What if the man with his finger on the nuclear button is insane? That’s the question raised by City of London’s The Economist in a commentary posted yesterday. “This fictional fog of nuclear war (portrayed in the movie “A House of Dynamite") is terrifying enough, even with a rational president in charge and a professional staff to advise him. But what of the real world in which Donald Trump, a mercurial president with sole authority to fire thousands of nukes, displays deep confusion about nuclear weapons and his national-security staff dares not set him straight?”
But, The Economist is lying if it wants its readers to believe it’s actually concerned about avoiding nuclear war. In a March 17, 2007 futurological article entitled “The European Union at 100,” The Economist not only “predicted” that Barack Obama would become President of the United States, but also backed a nuclear confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, years before the neo-Nazi coup in Kiev. “The other cause for quiet satisfaction has been the EU’s foreign policy. In the dangerous second decade of the century, when Vladimir Putin returned for a third term as Russian President and stood poised to invade Ukraine, it was the EU that pushed the Obama administration to threaten massive nuclear retaliation,” The Economist author wrote in a fanciful look-back at the EU from 2057. So, when it serves imperial interests, The Economist has no qualms about risking nuclear war, in fact, nuclear war is acceptable as long as the person threatening to launch it, like former British Prime Minister Liz Truss or former U.S. President Barack Obama does so with the full understanding of what they are doing.
