“The man who laughs has simply not yet heard the terrible news.”- Bertolt Brecht
On April 7, 2026, after launching an American war against Iran,[1] US President Donald J. Trump threatened: “A whole civilization will die tonight.” This declaration and several subsequent threats (e.g., “We will bomb you back to the Stone Age”) displayed mens rea or “criminal intent.” Unambiguously, these crude threats were lawless and genocidal.[2] Also, they wrongly conflated wars of preemption with wars of prevention.
Under authoritative international law, only the former can be permissible. In order to be permissible, pertinent military actions would need to meet the multiple legal standards of “anticipatory self-defense.” Inter alia, these standards require enemy threats that are “imminent in point of time.”[3] But as a practical matter, there can be no ascertainably objective criteria of “imminence.”
To continue, there are related or derivative issues. International law remains an integral part of United States law.[4] In consequence of Mr. Trump’s indiscriminate and visceral threats,[5] the United States could face variously expanding risks of a nuclear war.[6] Such grave risks could manifest incrementally or all at once. Moreover, they could concern both an intentional nuclear war and a nuclear war that is unintentional or inadvertent.
Stay ahead of the geopolitical week.
MD Briefing delivers expert analysis across five global fronts — the Indo-Pacific, energy, geoeconomics, European security, and the Middle East — every Monday morning. Free.
Science involves informed judgments of probability. But because science-based probabilities must be based on the determinable frequency of relevant past events, an America that still subscribed to Trump’s defiling logic would effectively accept intolerable risks of a nuclear conflict. In the parlance of formal logic, Trump’s contrived “reasoning” displays the argumentum ad baculum fallacy or “illegitimate appeal to force.” Correlatively, this reasoning is intended to recruit supporters by downplaying complex strategic problems via unwarranted simplifications.[7]
In dealing with nuclear war scenarios, US national security policy will need to exhibit palpable levels of courage. Donald Trump’s re-named “Department of War” – a change signifying much more than nomenclature – will encourage variously rancorous policies drawn from intellectually barren clichés. Though this president’s “peace through strength” mantra might somehow be appropriate for grammar-school recitations,[8] it offers nothing of mature analytic value.
World peace requires enforceable world law. But in announcing the Department of Defense name-change to the Department of War on September 5, 2025, Pete Hegseth, America’s “Secretary of War,” promised “maximum lethality, not tepid legality. “Trump’s messaging was clear: Better an invigorating hot war than a disappointingly lukewarm peace.
Could there have been any dignified and decent justification for sending such a barbarous message? Though modern international legal rules were established and codified at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, seventeenth-century anarchy is now morphing into something far more ominous. Ironically, this transformation into “chaos” owes in large part to the increasing complexity of strategic decision-making in world politics (especially risks of miscalculation, computer malfunction, hacking, artificial intelligence manipulations and accident) and to reciprocal national policies of deliberate simplification. As a dynamic process, the emergence of global chaos can be understood only by systematic applications of courageous thought.
The 2025 movie, “A House of Dynamite” offers a scenario in which a nuclear aggressor is not readily identifiable. In the “real world,” this fearful scenario is entirely credible. After all, as the number of nuclear powers increases, the plausibility of an “anonymous attacker scenario” must also increase. Even without a verifiable expansion of nuclear weapon states (“horizontal proliferation”), US arms race accelerations (“vertical proliferation”) would open a Pandora’s Box of prospectively irremediable harms.
There is more. Since the 17th century, global stability has depended on a presumed “balance of power.” But this “balance” has never been anything more than a falsely-reassuring fiction.
In today’s world of rapidly-approaching chaos, longstanding security deficits are being exacerbated. Accordingly, still-capable and courageous American leaders will urgently need to devise alternate strategies of nuclear war-avoidance and counter-nuclear terrorism. Among other cautionary issues, these law-enforcing strategies could never benefit from an American president who prefers stream-of-consciousness reasoning to logic-based analyses. In essence, these strategies will require strenuous thought and corresponding acts of “will.”[9]
Inherently antagonistic to intellect, Donald Trump’s national security policies cling tenaciously to crumbling architectures of Westphalian anarchy. As timely geographic examples, transitional forms of chaotic disintegration are already being boosted by US presidential actions in the Middle East, a region where Trump’s most recently declared “peace” remains little more than caricature. Now, here and in assorted other places, fundamentally rational threat mechanisms of Westphalian anarchy are being sacrificed to irrational expectations of belligerent nationalism.
In world politics, metaphor can be convincing, but no analogy is authentic truth. Overall, there is no longer any defensible pretext for seeking a regional or global “balance of power.” Because of “normal” nuclear weapons proliferation, many usual calculations of world system equilibrium are being rendered increasingly futile. Everywhere in this Trump-dissembled world legal order, states are unable to gain any tangible security advantages via regional or global “equilibrium.”
Even amid such difficult matters, some strategic calculations are not necessarily complicated. Under no conceivable circumstances could shrill presidential threats of vengeance and reciprocity ever help the United States or its Israeli ally. Following Donald Trump’s unhidden indifference to refined analytic thought (e.g., “I love the poorly educated.”), unmanageable nuclear spread is now virtually assured. This proliferation could include sub-state terror organizations in the Middle East, a development that would impact US ally Israel in particular.[10]
Quo Vadis? During periods of competitive risk-taking, which are now more-or-less inevitable, once “unthinkable” weapons could become “thinkable.” Most worrisome will be new nuclear powers that operate with deficient systems of command and control and/or already-nuclear powers led by unstable decision-makers.
During his ritualized rants, US President Donald Trump has mused openly about nuclear weapons as operationally-appropriate instruments of war and vengeance. But the only rational use of nuclear weapons in world affairs would be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post. Portentously, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been voicing similarly dangerous nuclear sentiments. At some point, ipso facto, Trump-Putin musings could intersect. What then?
In significant measure, it is from variously indecipherable interactions between Trump and Putin decision-making processes that authentic existential harms could emerge. Presumptively, some of these interactions would be “synergistic.” This means, by definition, that any cumulative outcome would be even more injurious than the simple sum of constituent parts. Precisely how much more injurious is not logically or scientifically determinable. Ultimately, however, such synergistic interactions would enlarge the risks and consequences ofchaos. “Where there were great military actions,” foresaw French Poet Saint-John Perse (1887-1975), “there lies whitening now the jawbone of an ass.”
There are additional particulars. A credible aspect of any upcoming chaos would be acts of irrationality.[11] If the United States should have to face a jihadiststate adversary with access to nuclear weapons (e.g., Iran backed by North Korea), both countries’ balance-centered deterrence postures could be undermined. A similar scenario would confront the always-beleaguered state of Israel.
Such challenges to American military power would signify unacceptable threats of nuclear terrorism or nuclear war. These threats would be enlarged by Trump’s illogical plans for resumed nuclear testing, regarding both warheads and delivery vehicles. Russian fears would be heightened by any US deployments of a “golden dome,” a politics-shaped plan for “total” missile defense. In essence, this misguided plan would compel Moscow to aggressively seek a more “assuredly destructive” nuclear arsenal – an incentive that would continuously raise the odds of a nuclear war,
There is more. To proceed purposefully, issues of adversarial irrationality and madness will need science-based scrutiny in Washington. In world politics, irrationality is never the same as madness.[12] More precisely, an irrational adversary is one that could at some indeterminable point value certain intangible goals more highly than national self-preservation.
For the United States, a mad adversary could be much worse than an irrational one. This mad enemy would display no determinable preference ordering and not be subject to any calculable threats of American military deterrence. Here, the incumbent president’s limited understanding of nuclear risk calibrations could lead the United States away from urgently-required policy revaluations. To wit, a prudent response to such multiplying challenges ought not to be expected from Donald Trump’s “Department of War.”
In any event, for Washington and also Jerusalem, no choice between mad and irrational adversaries could become available. Whether the United States and its Israeli ally would do better to confront irrationality, madness or both will not be Donald Trump’s decision to make. On this predictable disqualification, Washington’s sensible imperative would be to base all high-consequence conflict decisions (especially nuclear war avoidance) on solid intellectual foundations.
What should reasonably be expected about the rising risks of a nuclear war? In brief, there will be no viable solutions championed by competent political authority. It is only by elevating science-based logic above a president who “learns only in his own flesh” that the United States could avoid civilizational despair.[13]
Though we humans ought to have become more “civilized” since the 17th century Peace of Westphalia, species survival has never been a deliberate objective or linear process. Unless the United States and other states refuse to follow the policies of a president who “has no attention to spare for reasoning,” a nuclear war could rage until every sturdy flower of culture had been trampled. At that no longer unimaginable moment, millions would perish in paroxysmal quakes of primordial unreason.
There is one final conclusion. Since the seventeenth century, our anarchic world is best described as a “system.” Accordingly, events in any one part of this ungovernable world could tangibly affect what happens in some or all the other parts.
When deterioration is marked and begins to spread from one country to another, corollary effects will undermine all residual infrastructures of “balance.” When deterioration is rapid and catastrophic, as would be the case following the start of an unconventional war or unconventional act of terrorism, cascading harms would become synergistic and unmanageable. As for Bertolt Brecht’s “man who laughs,” he would still not have heard the “terrible news.”[14]
[1] Under international law, the question of whether or not a condition of war exists between states is often unclear. Traditionally, a “formal” war was said to exist only after a state had issued a formal declaration of war. The Hague Convention III codified this position in 1907. This Convention provided that hostilities must not commence without “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. See Hague Convention III on the Opening of Hostilities, Oct. 18, 1907, art. 1, 36 Stat. 2277, 205 Consol. T.S. 263. Presently, a declaration of war could be tantamount to a declaration of criminality because international law prohibits “aggression.” See Treaty Providing for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, Aug. 27, 1948, art. 1, 46 Stat. 2343, 94 L.N.T.S. 57 (also called Pact of Paris or Kellogg-Briand Pact); Nuremberg Judgment, 1 I.M.T. Trial of the Major War Criminals 171 (1947), portions reprinted in Burns H. Weston, et. al., INTERNATIONAL LAW AND WORLD ORDER 148, 159 (1980); U.N. Charter, art. 2(4). A state may compromise its own legal position by announcing formal declarations of war. It follows that a state of belligerency may exist without formal declarations, but only if there exists an armed conflict between two or more states and/or at least one of these states considers itself “at war.”
[2]On the crime of genocide under international law, see: See Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, opened for signature, December 9, 1948, entered into force, January 12, 1951, 78 U.N.T.S. 277. Although the criminalizing aspect of international law that proscribes genocide-like conduct may derive from sources other than the Genocide Convention (i.e., it may emerge from customary international law and also be included in different international conventions), such conduct is always an egregious crime under international law. Even where the conduct in question does not affect the interests of more than one state, a traditional canon of international legal validity, it becomes an international crime ipso facto whenever it constitutes an offense against the world community “delicto jus gentium.”
[3] The customary right of anticipatory self-defense, which is the legal expression of preemption, has its modern origins in the Caroline Incident. This was part of the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. (See: Beth Polebau, “National Self-Defense in International Law: An Emerging Standard for a Nuclear Age,” 59 N.Y.U. L. REV. 187, 190-191 (noting that the Caroline Incident transformed the right of self-defense from an excuse for armed intervention into a customary legal doctrine). Following the Caroline, even the threat of an armed attack has generally been accepted as justification for a militarily defensive action. In an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then-U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self-defense that does not actually require a prior armed attack. (See Polebau, op. cit., citing to Jennings, “The Caroline and McLeod Cases,” 32 AM. J. INT’L L., 82, 90 (1938).) Here, a defensive military response to a threat was judged permissible as long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.”
[4] Recalling the precise words of Mr. Justice Gray, in delivering the judgment of the US Supreme Court in Paquete Habana (1900): “International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction….” (175 U.S. 677(1900)) See also: Opinion in Tel-Oren vs. Libyan Arab Republic (726 F. 2d 774 (1984)).The specific incorporation of treaty law into US municipal law is codified at Art. 6 of the US Constitution, the so-called “Supremacy Clause.” It is manifest that Donald J. Trump has no awareness of these facts or simply doesn’t care about them.
[5] One may think here of Swiss Nobel Literature laureate Hermann Hesse’s generic description of a false national leader: “The dull-witted brute, blindly trampling around in the flower gardens of intellect and culture.” (See The Glass Bead Game, 1943).
[6] On probable consequences of a nuclear war by this author, see: Louis René Beres, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd. ed., 2018); Louis René Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: America’s Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: US Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington MA; Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, ed., Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1986).
[7] See, in this connection, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s generic comment on analytic simplifications as deception: “Remember that one is sometimes convinced of the correctness of a view by its simplicity or symmetry…. “(On Certainty, 1969).
[8] Intermittently, this mantra focuses on assorted agreements for “cease fire.” In law, a cease fire or armistice represents an intra-war convention, an agreement concluded between belligerents. Such an agreement, it follows, does not terminate a “state of war.” The 1907 Hague Convention IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, stipulates, at the Annex to the Convention, that “An armistice suspends military operations by mutual agreement between the belligerent parties.” (Emphasis added): See CONVENTION NO. IV RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND, WITH ANNEX OF REGULATIONS. Done at The Hague, Oct. 18, 1907. Entered into force, Jan. 26, 1910. 36 Stat. 2277, T.S. No. 539, 1 Bevans 631, at Chapter V, Art. 36.) The courts of individual states have also affirmed the principle that an armistice does not end a war (See, for example, Kahn v. Anderson, Warden, United States, Supreme Court, 1921, 255, U.S. 1). Throughout history, cease fires and armistices have envisaged a resumption of hostilities.
[9] Modern philosophy origins of “will” lie in writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially The World as Will and Idea (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew freely upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Nietzsche drew just as freely (and perhaps more importantly) on Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic twentieth-century work, The Revolt of the Masses (Le Rebelion de las Masas (1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s very grand essay, “In Search of Goethe from Within” (1932), written for Die Neue Rundschau of Berlin on the occasion of the centenary of Goethe’s death. It is reprinted in Ortega’s anthology, The Dehumanization of Art (1948) and is available from Princeton University Press (1968).
[10] Regarding Israel’s never-ending war with Palestinian insurgent forces, history deserves pride of place. Relentless Palestinian hostility to Israel has its decipherable doctrinal foundations in the PLO’s “Phased Plan” of June 9, 1974. In its 12th Session, the PLO’s highest deliberative body, the Palestinian National Council, reiterated the PLO aim as being “to achieve their rights to return, and to self-determination on the whole of their homeland.” All prospective Palestinian terror would have still-earlier roots in the Palestinian National Covenant. Calling officially for sustained Arab violence against Israel, this document was adopted in 1964, three years before the 1967 Six Day War. This means that the PLO’s core guidance on terror was first published – together with its explicit references to the annihilation of Israel – three years before there were any “occupied territories,” For the Palestinian Authority, which until October, 2015, had still officially agreed to accept a “Two-State Solution,” the underlying position of protracted war was part of a broader strategy of incorporating Israel into “Palestine.” This irredentist incorporation was already codified on all PA maps. The most unambiguous Palestinian call for the removal of Israel remains the PLO’s “Phased Plan” of June 9, 1974. Under the authoritative laws of war, this Plan represents an unhidden commitment to carry out certifiable crimes against humanity.
[11] Says Karl Jaspers: “The rational is not thinkable without its other, the non-rational, and it never appears in reality without it.” (Reason and Existence; 1935).
[12] “We are mad,” says Seneca (Letters, 95), “not only as individuals, but as nations also. We restrain manslaughter and isolated murders, but what of war and the so-called glory of killing whole peoples?”
[13] In the words of Spanish existentialist philosopher Jose Ortega y’ Gasset, “The mass man [in this case, Donald J. Trump] has no attention to spare for reasoning. He thinks only in his own flesh.” See Ortega’s classic, The Revolt of the Masses (1930).
[14] See the poet’s epigraph, above.
