In a post which simultaneously caused consternation and the scratching of heads in high offices from London to Moscow, the US president elevated a social media spat with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to an exercise in nuclear brinkmanship when he said he had ordered two ballistic missile submarines to change course for Russia.
Some 72 hours after Trump’s social media post, the wider significance of the move remains obscured by silence from Moscow and disquiet elsewhere over the US president’s intentions.
For decades America has operated its “nuclear triad” – a three-pronged system of delivering atomic weapons which includes a fleet of 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines or SSBNs.
It is these facts which have left experts and diplomats scratching their heads at Trump’s apparent command to shift the course of two of these doomsday boats and at least hint at a new location within the vicinity of Russian territory.
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“Bluntly, an Ohio-class sub could be parked off Kenya and still comfortably wipe out Moscow. It’s the status quo ante. The only thing Trump has done is to effectively weaken his own position by playing a nuclear card when he didn’t need to.”
Speaking on CNN, Bolton said: “The Ohio-class submarines don’t sit around in port. To say he’s going to move those kinds of submarines anywhere indicates he doesn’t know how they might work right now. I hope someone from the Pentagon explains our ballistic missile disposition to Trump at some stage.”
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, which campaigns on non-proliferation policies, said: “No leader… should be threatening nuclear war, let alone in a juvenile manner on social media.”
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Trump’s decision to deploy a distinctly 21st–century version of this tool appears to be born from a wider context of the US president’s growing disenchantment with Vladimir Putin and an apparent desire to apply more stick rather than carrot to their increasingly fractious relationship.
It was Medvedev’s public response to this, stating that “each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war” along with a later reference to a Soviet-era mechanism allowing Russia to automatically retaliate to a nuclear attack, which provoked Trump’s submarine threat.
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“From Trump’s perspective this could be another roll of the dice, another form of pressure, to throw the Kremlin off balance a little and make it pay attention. The best-case scenario [for the White House] is that Moscow now goes away and comes up with some sort of ceasefire proposal that gives Trump his win. But I’m not holding my breath.”
While Russian commentators have mused that the US president’s remarks are him letting off steam – one retired commander this weekend described the submarine threat as “meaningless blather” – the Kremlin, which has also made clear it is still pursuing its war aims in Ukraine, has chosen not to publicly address the matter.
Hans Kristensen, head of the Federation of American Scientists, said the US president had created a “commitment trap” for himself by hinting that nuclear weapons were on the table if tensions with Russia further escalated.
He wrote: “Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.”
But experts warned this weekend that the US president should also pay heed to his own ministrations.
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Read MoreAs such, Trump’s words are at risk of being interpreted by Russia as a concrete action by Washington to increase its nuclear threat.
There were some signs this weekend that behind the scenes Moscow is feeding an amount of diplomatic oxygen to such concerns.
Diplomatic sources nonetheless suggested that Moscow’s public silence on the matter of America’s submarines should be interpreted as a sign that the Kremlin did not consider Trump’s remarks worthy of a response rather than pondering a move up the nuclear ladder.
Evelyn Farkas, a former senior Pentagon official and executive director of the McCain Institute, an international affairs think-tank, said: “It’s really signaling. It’s not the beginning of some nuclear confrontation and nobody reads it as such. And I would imagine the Russians don’t either.”
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