As he embroils the world in a vast and unnecessary international military conflagration, what is stopping Donald Trump from using nuclear weapons?

Not much, it seems; there are no real remaining checks and balances.

He has replaced most of the senior military leadership in his country for people who will obey his orders. He has replaced the Judge Advocates General to remove legal objections to his whims. He has shown that he has little interest in court orders that oppose his objectives. He has demonstrated a complete disregard for Congress and both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress have in turn completely abdicated their own legal authority and constitutional obligation to restrain him.

When cornered, Trump goes to the next level of insanity. Every time it looks like there is a limit to his depravity and ruthlessness, he finds a way to prove that he will go still further.

The war he is waging against Iran, officially dubbed Operation Epic Fury in the US, and widely derided as Operation Epstein Distraction, is a testament to what he is willing to do. He says more Americans will die because that ‘usually happens’ in war. A few Americans have already died. Hundreds if not thousands of Iranians have already died.

Reports are that at least 14 countries are now directly involved in the conflict he launched to distract his country from extensive allegations of sexual assault and corruption, supported by religious nutcases who think it will bring about the apocalypse, the return of the Messiah, and the rapture saving every good Christian which they obviously delude themselves into thinking they might be.

In such an environment, who will stop him from pressing the big red button? If anything, those wishing for the end of the world in the interests of their own posthumous salvation are probably salivating at the chance for an excuse to launch the world into nuclear annihilation. They’re that selfish.

What could be more effective than using nuclear weapons to wipe out an alleged and unproven nuclear weapons program? Or to suppress an enemy intent on fighting back?

Just a couple of days ago, the American navy fired a torpedo at an Iranian navy frigate returning from a fleet week-type event in India to which the Americans had also been invited. A condition of attendance was that the vessels present could not be armed. The Americans knew this. They fired anyway, sinking the IRIS Dena and killing the majority of its crew. Shooting an adversary’s vessel sailing on a schedule with no ammunition in a war is cowardly, but it is a legitimate military target.

As the few survivors escaped the burning wreck, the American ship that fired the kill shot and the US navy in general refused to get involved in rescuing them in a gross violation of both the laws of the sea and the Second Geneva Convention.

It was the Sri Lankan navy that picked up the 32 survivors, while the Americans casually committed another round of war crimes. The shipwrecked are entitled to be saved. As with the blasting of fishing boats out of the Caribbean in the lead-up to the kidnapping of the president of Venezuela just a few months ago, the United States has little interest in following international law or conventions.

With the American military being willing to commit such acts without blinking, what is to say that any member of the American armed forces would refuse a nuclear launch related order?

We only know of two circumstances where protocol called for the launch of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. In both cases, Soviet officers paused and said ‘no’ at a critical moment when their training said ‘yes.’

Vasily Arkhipov refused to agree with the captain and political officer aboard the Soviet B-59 submarine on October 27th, 1962, in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, when the captain of believed war had broken out and ordered the launch of a tactical nuclear weapon against a pursuing American aircraft carrier. In Soviet protocol, three officers had to agree in that circumstance, and only two did. His refusal alone prevented nuclear war.

A little over 20 years later, and just a few weeks after an off-course Korean Air flight 007 had been shot down over the Soviet Union, the sun glinted off the horizon causing an alarm in a satellite-based Soviet ICBM monitoring station announcing the first-strike launch of several nuclear weapons by the US. Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov didn’t believe his instruments and delayed reporting it until he was sure, confirming that nuclear war was not in fact under way and preventing one from being incorrectly called in response.

The United States, unlike most nuclear powers, maintains a nuclear first-strike protocol. There is already a process by which the president, with nobody to second guess him, with no declaration of war, with no required justification, can issue a nuclear launch order as he sees fit. The failsafe in the system has always relied on the President being a rational empathetic human being aware of the consequences of his actions.

This is no longer the case.

We know Trump is willing to test the limits of his power in every other category. We know he likes to use every tool physically available to him. We know he has been curious about American nuclear weapons since before he was inaugurated the first time. We know he has the power and authority to fire nuclear weapons whenever and however he sees fit. We know that the layers of experienced military commanders who would have the courage to refuse or at least push back against an illegal order have largely been purged. We know how Trump acts when backed into a corner. And we know that many of his advisors, including his own Crusaders Cross-tattooed secretary of defence, are apocalyptic religious extremists hoping to usher in the end of the world to bring about the rapture.

If he decides he wants to try, the only thing standing between the United States and nuclear war is the hope that there are enough Arkhipovs and Petrovs in the American armed forces able to refuse to turn the keys and press their launch buttons.

As unfathomable as it is that he is that evil of a human being, I cannot help the feeling that Trump is itching to be the first president since Truman to fire a nuclear weapon in anger. To his mind, that ‘beautiful’ act would make him truly the greatest president ever to have served in what’s left of the White House.