I have an interest in the Cold War but I’ve never come across this assertion before. Reading the comments on a recent article on the Guardian website concerning Hillary Clinton’s statement that Donald Trump is too unstable to be given the ‘nuclear codes’ some stated that towards the end of Nixon’s time in office and while he was high on prescription drugs he ordered a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, and the Generals just ignored him until he calmed down.
I’ve checked google and it has quite a few references to the ‘madman theory’ of Nixon but no specific references to this alleged incident.
Is it possible for a US President, who is not mentally or otherwise impaired, to be over-ruled regarding a decision whether or not to retaliate to a nuclear strike on the US. Several people in that thread (and I’m one of them) stated that they would not retaliate to an incoming massive nuclear attack on America from Russia.
In reality if the President made that decision could he be over-ruled by lower levels of command or is it a case of ‘the President says no and that’s final’.
Thanks
btw I am not American, and neither am I in charge of a large strategic nuclear arsenal.
The President can’t physically launch nuclear weapons by him or herself. There is elaborate chain of safeguards that is designed to stop any type of rogue or unauthorized launch but it could also be used to prevent the President from carrying out a rash or insane decision. There are multiple levels in the chain but the most likely link where an insane President could be blocked is by the Secretary of Defense. That is the Cabinet level official that passes on the launch orders to the military Generals and so on down the line to the people in the nuclear silos or submarines.
The Secretary of Defense could just refuse to pass the launch order along and then notify the Speaker of the House, President Pro Temp of the Senate, Congressional and majority leaders of both houses of Congress and other relevant Congressmen and Cabinet members that the President has gone off the rails and isn’t currently fit for office. That would probably result in the President being relinquished from duty with the Vice President stepping in while the mess is straightened out. If the President is found truly incompetent or insane, it could result in anything from a lengthy medical leave of absence, resignation to impeachment.
Part of the brilliance of the U.S. Constitution is that it already covers almost all scenarios like this because the President is not a dictator and there is a very robust chain of command that can deal with the loss of other parts of it even if the failure happens at the very top.
In normal practice, the President cannot be over-ruled by underlings, and everybody is an underling. People can refuse to carry out an order of the President, and either resign their position or face the legal consequences, but they have no authority that is higher than the President’s.
There’s an out, however, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment:
The intention of the Amendment was to provide an orderly transition if the President became serious ill or incapacitated. Say that Kennedy had been left brain-damaged but not dead by the assassination attempt.
But, especially after Nixon, people realized that this was a possible measure if the President went crazy. “Crazy” is here defined as anything the VP and more than half the cabinet think it is, just as impeachment can be brought for anything you can get the proper majorities in Congress to agree to. Whether the President is legally insane is irrelevant.
That makes this scenario a favorite of political novels. In the real world, it would be reserved for only the most extraordinary occasions, though inaction during a nuclear strike may rise to that level. At that point we’re dealing with such a ridiculous level of hypotheticals that it can’t be addressed in GQ.
I don’t know the origin of this story, I have never heard it. However, there is one related event that may be the seed from which a crazy story spread.
During the last stages of Nixon’s presidency, when he was found to be wandering around the white house at night talking to the pictures, and under the pressure he was under I can understand that reaction, Sec. of Defense James Schlesinger told the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to carry out any orders from the President without checking with him (Schlesinger) first. From the context of the article I read this in, the Secretary was more concerned about troop movements within the US than the nuclear arsenal. But I am sure that was on his mind as well.
Perhaps that is the origin of the story the OP heard.
It’s not the same as “over ruled” but it’s well-established in military law that you can refuse to follow an unlawful order. If the President orders an unprovoked attack, it’s likely that this order would be unlawful and would be rejected at a pretty high level.
The scenario of retaliating for an incoming attack wouldn’t be unlawful, though, so that line of thinking only takes you so far.
The unlawful order piece is accurate. It’s not merely allowed to refuse, it’s duty to refuse. In my almost three decades of mandatory annual briefings, mandatory classes in professional education requirements, and pre-deployment training on the Law of War the concept of provocation having an effect on lawfulness never once came up. Not once. The US has in fact maintained the right of first use to meet vital national interests. There’s some discussion about our current doctrine (with the last Review done under the Obama administration) at wiki. Even though it’s more limiting than just nuking whoever we feel like first… it’s doctrine not law or legally entered treaty. The President, as National Command Authority trumps doctrine. Any justification for disobeying an order involving nuclear weapons would have to be under the more generally accepted principles of the laws of land warfare the US has accepted by treaty obligations or by demonstrated acceptance of customary limitations.
Refusing to obey an unlawful order does come with potential legal consequences that Exapno Mapcase briengs up. If it’s the President you’re ignoring you better be prepared to justify it as unlawful in a Court Martial. Of course if you obey an unlawful order you can also face legal consequences. It’s duty to disobey at that point.
Those comments are about as accurate as what you will find on most web site comment sections, which is to say that they are full of shit. Nixon never ordered any nuclear strikes.
I remember one day (1973?) during the Yom Kippur War, things were fine in the morning then I came back to my room later in the afternoon and the world was close to blowing up. Nixon was not crazy, it was just brinksmanship. IIRC- The Soviets were supplying the Egyptians, and appeared to be close to sending in their own troops; the Israelis had bypassed the Egyptian army and were approaching Cairo. The Soviets threatened to defend Egypt at all costs. Nixon responded by putting the USA on alert too.
Eventually, the two sides backed down, the Israelis stopped at Kilometer 101, and things became quieter. Many pundits and political enemies at the time said that putting the USA on alert was a tactic by Nixon to distract from the Watergate enquiry, but there was a serious and legitimate reason to be somewhat confrontational with the USSR.
This may have also lead to concerns that he might have tried a repeat performance as the Watergate investigation got closer to impeachment.
Actually it was Brezhnev who was drunk in the Kremlin and telexed Nixon the ultimatum that if Israel didn’t back down he’d commit full-scale Soviet Forces to defending Egypt and essentially WWIII would soon be starting (conventional and then likely otherwise being that Israel was a nuclear power by then). I saw this in a documentary about the SR-71 because it was used to take pictures of the war zone to show to the Soviets to prove that Israel was in fact backing down (spy satellites back then couldn’t gather real-time data fast enough for the situation).
And I know it’s a staple of fiction, but I’ve always thought that the ‘two-man’ rule is a real thing and always applies to the use of nuclear weapons, whether it’s on a bomber, a submarine, in a missile silo, or even in the White House and one of the men is the US President…
As distinct from all those hundreds of other current countries where the apparatus instantly launches war when the Ruler declares it…
Even in the legendarily efficient USSR it would be doubtful if an Uncle Joe or a Brain-dead Leonid could order a first strike without considerable consultation.
Admittedly the Politburo was full of young hotheads, eager for revolutionary change.
But there was real blow-back that some pundits and politicians thought that putting the USA forces on full alert was Nixon trying to distract the country from the Watergate scandal, which was full steam ahead at the time. I don’t recall anyone suggested he was losing his marbles at the time, the suggestion was that it was a cynical and deliberate posturing and an over-reaction.
I suspect this is muddling two interrelated stories. There is the fairly well established story - as I recall, Woodward and Bernstein go through all this aspect in The Final Days - that Nixon by the end was basically a raging drunk wandering the halls of the White House at night. As a result, the decision was taken that a nuclear strike of any form would require a secondary authorisation. Nixon, in his cups, could be overruled. This was a precautionary measure, never invoked.
The weaker story, because I haven’t been able to track down the primary source for, is the claim that a drunken Nixon essentially ordered the US military into a war footing against China. This order was being transmitted via Kissenger. Who took the judgement that Nixon was drunk and so unilaterally waited for him to sober up. In other words, for him to have “calmed down”. With the result that the deployment, and provocation, never took place.
My main source for this is Francis Wheen’s Strange Days, Indeed, his recentish history of Seventies paranoia. Wheen is essentially a notable UK (and usually amusing) journalist and satirist. Without independent backup, I’m not inclined to trust the story.
But it is striking that the OP’s question does seem to conflate the two.
I have read that at a certain time Israel either demonstrated they were preparing a nuclear strike in a non clandestine way, or went ahead and did it (as a gesture?–who knows) assuming that US snd/or Russian satellites would immediately take note.
Hence a lot more frantic phone calls.
Although I know think maybe that story has been overblown?
The only thing I can think of like that is the infamous ‘Vela Incident’ where a bright flash was detected in the southern Indian Ocean. Long story short: Supposedly South Africa provided Israel with Uranium and in exchange Israel helped South Africa quickly build a handful of small, gun-type, Hiroshima-sized A-bombs. And Vela was a mutual, clandestine test explosion. Intriguing as the idea is, it’s grown less and less credible over the decades (or at least it hasn’t grown more).
Israel has still not officially admitted nor denied *possessing *nuclear weapons, so an overt test/demonstration would be out of the question. The only time you’re gonna see Israel use a nuke is if the barbarians are literally crashing thru their borders or if they’re struck first with a WMD. And in those cases they *will *use (at least) one…
Oh, no, I’m talking about (as perha you are aware) that specific (maybe) incident, of the immediate oh-shit moment for the US (leaving aside the horrible oh-shit weeks in Israel during the opening of the war.
I believe that was the opening sequence of Tom Clancy’s “The Sum of All Fears” where the Israelis load the atomic bombs onto aircraft and miss unloading one during the panic over the initial Syrian attack in 1973?