President of the US gets it in his head one day to launch nukes at North Korea.
Suppose not one other person, anywhere, agrees with him that this is a good idea.
Are there any legal obstacles to him getting the nukes launched anyway?
Are there any procedural obstacles? (Like, maybe he legally could do it, but the standard procedure for it includes needed participation from some other official(s) who could take that opportunity to keep it from happening? Let’s set aside the operations of the people ‘on the ground’ who would be engaged in the actual physical work of getting it launched, whatever that involves–I’m talking instead about interactions at the high administrative level.)
Yes, he needs the Secretary of Defense to go along with his order. Of course the President can then fire the Sec of Def and go down the list of replacements until he or she finds one that agrees. In your scenario, if there is no one else who agrees to launch nukes then the order will not be followed.
I saw some talking head mention this recently. The president is the only one that can authorize the use of nukes were the kind of words he used.
That at least implies that others HAVE to want to use them and he is the one that gives the final go ahead. Which also implies if nobody else wants to, it ain’t happening (at least not easily).
I eagerly await a more firm and detailed answer myself.
Well … he’d have to type out the Executive Order himself … so if everyone hid the typewriters then The Donald would have to write the Order out by hand … I suppose he’d have to go down to the crypto vault and encode it himself as well … type it into the comm link … whoever gets the message would probably check with the Pentagon … then there’s the issue of getting the missiles re-targeted …
American bureaucracy as it is … we could see weeks or months of foot-dragging … maybe enough time for Congress to intervene … or the next election …
There are potential procedural obstacles - kinda.
The Two-man-rule governs how missiles are actually launched from silos or submarines. Two-man rule - Wikipedia It takes two authorized personnel to turn the key and hit the button (fry silo-based missiles takes another 2-man team to confirm). Theoretically, if one of those people decides that the order cannot possibly be lawful, or has other qualms, that particular missile stays put.
But aren’t those people constantly drilled without knowing if it’s real or not so that if the real thing happens they will turn the keys without hesitation.
I dont know the procedure, I’ll leave that for someone else to research.l But in addition to refusing his commandk I believe there is a mechanism to have the president held to be “temporarily” unfit to hold office, and relieved of executive power, like if he is in critical condition following an assassination attempt. Like when Al Haig said “I’m in charge here”, and joined David Atchison as president-for-a-day… This would certainly happen if the president ordered a suicidal armageddon for which there was zero concurrence.
That fact that this question is even on anybody’s mind is more frightening than the substance of it actually coming to pass.
Alexander Haig was never Acting President. In fact, the 25th was never invoked at all after Reagan’s assassination attempt, and if it had, George H.W. Bush would’ve taken the helm. Al Haig simply didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
As for what would happen if Trump suddenly ordered nukes, who’s to say that he wouldn’t have picked Cabinet members who are just as hawkish and bloodthirsty as him?
Because the men and women with the actual launch keys can independently think and reason, and don’t have to go along with the order if they consider it unlawful. Or, technically speaking, if they just don’t want to. Or are commie symps. Or lazy.
No. This is from conversations with former LCC personnel, but from them, while they don’t know at the outset of the Emergency Action Message whether the EAM is for a valid Launch Order, by the time they decode the EAM they know.
To the best of my knowledge, and I’ve never been in a LCC or a missile submarine or SAC base or any other special material program, there has never been a “Wargames”-like scenario where US military personnel have been under the impression they’ve been given a valid launch order and are launching/releasing/flying past the FailSafe point with nuclear weapons.
In fact, the LCC commander I’ve talked with indicated that heads would literally roll if he ever was toyed with in such a manner. He may have been lying; I obviously couldn’t know.
Raqqa, as the largest extant city under ISIS control, now that Mosul is being fought over, seems like an obvious target for destruction. That said, the US hardly needs to use a nuclear weapon to destroy Raqqa if they choose.
I’m going to go with the candidate who didn’t advocate for a no-fly zone over Syria, nor had been sabre-rattling with the Russians, as the candidate less likely to accidentally involve the United States in a potential nuclear conflict.
He’s thin-skinned, he’s definitely bitchy; but you all think he’s actually likely to use nuclear weapons on some country? Jeez, and I thought the worse he’d do is be rude on Twitter…
Curiously this is, in many people’s minds, the most important question. From a naive business point of view, spending many many billions on the nuke arsenal, when it is not clear that they are actually useful in any tangible manner is odd. Of course there is a rationale, but it isn’t the obvious one.
One could recast the conversation as Trump playing devil’s advocate, and asking why he should not immediately cancel all funding for the nukes, and the delivery systems. Nobody really imagines this is the point of the conversation, but by the same token, it isn’t clear what the point really was.
The North Koreans have made an art form of making their opponents worry that they are just crazy enough to actually use a nuke. This is the problem with the MAD doctrine. It only works if the other guy believes you actually are just insane enough.
ETA, one thing that does seem missing from much discussion of MAD. It isn’t really about wiping out your enemy. The nukes are not (so far as we know) aimed at major population centres. They are aimed at major military targets. What is assured is not so much total annihilation, but that your country will be left with no functional defence. In principle ripe for picking off by any neighbour armed with pointed sticks.
Hillary knows a lot about no-fly zones. She was living in the White House with the commander in chief who authorized bombing missions about every other day during his entire administration, killing a half a million Iraqi children,strictly on his own with no UN sanction in place. There is no record of the influential Mrs. Clinton disagreeing with Madeline Albright’s “worth the price” sentiment.
I think that there’s been so much discussion of Trump and Clinton already that this is probably not salvageable for GQ without nuclear moderation. Off to Great Debates. Bombs away!
I always felt that Al Haig got a bum rap on that incident. It was pretty clear, to me at least, that he was talking about operational command at the White House itself, rather than an assumption of full presidential powers. (And I say that as a Democrat.)
Off to Great Debates. Bombs away!
