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By Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive to Rense
7-11-17

Summary: Filling in background to Part 1, which detailed the current U.S. president’s die-hard commitment to nuclear power for warheads as well as civilian energy, this second essay in the series explores Donald Trump’s lifelong fascination with exotic weapons of mass destruction due to the early influence of his uncle, John George Trump, an electromagnetism and radioactivity researcher at MIT, who was closely connected with inventor Nikola Tesla, nuclear contractor Westinghouse, and the spooky Office of Naval Research.
 
Donald Trump’s quixotic advocacy of independent nuclear-weapons programs for South Korea and Japan, along with Saudi Arabia, have stunned the U.S. intelligence community and rattled media pundits. The fierce reaction inside the Beltway to his presidential campaign remarks in support of nuclear-weapons proliferation later prompted him to deny ever blurting out such an unpopular idea, even though his heretical statements remain indelible:
 
- March 2016, Trump to Anderson Cooper at CNN: “Wouldn't you rather, in a certain sense, have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?" Trump then added "Saudi Arabia, absolutely." (He did not specific if this was to counter the potential nuclear program of Iran or the Israeli arsenal of warheads.)
 
- In April 2016 to Chris Wallace at Fox News Sunday: “In many ways, the world is changing. Right now, you have Pakistan and you have North Korea and you have China and you have Russia and you have India and you have the United States and many other countries [that] have nukes. . . . . Maybe they (South Korea and Japan) would be better off [being included] with nukes, yes, including [sic] with nukes."
 
- In May, in response to Wolf Blitzer at CNN about whether he was prepared to let Japan and South Korea build and deploy nuclear weapons, Trump replied: "I am prepared to, if they're not going to take care of us properly, we cannot afford to be the military and police for the world."
 
While Washington insiders shook their heads in disbelief as if Trump’s advocacy of nuclear proliferation is delusional or even criminal, there is a real-world precedent for his strong-held opinion to encourage foreign nations to manufacture and possess nuclear weapons rather than expect American soldiers to constantly shed their blood on their soil over disputes that do not directly affect the United States.
 
Roots in a Past Foreign Policy Split
 
Trump’s views on providing weapons instead of soldiers to foreign allies is firmly rooted in the Guam Doctrine spelled out by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in November 1969, when domestic opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War compelled the White House to start withdrawal of U.S. troops under the new program of Vietnamization of the war, which reversed the discredited Kennedy-Johnson policy of military escalation.
 
At an earlier two-day San Francisco summit with South Korean President Park Chung Hee, in August 1969 (which remains a missing chapter from the public record), Nixon understood there was a quid pro quo for removing US troops out of South Korea as part of the draw-down of forces in Asia. Reciprocity required his administration to permit and secretly aid Seoul to develop an independent nuclear-weapons capability along with missile development for independent strategic deterrence against North Korea and China.
 
The Nixon White House’s support for a South Korean nuclear strike force was not unthinkable at the time, given the U.S. obligation to compensate Seoul for the ultimately futile service of more than 300,000 South Korean troops with the (in)famous Tiger Division in Vietnam, 3,800 of whom were killed in combat, and the reluctance of the American public to ever again support a war in Asia. In addition, dictator Park complained that the Kissinger-Nixon diplomatic initiative to seek China’s support for a safe U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam was a high-stakes gamble that could easily go awry or be betrayed. Park feared that Beijing might take its rapprochement with Washington as a green light for Chinese domination over the entire Korean Peninsula.
 
Whatever illegal his actions regarding the Watergate and violent suppression of domestic antiwar protesters, we should in hindsight recognize that Nixon did what John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had dared not, which was to end that senseless and horrific intervention in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. White House support for a South Korean nuclear initiative was a part of the terrible price for a misguided foreign intervention.
 
According to CIA records from the subsequent Carter administration (available from the Wilson Center; any notes from the Nixon era are absent, and presumably still deeply classified), South Korea did, in fact, launch a “massive” nuclear-weapons program from at least 1971 until 1974, when operations were forced to cease on orders of the incoming President Jimmy Carter.
 
Available CIA documents imply that France quietly supported President Park’s nuclear project, and that Seoul was negotiating to purchase a heavy-water CANDU reactor from Canada. No mention is made of clandestine American support for that project, which was prohibited under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that, ironically, had been ratified and signed by President Nixon in November 1968.
 
[A brief outline on official secrecy: Nixon focused foreign policy decisions in his National Security Council (NSC) under Henry Kissinger, in order to bypass and marginalize the State Department and CIA, which were responsible for the mess in Vietnam. The pull-out from Vietnam required less-than legal methods and atrocities of a different kind, as in the mass elimination of participants in the Secret War in Laos. By default, his successor Carter had to keep on Kissinger as National Security Adviser, since he was the only man fully in the know, in order to untangle Nixon’s web of secret dealings. Since the Carter years, counter-proliferation has been a core principle, although fraught with flaws from actual U.S. policy,for example, the outing of anti-nuclear spy Valerie Plame. Donald Trump could help untangle these legacies by ordering full disclosure of all records from that troubled era, which continues to cast its long shadow over American policy.]
 
"Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." (from “Marmion” by Walter Scott, and not Shakespeare)
 
Trump’s Uncle John
 
Admittedly we are left to reading between the lines, led on by Donald Trump’s tantalizing hints. Without access to classified records and realizing that it will be a cold day in hell before Henry Kissinger mutters out any bona fide facts (instead of his self-congratulatory factoids), I have reconstructed, quite tenuously, those parts of the clandestine American role in the South Korean nuclear-weapons project as they might relate to John G. Trump and his nephew.
 
In contrast to his national security adviser, Richard Milhouse Nixon could be refreshingly blunt, at least in private, about the unrelenting hypocrisy of government. There can be no doubt that he flung colorful expletives at the myopic bureaucrats in the Department of Energy (DOE), the Atomic Energy Commission (AEA) and the IAEA, along with State, the Agency and the rest of the self-serving elitists, while American power was melting down and the Paris Peace talks to end the Vietnam War dragged on as tens of thousands of soldiers lay dead or dying. Meanwhile, the wolves smelled blood and were waiting eagerly for their moment of opportunity.
 
As RMN put it: “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”
 
Hand out the shotguns and send the nukes to our good friends still holding the line, like the Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Desperate times call for regrettable measures.
 
When the high priesthood of nuclear energy chants the mantra of nonproliferation, what trustworthy hero then can be sent to Seoul or Islamabad? There’s that mild-mannered radiation engineer at MIT, who proved trustworthy enough to rifle through the Tesla papers for his government, a man of few words and many dangerous deeds like bushwhacking Hitler’s air corps. One of the inventors of radar, veteran defense engineer John George Trump with MIT had extensive knowledge of a key component needed to trigger a hydrogen bomb, which he had modified from the notorious “Death Ray” particle gun designed by the late Nikola Tesla.
 
At the time, however, the electrical engineering expert had reached his late 60s, and his frail wispy frame may have required some assistance from a young helper and bodyguard, the perfect candidate being his nephew, a strapping tall lad named Donald John Trump. A clandestine assignment was also an ideal way for the young fellow, just out of college and still in his 20s, to gain a deferment from the military draft. Plus Seoul had cheap beer and pretty girls, although visiting the exciting DMZ was off-limits for anyone on a sensitive secret mission.
 
Participation in a covert program to aid Seoul’s nuclear program would explain the chumminess of Donald Trump’s partnership with the Daewoo Engineering and Construction Corporation, which designed, built and funded the Trump World Tower at UN Plaza in the late 1990s, and also the three Trump World Seoul projects. Daewoo Engineering is also a major builder of nuclear power plants in South Korea. Old-style Asian gratitude and patronage would explain why Daewoo founding chairman Kim Woo-jung treated Donald Trump like a member of his own family, a way of expressing appreciation for the tireless contribution of the elder Trump to the safety of the Korean people.