{"id":45107,"date":"2023-12-18T11:57:29","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T19:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=45107"},"modified":"2023-12-18T11:57:45","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T19:57:45","slug":"scary-us-presidents-still-have-unchecked-authority-to-launch-nuclear-first-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/18\/scary-us-presidents-still-have-unchecked-authority-to-launch-nuclear-first-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"Scary: US Presidents Still Have Unchecked Authority To Launch Nuclear First-Strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

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There\u2019s an important, if scary, opinion piece today<\/a> at The Washington Post<\/em> by Jon Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists and former National Security Council senior director under President Barack Obama. He cites the (still) current remnant of Cold War tensions that seemingly allows any U.S. president to start a nuclear war without what you might call checks and balances.<\/p>\n

Wolfstahl recalls the dangerous final days of the Nixon and Trump presidency when others did intervene to try to block any nuclear launches ordered from the White House but he insists these roadblocks were not really allowed under present policy. Especially with Trump having a real chance to return to power in January 2025, he calls on President Biden to change policy now<\/em>. Of course, warning about our \u201cfirst-use\u201d policy has driven my own writing of three books and hundreds of articles and directing a current PBS movie\u2026<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll excerpt from the first part of the piece, then follow link to see steps he proposes with further delay. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.<\/p>\n

by Jon Wolfshal<\/em><\/p>\n

Whoever is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025, will immediately be vested with the sole legal authority to order the use of the United States\u2019 nuclear weapons. If a sitting president decides to exercise that authority \u2014 for almost any reason \u2014 no one can legally stop them. That must change.<\/p>\n

This is not a new problem. Two of the 14 presidents in the nuclear age have behaved dangerously enough that their own officials have tried, in legally questionable ways, to insert themselves into the nuclear chain of command.<\/p>\n

In President Richard M. Nixon\u2019s final days, then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger declared that any nuclear order had to be checked with him first<\/a>. The fact that Donald Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination injects additional concern given his behavior as president. In the last few days of Trump\u2019s term, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley tried to mitigate these risks<\/a> by telling officers at the National Military Command Center (NMCC) that if they received a nuclear launch order from Trump, they must loop him in. \u201cI\u2019m part of the procedure,\u201d Milley reportedly told subordinates.<\/p>\n

We might want to thank both Milley and Schlesinger for did what they did, but they might have broken the law in doing so. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the country\u2019s senior military officer, he is not part of the nuclear-launch process. Nor is the defense secretary, secretary of state or even the commander of U.S. Strategic Command.<\/p>\n

To initiate a nuclear strike, the president can issue an order bypassing senior military leaders and advisers. Every president carries with him a sealed card known as the \u201cbiscuit.\u201d The president can call the NMCC at any time and use the code from the biscuit to verify his identity \u2014 and the weapons get launched. As commander in chief, a president can even order the watch officer not to tell superiors that an order has been given. So even if a concerned chairman of the Joint Chiefs instructs his soldiers to inform him of any such command, the president can simply override that \u201csafeguard\u201d at his discretion.<\/p>\n

The chain of command, however, is different for almost every other decision to use military force. For non-nuclear decisions \u2014 including conventional military strikes or sending soldiers into combat \u2014 the president must give an order to the defense secretary, who then issues written instructions to the relevant combatant commander. It\u2019s a transparent system that encourages accountability.<\/p>\n

Why are nuclear weapons procedures different from conventional ones? Because, during the Cold War, speed was seen as essential for deterrence. If a Soviet nuclear bolt from the blue could kill a sitting president before he had time to order a counterattack, adversaries were thought to have an incentive to initiate a first strike. By being able to respond quickly, without having to work through layers of officials, deterrence was thought to be more robust.<\/p>\n

But there is no reason today to rely on speedy decision-making during situations in which the United States might launch first. Even as relations with Moscow are at historic lows, we are worlds removed from the Cold War\u2019s dominant knife\u2019s-edge logic. This means checks and balances on a president\u2019s decision to start a nuclear war can be adopted without sacrificing America\u2019s security or the protection of our allies. It\u2019s time our institutions caught up with this strategic reality.<\/p>\n

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Thanks for reading Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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