There are some interesting statistics in Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing between Democracy and Doom by Elaine Scarry. Her main point is that the speed and scale of a nuclear attack makes democratic procedures and congressional authorization of war too slow for a response and thus decisions about nuclear war relies on the executive power, similar to what one would have in a monarchy and the arbitrary power of one man. She quotes Richard Nixon saying that “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and within 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” She also quotes Robert McNamara stating that President Kennedy three times “came within a hairbreadth of nuclear catastrophe." We also know now that there have been at nine instances in which presidents have at least considered a nuclear option. The United states now has 7,700 nuclear weapons.
One doesn’t have to concur with her conclusions about having to choose between nuclear weapons and democracy to be impressed with the evidence. Scarry notes that there are 18 Ohio class nuclear submarines and each of these subs carries nuclear weapons with eight times the total explosion power used by all of the Allied and Axis powers in World War II. There are only seven continents, but the 14 Trident submarines have enough collective power to destroy all of life on 14 continents. Recent projections are that a relatively small nuclear exchange exploding even 0.015 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons could leave 44 million people dead immediately and one billion more people likely to die given the expected nuclear winter and its effects on food supplies.
I would conclude that the primary issue of our times would thus be the need to establish a more stable world order.
