One of the most frequent paranoid alarms raised about a Trump presidency was the “red button” fear; the idea that Trump might order a nuclear attack for petty or unwarranted reasons and that, somehow, those orders would just be carried out with no questions asked, the “What if Trump nukes Russia because Putin insulted Trump’s small hands?” scenario.
But that seems highly doubtful to be carried out - especially if Trump orders an attack against an adversary that can hit back devastatingly (i.e., Russia and its thousands of nukes; although, even, really just one Chinese, North Korean or other nuke hitting the United States would be equivalent to a hundred 9/11s).
Certainly no one would understand the grave consequences of a nuclear war better than the U.S. military and nuclear forces personnel themselves. And Secretary of Defense Mattis would surely be 99% likely to refuse to go along with “Mad Dog, I want you to green-light a launch of all our ICBMs on Russia because Putin insulted me.”
Even in the highly unlikely event that Mattis goes along with it, how likely are the lower-down subordinates down the chain to go along with a nuke launch order? Under the likes of Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush or Obama, such a nuke launch might be carried out as per protocol; those Presidents were regarded as normal, rational presidents. But Trump’s erratic personality is well-known to all. Would the military take a nuke-launch order from President Trump anywhere as seriously as it would a nuke-launch order from Bush or Obama?
I think the whole scenario is a bit of liberal fantasy, but I don’t know how involved lower-down subordinates are in the launch procedure to know whether their cooperation matters. Beyond submarine captains and skippers, I don’t think the rest of the crew has much say in the matter. I’m even fuzzier on the protocol for our land-based ICBM silos.
FWIW, Russia has the hitting power to retaliate that matters most. It’s kind of fortunate because Russia is on Trump’s ‘nice’ list, so we’re probably less likely to see this (very unlikely, imo) scenario play out against the other major heavyweight than we are with some minor player. China is, I think, a distant second, and I don’t think that the North Koreans have an ICBM that can hit the CONUS, or Hawaii for that matter, but they might be able to reach Guam.
If Trump tried to nuke Russia over a petty insult, I suspect it’s a virtual certainty that someone would talk him out of it or put a stop to it before we started WWIII, but I can think of plenty of on-the-bubble scenarios where it might go through. For example, what if China initiated a non-nuclear first strike by sinking one of our aircraft carriers, or an all-out attack on Taiwan? Or what if Iran hit a carrier in the Gulf? One of those could potentially trigger a nuclear response, and then I think the chances are quite likely the order gets followed. But, at that point, I am fiddling with the meaning of “unwarranted”.
It won’t be one insult that starts the war.,
It will slowly escalate, Trump will get insulted and then try to take revenge by arresting a ship on the high seas, which will then in turn lead to something else and something else –
Ending in war…
Harold Hering asked “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” and he was discharged from the US Air Force. Once the decision to launch has been made nobody down the chain of command is supposed to question it and no single person can stop it.
The system is designed to launch missiles as quickly as possible because it assumes two things - that the President wouldn’t make the decision to launch rashly and that time is of the essence since the most likely reason to launch is as a counterattack.
People would try to talk Trump out of it but if he gave the order it’s a near certainty that the launch would occur.
The usual hope is if the POTUS is off his rocker the inner circle will invoke the 25th amendment of the Constitution. One would hope ordering a first strike against another nuclear power for no reason would be a trigger for that. It’s less obvious what happens if he did something less extreme but still kinda crazy, like ordering tactical nukes used against ISIS positions.
Things came, very close, even with a sane POTUS ( Kennedy qualified, right?), during the Cuba crisis. Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, Russian submarine captain, saved the whole world from nuclear fire.
But he was a Soviet. Maybe they are more used to exercising their own judgment then someone serving in the US military would.
Given that the captain of the Soviet submarine in that incident very nearly started a nuclear war on his own initiative, without orders from above, I would say perhaps so. Which also goes to show that “one’s own judgment” is a double-edged sword.
We’ve discussed this a few times before; the fact that it isn’t unilateral is not much consolation. Per the OP, the scenario could play out as follows:
Trump: That’s it! Let’s nuke Moscow!
Cabinet member (probably SecDef, but it could be Becky DeVos): The President seems to be in his right mind and has just given the order to launch.
From then on out it follows the chain of command as people verify that they have received a valid order and, if everybody below Trump does the job they’re supposed to do, eventually we launch.
He fired the first acting cabinet member who pointed out that what he was doing might be illegal. If SecDef won’t sign off on it, he’s got a dozen more people he can call.
The entire premise of his reality TV show was that he would fire people he felt were under-performing. He has gone way out of his way to establish himself as a guy who fires from the hip and does what he wants, specifically ignoring or overruling people who disagree with him.
The two-man rule does not work this way. If the SecDef refuses to issue the command to launch nukes the president cannot just fire him and find someone who will. If he could there would be no point to the rule.
Also, SecDef does not have to say “yes” just because he thinks Trump is sane. He can say “no” for any reason whatsoever. I can’t imagine someone is much worried about their job if they know the world will end in an hour if they say yes to the launch.
I think we exaggerate the potential use of nuclear missiles. The United States as well as a few other countries has overwhelming inter-ballistic missile power. No need to use a nuke at all. A city smashed by cruise missiles is simply that - smashed.
Huh, what? The kinetic power and conventional-explosive power of cruise missiles or non-nuclear ICBMs is a pinprick compared to nuclear warheads. This is vastly overstated.
You could slam 1,000 cruise missiles into Moscow and from an overhead satellite the city would probably still look about 99% intact.
I don’t think that works (well I hope it doesn’t!). If the SecDef says no and Trump fires him, doesn’t the replacement have to be confirmed by the Senate first? Or can Trump pick the Deputy Secretary of Defense, call them the Acting Secretary of Defense, and get them to do it?
No, but he’s got a dozen other cabinet members. Any of them can sign off it. My point was that if he’s going to fire somebody for telling him he’s doing something wrong, he’s certainly willing to ignore somebody for doing it…
The President can dismiss the Secretary anytime he wants. If there’s no Senate-confirmed Secretary of Defence then the next most senior DoD official serves as Acting Secretary of Defence until on is confirmed. So in theory if the Secretary of Defence refused to countersign the President’s order to use nuclear weapons the President could keep firing senior DoD officials until the next in line agreed with him (basically the Saturday Night Massacre with nuclear weapons). And it has to be the (Acting) Secretary of Defence; the President can’t just swap in another Cabinet secretary.