Sunday, 4 December 2016

No one can stop President Trump from using nuclear weapons

quote [ The people who set up the current command-and-control system did believe there was a check in place: elections. Don’t want an insane president to have nuclear weapons? Don’t put one in office. ]

I remember the nuclear war nightmares I had during the Cold War. Now I'm waiting for them to return.

Reveal

No one can stop President Trump from using nuclear weapons. That’s by design.
The whole system is set up so the president — and only the president — can decide when to launch.

By Alex Wellerstein December 1

Alex Wellerstein is a historian of nuclear weapons at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. He runs the website Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog.

Sometime in the next few weeks, Donald Trump will be briefed on the procedures for how to activate the U.S. nuclear arsenal, if he hasn’t already learned about them.

All year, the prospect of giving the real estate and reality TV mogul the power to launch attacks that would kill millions of people was one of the main reasons his opponents argued against electing him. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons,” Hillary Clinton said in her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination. She cut an ad along the same lines. Republicans who didn’t support Trump — and even some who did, such as Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) — also said they didn’t think he could be trusted with the launch codes.

Now they’re his. When Trump takes office in January, he will have sole authority over more than 7,000 warheads. There is no failsafe. The whole point of U.S. nuclear weapons control is to make sure that the president — and only the president — can use them if and whenever he decides to do so. The one sure way to keep President Trump from launching a nuclear attack, under the system we’ve had in place since the early Cold War, would have been to elect someone else.

* * *

When the legal framework for nuclear weapons was developed, the fear wasn’t about irrational presidents but trigger-happy generals. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which was passed with President Harry Truman’s signature after nine months of acrimonious congressional hearings, firmly put the power of the atomic bomb in the hands of the president and the civilian components of the executive branch. It was a momentous and controversial law, crafted in the months following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with an eye toward future standoffs with the Soviet Union.

The members of Congress who wrote the law, largely with the backing of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, framed it explicitly as a question of who controls the power to use nuclear weapons: Is dropping an atomic bomb a military act or a political one? If it is inherently political, above and beyond a regular military tactic, then that power could not be entrusted to the military. Ultimately, the president was supposed to be the check against the Pentagon pushing to use nukes more often.

The scientists’ fears were based in their experiences in World War II. Their work under the Army Corps of Engineers and the Army Air Forces left them with a sour taste: Generals, they concluded, cared little about ethics, democracy or international politics. Even during the war, some civilians involved with atomic-bombing work feared that the military had become too eager to leave German and Japanese cities in cinders. The secretary of war, Henry Stimson, learned about the ruinous firebombing of Tokyo from the press. He warned Truman that letting the military run the show might cause the United States to “get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities.”

This division between military and civilian control over nuclear weapons has been weaker or stronger at various points. In the late 1940s, U.S. nuclear weapons could have their nuclear components — the plutonium or uranium “pits” needed to start their reactions — removed and inserted as needed. The nuclear parts of the atomic bombs were in the custody of the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (the precursor to the present-day Energy Department), while the military controlled the nonnuclear parts. The president had the power to transfer these pits to the military and order their use.

During the Eisenhower administration, more compact and complex weapons were developed whose nuclear and nonnuclear parts could not be separated. Fearing a Soviet sneak attack, President Dwight D. Eisenhower put the military in charge of most of the U.S. nuclear stockpile to streamline a possible response. Eisenhower also “pre-delegated” authority to the military to use tactical nuclear weapons (aimed at tanks, not cities) without getting specific presidential approval in certain situations, such as if Soviet tank columns rolled into Germany’s Fulda Gap.

Fears of low-level commanders setting off nuclear conflagrations during the tensions of the early 1960s persuaded President John F. Kennedy to dial some of this back. Miscommunications during the Cuban missile crisis almost led to the use of nuclear weapons by both U.S. and Soviet troops, and U.S. weapons stationed abroad, such as the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, could be used by any army that seized control of them. There were also lingering concerns about “Strangelove”-esque rogue generals. The head of the Strategic Air Command, Gen. Thomas Power, was an enthusiastic proponent of preemptive nuclear war.

Similar concerns within the upper reaches of the Kennedy administration led to a push for technologies to “lock” the nuclear weapons and prevent their use without some kind of codes or authorization. Some early versions were as primitive as combination locks, but later versions were complex electro-mechanical systems that could physically disable a weapon if it were tampered with or if the wrong code was entered too many times.

Eventually, the brass adopted the idea that, when it came to nuclear matters, they were at the beck and call of the president. It was not generals’ responsibility to make the order; it was their responsibility to carry it out.

That the president would be the only person competent to use nuclear weapons was never challenged. Even asking the question would throw the entire system into disarray, as Maj. Harold Hering learned in 1973. Hering was a 21-year Air Force veteran who was decorated for his flying in Vietnam before being sent for training as a nuclear missile squadron commander. He had been taught that officers had an obligation to disobey illegal orders. So when he was told how to launch a nuclear attack, he asked what seemed like a simple question: How could he be sure that an order to launch his missiles was lawful? How could he be sure, for example, that the president wasn’t insane? Instead of an answer, he got the boot: an aborted promotion and an administrative discharge for “failure to demonstrate acceptable qualities of leadership” and for indicating “a defective mental attitude towards his duties.”

The Air Force’s problem, in short, is that once a serviceman starts down the rabbit hole of doubt, he becomes an unreliable second-guesser — and suddenly he is one of the few people who can decide whether nuclear weapons are used.

* * *

The procedure for ordering a nuclear attack involves more than one person: The president cannot literally press a button on his desk and start World War III. There is no “nuclear button” at all. Instead, the U.S. nuclear command-and-control system is bureaucratically and technically complex, stretching out to encompass land-based missile silos, submarine-based ballistic and cruise missiles, and weapons capable of being dropped from bombers. The chain of command requires that the president order the secretary of defense to carry out a launch; the secretary serves as the conduit for implementation by the military. There are succession policies in place so that the procedure can be continued in the event of the death or incapacitation of either the president or the secretary of defense — or their designated successors.

Most details of how a nuclear war would be started are classified, because an enemy who knew enough about the system could come up with ways to complicate or defeat it. What is known is that an aide is always following the president, carrying at least one large satchel (often two) known as the “nuclear football,” reportedly containing information about nuclear attack possibilities and how the president could verify his identity, authenticate orders and communicate with the military about implementing them.

Could the secretary of defense refuse to carry out a presidential order for a nuclear attack? The legal and constitutional aspects are not clear. The official doctrine that has been released says nothing about this question, and the cryptic public responses to official inquiries, even from Congress, indicate that it is not something that can be openly talked about. “Only the president can authorize the use of nuclear weapons” is essentially the only reply officials ever give to any questions about nuclear controls. Could the president simply fire the defense secretary and move on to the deputy secretary, the secretary of the Army and so on through the chain of command? Maybe. Such an action would at least slow things down, even if the refusal to carry out the order was illegal.

Commanders further down the pipeline are trained to act quickly on any orders that do come in. The launch officers are trained to launch weapons, not to debate the legality or advisability of the action. Hence the problem with Hering’s question in 1973: While nuclear launch officers are not meant to be strictly mechanical (and indeed, the United States has always resisted fully automating the process), if they stopped to question whether their authenticated orders were legitimate, they would put the credibility of U.S. nuclear deterrence at risk.

Congress held hearings on these issues in the mid-1970s, but nothing came of them. The debate faded away except among a small circle of nuclear wonks. In the early 1980s, Jeremy Stone, then the president of the Federation of American Scientists, proposed that Congress ought to pass a law restricting presidential use of nuclear weapons. The idea was fairly simple: So long as no nuclear weapons had been used by another power in a conflict, the president should not be able to order a first strike with nuclear weapons without getting approval from a fairly large committee of high-ranking members of Congress. It would not eliminate the possibility of an American first strike but would spread the responsibility more democratically.

The idea was pooh-poohed by legal scholars, who noted that Congress has often been far more belligerent than presidents and that the logistics could be complicated.

The people who set up the current command-and-control system did believe there was a check in place: elections. Don’t want an insane president to have nuclear weapons? Don’t put one in office. But this isn’t necessarily much of a check — even rational presidents have bad days; even high-functioning people succumb to mental illness or substance abuse.

It might be worth resurrecting this debate , if we take seriously the idea that presidents — any of them, much less Trump — should not have the legal authority to conduct arbitrary and unilateral nuclear war. Perhaps now, decades after the end of the Cold War, we are past the moment when we need to entrust that power in a single person. One can imagine a law that would allow the president to use nuclear weapons in the face of imminent danger, the sort of situation in which a matter of minutes or even seconds could make a difference, but would enact formal requirements for outside consensus when more options were on the table. It would not require a full renunciation of the possibility of a first-strike nuclear attack (something the United States has never been willing to make) but might add some reassurances that such decisions would not be made unilaterally.

Congress ceded a considerable amount of power to the presidency in 1946. Seventy years later, maybe it is time lawmakers took some of it back.

[SFW] [politics] [+1 Underrated]
[by sanepride@2:44amGMT]

Comments

SnappyNipples said @ 10:50am GMT on 4th Dec [Score:1 Insightful]
I bet 50 quatloos that Trump gets impeached on the first term and Pence takes over giving the GOP their win.
bbqkink said @ 4:36pm GMT on 4th Dec
No bet.
Taleweaver said @ 1:13pm GMT on 6th Dec
50 quid* against it.

*Yeah, that's fifty British pounds. And yeah, I'm serious.
XregnaR said @ 12:36pm GMT on 4th Dec [Score:1 Underrated]
I'm sorry, but this is some of the worst chicken little scaremongering I've seen so far.
HP Lovekraftwerk said[1] @ 3:29pm GMT on 4th Dec [Score:1 Underrated]
Did you not live through the Reagan administration? Ronald Reagan really didn't get that nukes were a bad thing and that nuclear war was unwinnable until he saw the made-for-TV movie, "The Day After." It's why he was so willing to saber-rattle with the Soviets before seeing it and so eager to start negotiations afterwards. Trump seems even more oblivious to the realities of what he's saying than Ronnie did, and Ron had Alzheimer's.

Tell me you honestly think Trump understands what would happen if he launched even a single ICBM.
bbqkink said @ 6:01pm GMT on 4th Dec
Trump Asks, 'If We Have [Nuclear Weapons], Why Can't We Use Them?'
taeyn said @ 2:40pm GMT on 4th Dec
I agree, but still found it interesting for some of the chain-of-command details i didn't know.
XregnaR said @ 3:08pm GMT on 4th Dec
We still don't know them all, and never will. Neither will this journalist.
sanepride said @ 10:35pm GMT on 4th Dec
Alex Wellerstein is a historian of nuclear weapons at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. He runs the website Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog

Dr. Wellerstein's full CV

I think he probably knows a lot more than any of us.
bbqkink said @ 5:45pm GMT on 4th Dec
Because the fact that a person of questionable mental fitness who's understanding of the workings of government let alone the nuances of diplomacy are very much in doubt has control over a system that is designed to destroy the entire planet?

All Trump needs to launch a nuclear attack is 30 min. and the nod of an ex-general called "Mad Dog" who has said on the record that killing "certain" people is fun....no reason to worry at all.
sanepride said @ 7:42pm GMT on 4th Dec
Granted the title and tone are a little dramatic, but also accurate. I'd argue it's not scaremongering to point out the dated, Cold War era policy that gives the president incredibly wide latitude in employing nuclear weapons (due to the obviously short time span a retaliatory strike would have to be authorized in the event of attack) and the fact that we've elected a president with a clearly limited grasp or interest in the complexities of global relations and security (well illustrated with the Taiwan phone call). But it's also pointed out that this is fixable via Congressional action. In the current global environment, there's no need to put world-ending power in the hands of one individual.
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 8:25pm GMT on 4th Dec
Look, it's not like it's as bad as snow in Hawaii, right?
XregnaR said @ 8:36pm GMT on 4th Dec
Don't eat the snow in Hawaii.
GordonGuano said @ 5:53pm GMT on 4th Dec [Score:-4 Troll]
filtered comment under your threshold
papango said @ 5:47am GMT on 5th Dec [Score:1 Insightful]
Why should anybody be able to stop him? He's the president. This is what America voted for (or weren't bothered enough to vote against). He's the Commander in Chief; he gets the nuclear codes.
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 2:48am GMT on 4th Dec
And he's already getting the Chinese pissed at him by talking to Taiwan and violating the One China policy.

Naturally, Trump thinks he did nothing wrong and is grousing back. That bully-ego of his is what's going to get us all nuked, if anything does. He'll just see no other way to "win" an argument and rather than be seen as a low-energy pathetic small-hands, he'll do the only obvious thing he can think of.

Is this all still Hillary's fault and everything? We're still letting the people who voted for him off the hook, are we?
sanepride said @ 5:31am GMT on 4th Dec
Still isn't even clear if that phone call was out of defiance of the One China policy or shear ignorance of the One China policy.
Either way, not exactly a reassuring start.
Ankylosaur said @ 5:41am GMT on 4th Dec
Or sheer indifference to either of those since he was just doing it to grease the wheels of a local government as part of a hotel development bid.

Nuclear deterrent used to be about either getting nukes of your own or entering in defensive agreements with nuke-possessors. Now countries will seek to have Trump hotels to protect themselves.
bbqkink said @ 5:52pm GMT on 4th Dec
I would actually feel better if the call was done out of defiance and not like I fear because of a hotel deal and ignorance of the sensitivity.
bbqkink said @ 7:22pm GMT on 4th Dec
Whether it says it or not, China will regard this as a deeply destabilizing event not because the call materially changes U.S. support for Taiwan—it does not—but because it reveals the incoming Presidency to be volatile and unpredictable. In that sense, the Taiwan call is the latest indicator that Trump the President will be largely indistinguishable from Trump the candidate.

Trump has also shown himself to be highly exploitable on subjects that he does not grasp. He is surrounding himself with ideologically committed advisers who will seek to use those opportunities when they can. We should expect similar moments of exploitation to come on issues that Trump will regard as esoteric, such as the Middle East, health care, immigration, and entitlements.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-risk-behind-trumps-taiwan-call
sanepride said @ 7:45pm GMT on 4th Dec
Somehow I'd be more reassured knowing that it was out of old-fashioned corrupt cronyism. At least we'd know there was a tangible motivation.
bbqkink said[3] @ 8:29pm GMT on 4th Dec
Well if he knew enough not to take that call no mater the motivation. But instead shows complete ignorance by saying "He called me"...Who the hell is advising him?

I am also wondering what all of those farmers around here where I live will think when the trade war starts and those Chinese grain orders are canceled.

++++UPDATE+++

It seems he didn't tell his advisors until after the call...

Senator Chris Murphy talks with Rachel Maddow about the complicated relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan and how Donald Trump's phone call with the Taiwanese president has upset 40 years of careful U.S.-China diplomacy. Duration: 21:23
HoZay said @ 10:20pm GMT on 4th Dec
China might well decide this is a good time to bring Taiwan back into the fold. That way Trump wouldn't be confused about how many Chinas there are.
Fish said @ 3:56am GMT on 4th Dec [Score:-5 Troll]
filtered comment under your threshold
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 4:21am GMT on 4th Dec [Score:2 Underrated]
Oh, good. We're back to the juvenile dick-waving of the Bush II years. Thanks for 6+ trillion dollars and thousands of deaths proving you weren't "pussies."

God, you Trump cultists need to grow up.
cb361 said @ 4:38am GMT on 4th Dec [Score:1 Insightful]
The only comfort is that at least they'll wind up just as radioactive as the rest of us.
Ankylosaur said @ 5:11am GMT on 4th Dec [Score:1 Underrated]
Even as they're glowing in the dark and sprouting a third arm they'll insufferably insist that "anthropogenic radiation" is a liberal hoax.
sanepride said @ 5:29am GMT on 4th Dec
No comfort in the knowledge that they'll still have a gun for each arm.
cb361 said @ 6:16am GMT on 4th Dec
And matchless aim, with their six eyes.
midden said[2] @ 6:18am GMT on 4th Dec
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 3:20pm GMT on 4th Dec
And yet overall gun ownership is down. Maybe the NRA-ites think they can make up for it with volume?
midden said @ 7:35am GMT on 5th Dec [Score:1 Informative]
Yeah, pretty much.

"The average gun-owning household now owns an estimated 8.1 guns, compared with 4.1 guns in 1994. But, at the same time, less households actually own guns. The ownership estimates come from the Post’s Wonkblog, which analyzed results from surveys and data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives."

http://www.chron.com/national/article/A-new-estimate-on-how-many-guns-the-average-gun-6584060.php
Fish said @ 4:41am GMT on 5th Dec [Score:-2 Troll]
filtered comment under your threshold
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 5:43am GMT on 5th Dec
Ah, the obsession with penises. No wonder guns are so important to you.
Fish said @ 5:03am GMT on 8th Dec
Whatever.

Get the fuck off my lawn.
arrowhen said @ 3:23pm GMT on 4th Dec
Those mutations could be explained by simple inbreeding!
foobar said @ 6:23am GMT on 4th Dec
Except they won't. Nukes are expensive; they only get aimed at important places.
satanspenis666 said @ 4:06pm GMT on 4th Dec
They are cheap, when you get other people to pay for them. i.e. the American tax payers.
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 4:10pm GMT on 4th Dec
They're even cheaper when no one is left to collect on what you owe for them.
gendo666 said @ 9:02am GMT on 4th Dec [Score:-2]
filtered comment under your threshold
eidolon said @ 3:54pm GMT on 4th Dec
Really takes the punch out of it that we have to say we're afraid he'll use the football and the biscuit.
the circus said @ 3:54pm GMT on 4th Dec
The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
Ussmak said @ 5:06pm GMT on 4th Dec
This exact same article would've been written if Hillary had won the election.

HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 5:11pm GMT on 4th Dec
Except it would've been on a site with either spinning skull GIFs or ads for prepper equipment and how colloidal silver will cure chemtrail infections.
Ussmak said @ 6:14pm GMT on 4th Dec [Score:-1 Flamebait]
filtered comment under your threshold
sanepride said @ 7:53pm GMT on 4th Dec
So are you suggesting that former Secretary of State Clinton is somehow less qualified than real estate mogul and reality TV star Trump in the area of international policy and global security?
yasha said @ 8:20pm GMT on 4th Dec
WWI was started by a bunch of super qualified folks who had no idea they were about to start an epoch ending apocalyptic war.

Could be that she'd a been less likely to start nuclear holocaust because her experience within the system taught her the right lessons. Could be that she'd a been more likely to start nuclear holocaust because her experience taught her the wrong lessons.

It's essentially unknowable.

The nuclear holocaust, if it comes, will be a shocking outcome from a chain of decisions that seemed perfectly reasonable to almost all players at the time.

Trump v Clinton doesn't enter into the equation at all.
sanepride said[1] @ 8:44pm GMT on 4th Dec
Actually WWI was started by a bunch of inbred monarchs having essentially an epic family quarrel. Their only qualifications were their lineage.
And when you consider that the president alone has such unchecked authority on unilateral nuclear weapons use, the qualifications, temperament, and ultimate judgement of the holder of that office is everything. Essentially unknowable, perhaps. But easily educated-guessable.
Fish said @ 4:46am GMT on 5th Dec [Score:-3 Troll]
filtered comment under your threshold
HP Lovekraftwerk said @ 5:44am GMT on 5th Dec [Score:0 Underrated]
"...had it been about popular vote he'd have beat her there too."

Except he didn't win the popular vote, no matter how many times he tries to convince himself of it.
sanepride said @ 6:47am GMT on 5th Dec
Any reasonable person knows this, which is why it's pointless to explain it to an odious troll like Fish. Even numbers is more agreeable than this worthless twat.
Fish said @ 5:03am GMT on 8th Dec
This worthless twat runs circles around you.

Kiss kiss, lovey!
Fish said @ 5:01am GMT on 8th Dec
"Except he didn't win the popular vote"

He didn't win the popular vote because the rules of engagement were to win the electoral college. So that's what he focused his campaign on.

Had the rules called for the winner to be decided by popular vote, he'd have geared his campaign that way.

The problem with dipshit condescending progs– the reason they lose– is because they believe that their enemies are idiots.

Which they clearly are not.
bbqkink said @ 6:31pm GMT on 4th Dec

What would the danger be if a Pres. Trump had nuclear codes? MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains in detail the logistics of how a president would declare nuclear war



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=371ppiYpk1U


HoZay said @ 8:18am GMT on 5th Dec
Looks like the Taiwan phone call/insult to China was deliberate. Now he's making it worse.

Trump attacks China in Twitter outburst
sanepride said @ 4:13pm GMT on 5th Dec
Yup.
Trump’s Taiwan phone call was long planned, say people who were involved

Seems like this is meant to be a big warning shot that he intends to 'get tough' with China. What exactly this is supposed to accomplish is unclear. Maybe it's something like 'that'll teach 'em for steaiin' our jerbs and dumpin' cheap goods in our Walmarts'.
I think we'll be seeing some very nervous Asian allies. It's a good bet China has well-laid out contingency plans for just such provocations.
HoZay said @ 5:41pm GMT on 5th Dec
They can take Taiwan any time they choose to. What would we do about it? Close Walmart?
sanepride said @ 5:56pm GMT on 5th Dec
...which brings us back to the original point of this post.
Despite our lack of official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, we are paradoxically pledged to defend them from attack or invasion from the PRC. Realistically it's utter madness for either the US or China to risk direct military conflict with their biggest trading partner. So why deliberately poke China over this? Welcome to the new, unpredictable normal of the Trump era. We can only hope that at leas one side will continue to act in a relatively measured, rational manner.
HoZay said @ 6:01pm GMT on 5th Dec
Trump doesn't seem to care about treaties. They're like contracts, made to be broken.
sanepride said @ 6:36pm GMT on 5th Dec
Maybe he thinks he can just sue China if they invade Taiwan.

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