https://www.yahoo.com/news/yes-trump-power-launch-nuclear-205953307.html
Despite Trump’s bellicose rhetoric, diplomatic options are still available. And it’s far from certain that he would ever actually give an order for a nuclear strike.
But if he did, there’s little legally or procedurally to block him. While details of the process for launching a nuclear attack are largely kept secret, the delegation of authority is clear.
“There’s no veto once the president has ordered a strike,” Franklin Miller, who worked in the White House and Pentagon on nuclear issues, told the New York Times last year. “The president and only the president has the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.”
The military employees charged with executing the president’s order could, theoretically, refuse to carry out the president’s order, but would risk a court martial, according to Michael O’Hanlon, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“A president could push the button all by himself or herself, legally-and constitutionally-speaking. Physically, military personnel would need to carry out the strike of course. They could choose not to, perhaps at the instruction of the secretary of defense or the four-star officer leading Strategic Command — who together constitute the chain of command between the president and the trigger-pullers. But any military officer ignoring a presidential order would be in open insubordination, subject to dismissal and court martial,” O’Hanlon wrote in a blog post last year.
Despite Trump’s bellicose rhetoric, diplomatic options are still available. And it’s far from certain that he would ever actually give an order for a nuclear strike.
But if he did, there’s little legally or procedurally to block him. While details of the process for launching a nuclear attack are largely kept secret, the delegation of authority is clear.
“There’s no veto once the president has ordered a strike,” Franklin Miller, who worked in the White House and Pentagon on nuclear issues, told the New York Times last year. “The president and only the president has the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.”
The military employees charged with executing the president’s order could, theoretically, refuse to carry out the president’s order, but would risk a court martial, according to Michael O’Hanlon, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“A president could push the button all by himself or herself, legally-and constitutionally-speaking. Physically, military personnel would need to carry out the strike of course. They could choose not to, perhaps at the instruction of the secretary of defense or the four-star officer leading Strategic Command — who together constitute the chain of command between the president and the trigger-pullers. But any military officer ignoring a presidential order would be in open insubordination, subject to dismissal and court martial,” O’Hanlon wrote in a blog post last year.
