In August 1974, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger ordered U.S. commanders to confirm any nuclear launch order from Richard Nixon with him or Henry Kissinger. Watergate had isolated a drinking president — sole constitutional authority had become a single point of failure. Consequently, senior officials built an extra-legal brake around the nuclear football without a formal amendment. Today, a different kind of command problem looms over the American triad — one driven not by an intoxicated executive, but by a radicalizing Western political landscape.

Democrats spent years warning that President Donald Trump’s impulsiveness would produce reckless nuclear use. Instead, Trump finished his first term and returned to office with an actual record of strategic restraint.