Breaking nuclear taboo has always been thinkable for US right
Paul Mason
... For a section of the US right, nuclear war has always been thinkable. The tradition goes back to the eyewitness report on Hiroshima by diplomat Paul Nitze in 1945 ...
Though Nitze would become, at the end of his life, a supporter of unilateral disarmament, he spent much of his career trying to inject the ideas of thinkability and winability into US nuclear strategy ...
... Throughout his life, Trump has been obsessed with nukes. In 1984, he claimed that he could single-handedly force Russia to accept a nuclear truce, telling a reporter: "It would take an hour and a half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles ... I think I know most of it anyway." In 1990, he told Playboy: "I’ve always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it’s a very important element in my thought process," adding that the assumptions behind the US’s long tradition of non-use were "bullshit" ...
Suppose Kim fires a nuclear-armed missile at Guam or Japan, then the US hits two or three military targets in North Korea with nuclear bombs and sinks Pyongyang’s navy. A short, conventional war follows, destroying Seoul and most of North Korea. A shocked China accepts it has miscalculated badly and does nothing in response. That is probably the least destructive possible outcome of what would be the first nuclear attack since 1945. But what would it teach Russia and China? Practically, it would teach them that nuclear weapons can be used with successful geopolitical outcomes. Morally, it would teach them that nuclear annihilation is OK ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/04/annihilating-north-korea-create-more-problems-than-solves-trump-us-right-nuclear-taboo
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