, magnified greatly by Donald Trump as president, and is properly trying to alert us:

· At the Brink: Confronting the Risk of Nuclear War

· The United States Is Living Under a ‘Nuclear Monarchy’

· ‘Oppenheimer’ Is the Origin Story. These Three Movies Reveal Our Nuclear Present

· A Nuclear Weapon Strikes. What Happens Next?

· Nuclear War: The Rising Risk, and How We Stop It

Last year a quite remarkable as well as extremely insightful and cautionary book titled, Nuclear War: A Scenario, written by Annie Jacobsen, was published. Though fiction, Jacobsen spent years interviewing for this book a large number of top-level persons who had been involved in their military and governmental careers on how to prepare for, how to prevent, and if “Mutual Assured Destruction” (“MAD”) deterrence failed, how to fight and “win” a nuclear war. The book is so realistic that Wikipedia mistakenly refers to it as a “non-fiction” book. This may be the case, because the book goes into considerable extremely important factual historical analysis about nuclear war planning before it transforms into a gripping fictional tale about a hypothetical first strike from North Korea, reasons and details unknown—and then chillingly and realistically shows how by misunderstanding, fear, confusion, and extreme time pressures to make decisions, this situation quickly escalates into full-scale thermonuclear war in just 72 minutes.

Then, beyond journalists, filmmakers, and authors, there are major academics such as Jeffrey Sachs and Peter Kuznick, who have been increasingly speaking out for similar reasons as we have as psychiatrists—for humanity’s survival.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is holding a 13-week public course on:

“The Causes and Cures of Violence”

The next class will be this Saturday, November 1, 2025, at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT on Zoom. A paid subscription is required to receive a link the morning before.

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on fit leadership that has been recently expanded, in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee warned that journalists and intellectuals are the first to be suppressed in times of unfit leadership, and it is happening here; she continues, however, to be interviewed or covered abroad, such as in France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada (with notable articles in Dutch, Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Slovakian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Persian, Hindi, and Korean). She authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials. Dr. Lee is also a master of divinity, currently developing a new curriculum for public education on “One World or None.”