When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, a plan had been drawn up to bomb sixty major Japanese cities and reduce the population by half.
I definitely think the US is capable of an atrocity on that scale. If it happens it will terminate the period of US hegemony overnight and overturn the world order. The UN would cease to exist and strategic alliances and balances would be decisively transformed.
My take is that that is unlikely to happen. A bluff has to be straight-faced, and Risch's remarks are on par with the rhetoric emerging from North Korea in that regard. Both the US and North Korea have a long history of pursuing rational foreign policy. Both the US and North Korea have a long history of making threats of destruction on the international stage.
Trump does have certain notional authorities, but he's a weak man.
