The world can’t bomb its way to nuclear disarmament 

If President Trump wants history and the Nobel committee to recognize him as a peace president, he has a strange way of going about it. No modern U.S. president has conducted as many military strikes against as many countries.

But Trump still has a narrow opportunity for redemption. Rather than trying to solidify his legacy by seizing new territories, erecting monuments to himself, and affixing his name to buildings like golden graffiti, he can pursue a stunning diplomatic achievement.  

The world is teetering on the brink of major nuclear weapons proliferation. There are three horses of the apocalypse running loose today: global climate change, unregulated artificial intelligence, and the spread of nuclear arms. Of these, nuclear weapons are the most dangerous. They can obliterate civilization in 30 minutes or less, all because of one miscalculation or moment of irrationality by the leader of a nuclear power. 

We don’t often hear about it, but America’s president has sole authority over about 100 U.S. nuclear weapons stored in at least five NATO countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. That deployment leaves the host countries under threat of direct retaliation if an errant impulse triggers Trump.

The only fail-safe solution is to abolish these weapons entirely.  

That’s the goal of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which took effect in 1970. It has been signed by 191 countries, including five with nuclear arsenals: the U.S., Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France. India, Israel, and Pakistan are nuclear-armed countries that have not signed it. North Korea was a party to the treaty but violated it and withdrew in 2003 to develop its own........

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