FEAST OR FAMINE

All of a sudden, I am swamped with more interesting and thoughtful comments than I can respond to.  I am going to start by replying to a comment by Richard Lewis that is, for me at least, extremely provocative.  Here is what he wrote:

“I disagree with the calculations that would cause a person on the left to reluctantly pull the lever for Clinton. I would argue that there is a factor which trumps the others; existential threat to civilization via global nuclear war. I would argue, based on the candidates' explicit statements, foreign policy advisors' backgrounds, and personal inclinations, that under Clinton the chances of a nuclear confrontation with Russia might be around 1%; under Trump about 0%. I would argue that even this small difference in odds dwarfs any progressive pragmatic inclination to go for Clinton over Trump.

I'm also not sure I see Clinton quite the way Prof Wolff does - as a 'known' quantity - dull, center-right, cautious, etc. On the contrary I fear she may be as much or more of a loose cannon than Trump. The only two instances where she has had real decision making power - the 1990's health reform debacle and the Libya air strike debacle (in depth reporting on both these is available, and disturbing) don't bode well for her basic mental stability and ability to listen to advisors and make rational decisions based on that advice. In short, she scares me more than Trump.”

This comment especially moved me because I spent a number of years, more than half a century ago, thinking about very little else besides the threat of nuclear war, lecturing, writing, arguing in public and private about the threat and informing myself as much as possible about every aspect of it.  Only one president, John F. Kennedy, has brought this country to the brink of a nuclear war, and so far as I am concerned, that fact alone is sufficient to judge him a disaster as a president.

If I really believed that the probabilities rather casually tossed off by Richard Lewis were in fact correct, that alone would not merely justify voting for Trump rather than Clinton but would argue strongly for planning her assassination.  A nuclear war would surely kill more than one hundred million people, pollute large portions of the earth’s surface for countless millennia, and destroy the world’s economy for generations.  A 1% probability of such a catastrophe would, by standard expected utility calculations, imply the certainty of an outcome worse than a world war.

I have no idea at all how Richard Lewis arrived at those numbers, nor do I have any clear idea how I might come up with alternative estimates myself, but I think I can say something about the circumstances under which the United States government would deploy and use nuclear weapons [I am utterly unable to judge the probability that the Russian government would do so.]  First of all, dramatic movies to the contrary notwithstanding, presidents do not make these decisions alone nor do they carry them out alone.  Elaborate bureaucratic procedures are in place that make such decisions very much collective chain-of-command decisions.  I think it is inconceivable that Clinton would initiate such a decision under any circumstances I can now imagine, nor do I think that the notoriously risk-averse US high command would press her do make such a decision.  I can conceive of circumstances in which Trump would be moved to issue such an order, but if he were to do so, I do not think it would be carried out.  Instead, almost certainly, there would be a defensive gathering of generals and admirals around him who would carefully, delicately try to dissuade him while simultaneously consulting with civilian figures about the procedures for removing a president from command on grounds of medical incapacitation.  I am quite serious about this.

Short of nuclear war, would Clinton be more or less likely to use military force than Trump?  This is a very important question and one that it is uncommonly difficult to answer, because of the incoherent quality of Trump’s statements on these matters.  He talks casually of “not taking off the table” the use of nuclear weapons in Europe [!!! Against whom???]  He brags wildly of wiping out ISIS in weeks, without the slightest apparent awareness of the military situation on the ground.  Are we to take these statements seriously?  Are we to ignore them entirely?  I have no idea.

We do have grounds for making predictions about Clinton’s use of military force.  She would be hawkish, as it is now common to say, which means that during her presidency, we would probably see a number of military deployments overseas, and perhaps the initiation of yet another limited war.  That is one of the principal reasons why I so strongly supported Sanders as against her.  My guess, and it is only a guess, is that Trump would be very likely also to order military deployments, particularly if he surrounds himself with the sorts of advisors whose names he has thus far given out.

Well, enough speculation.  If anyone has factually grounded probability estimates of the use of nuclear weapons by either Trump or Clinton, I would very much like to hear them.