MAY 18, 2026 – . . . North Korea! Or more precisely, Kim Jung-un. Or more accurately, the loser is . . . the United States and nuclear non-proliferation. Now that the Republicans have settled on a ratio existendi ex post facto for the war against Iran—namely, keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Mullahs and IRGC—the leader of North Korea has won legitimacy for his own nuclear arsenal. The feckless Trump has demonstrated irretrievably that the United States has become a rogue state. Worse yet, it’s a rogue state with the world’s biggest, baddest inventory of nuclear bombs and delivery systems.
Ironically, by the very fact that Trump himself is the head of our nation, his insistence that “We can’t let those crazy people [in Iran] have nuclear weapons,” applies as much to the U.S. as to Iran (and North Korea). Except, of course, we have the largest, most powerful military in the world, and Trump has shown that pursuant to bad advice or contrary to good advice, he and his sycophantic Secretary of [now] War,” not “Defense,” is willing to unleash that military on people and nations they don’t like, even in the midst of diplomatic negotiations in which Trump was gaining concessions from Iran. However extreme and unsavory the Iranian leadership and Kim Jong-un might be, they are unquestionably clear-minded when it comes to self-preservation. They see the record Trump has created for himself at the expense of Americans now and for generations to come: his attacks on NATO; his designs on Greenland; his kidnapping of Maduro; his open threats of aggression against Cuba; his tariff terrorism against the world; his clemency toward convicted felons; his incitement of the January insurrection; his false “stop the steal” campaign; his surrender to the influence of Netanyahu; his genocidal threat against Iran. From the reality of this record, our adversaries surely must conclude that:
a. Trump is crazy, unreliable, and untrustworthy.
b. Even within the much touted system of American democracy, with all its checks and balances, guardrails and systemic protections; despite its vaunted Constitution and governance in accordance with laws not by the whims and dictates of authoritarians, that system allowed someone like Trump to storm the bridge and establish ironclad control over his own party and impose irresistible power over the main opposition party.
c. The only leverage against an enemy as powerful militarily as the United States is to develop serviceable nuclear weapons. Not “peace through strength” but “leverage through one deliverable nuclear bomb that can reach Jerusalem from Iran, and Tokyo from North Korea.”
Neither Trump nor his record can be ignored, negotiated away or forgotten. Even with his inevitable passing, the fact that he is now locked into the history of America ensures that henceforth, neither friend nor foe of the United States can assume that we won’t again “go rogue.” Now, only by unilateral disarmament could we ever regain the moral authority to halt nuclear proliferation.
The damage wrought by the Commander of Rogue will be visited not only upon us Americans but on the world at large. Yet, to exercise one’s First Amendment rights, to speak critically of Trump’s disastrous move against Iran is to invite charges of treason and sedition by the “Secretary of War, the Whole War and Nothing but the War We Cannot Win.”
If the Republicans retain control of House and Senate after this November’s mid-terms, the great pinball machine of American democracy will flash, “GAME OVER.” Query, however, whether it’s already flashing so.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
