After the deadly assault by Trump supporters on the Capitol this month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in a panic.
In a letter to fellow Democrats, she posited a nightmare scenario: What if an “unhinged” and “unstable” president started a war, or worse, accessed the launch codes to order a nuclear strike? Who could stop him?
Pelosi made an urgent call to Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, seeking reassurance that there was some safeguard against President Trump impulsively ordering the use of nuclear weapons against Iran or some other potential adversary.
“I had sought information from those who are in a position to know that there were protections against this dangerous president initiating any military hostilities or something worse,” Pelosi later told CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Milley “answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority,” according to a spokesman. Still, we don’t know what Milley might have told Pelosi to ease her concerns, perhaps something about the time it would take to identify and recommend targets. This process would presumably allow time for deliberation.
There’s no evidence Trump even remotely considered ordering a nuclear strike. (If that has changed between the time I wrote this and the time it’s published, then there’s a much bigger problem than issuing a correction.)
But however overblown Pelosi’s fears might have been, she’s right about one thing.
If the president, any president, wants to start a nuclear war, it’s his prerogative, which worries many people.
“Speaker Pelosi has an understandable desire to rein in President Trump’s nuclear use authority at a time of great political upheaval and uncertainty, but short of Trump no longer being president, there are no legal options that can prevent him from pushing the proverbial button,” Eric Gomez, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, said.
The nuclear codes accompany the president wherever he goes, carried by a military aide in a briefcase called the “nuclear football.”
“Once the president opens ‘the football’ to obtain the codes that issue a launch order, the command is supposed to flow rapidly down the chain of command to launch units without any need for another person to approve the order,” Gomez said. “Individuals within the chain could refuse to follow the order, but there is no automatic mechanism or procedure that could serve as a firebreak.”
In this day and age, that’s just crazy, argue former Defense Secretary William Perry and Tom Collina, director of policy at the Ploughshares Fund. The pair have co-written a book calling for a significant rethinking of Cold War-era policies that effectively set aside the Constitution by giving the president the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons.
The credit, or blame, goes to President Harry Truman. After witnessing the devastation wrought by the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, he declared that no nuclear weapons could be used without his prior approval.
And thus, at the dawn of the nuclear age was born the concept that the president alone can authorize a nuclear strike.
The Cold War was also when there were fears that Russia might launch a preemptive strike against the U.S. The president would have only minutes to order a counterstrike before land-based ICBMs and strategic bombers would be destroyed.
“There is simply no realistic scenario that justifies a decision to launch nuclear weapons within minutes, given the inherent dangers of doing so. Given the tremendous consequences of the decision (the fate of the world) and the mind‑crunching time pressure (ten minutes or less) to make such a decision, it is not worth the risk,” Perry and Collina wrote. “We no longer live in a world — if we ever did — where one person should have the absolute power to end life on earth.”
Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to “declare War,” and indeed, they argue, launching a nuclear first strike would constitute about as unambiguous a declaration of war as one could imagine.
“In the case of first use, we support current legislation to require a declaration of war by Congress that specifically authorizes a nuclear attack before the president can use nuclear weapons. First use should require the shared authority of the legislative and executive branches.”
Trump first set off alarm bells during summer 2017 with his tit-for-tat “fire and fury” exchanges with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In response to Kim’s 2018 New Year’s address in which he said, “The whole of [the U.S.] mainland is within the range of our nuclear strike, and the nuclear button is on my office desk all the time,” Trump tweeted a few days later, “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
“If, in a fit of pique, he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” said James Clapper, who was director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama.
“The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So, there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary,” Clapper told CNN in August 2017.
If the president orders a strike, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is not even in the chain of command. Neither is the Strategic Command commander who oversees the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Even the defense secretary, who is in the chain of command, has no legal authority to countermand the order.
In 1974, then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, fearing President Richard Nixon, who was said to be drinking heavily, might do something crazy, told military commanders to check with him first if Nixon ordered the nuclear strike.
But while arguably the responsible thing to do, under the current protocols, Schlesinger’s order would be illegal, and following it would amount to mutiny.
Biden, who in 2016 previously endorsed a “no first use” declaration, will now have to decide if he wants to retire the football and remove from one person the power to launch a thousand nuclear weapons and end civilization as we know it.
“Once in office, Biden should announce he would share authority to use nuclear weapons with a select group in Congress. He should also declare that the United States will never start a nuclear war and would use the bomb only in retaliation,” said Perry and Collina in a follow-up op-ed in Politico.
“Once Biden is sworn in as president, the nuclear football will be his. It will then be up to Biden to retire the football and ensure that we never again entrust the most powerful killing machine ever created to just one fallible human.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
