Wednesday morning, NBC’s Joe Scarborough said something profoundly frightening about Donald Trump. In a private conversation with a foreign policy expert, Scarborough reported, Trump asked — repeatedly — why we have nuclear weapons if we don’t use them...
Obviously, this isn’t gospel; it’s a thirdhand report of a conversation that may or may not have happened. But it tracks with what Trump has said publicly. When MSNBC’s Chris Matthews told Trump in March that presidents shouldn’t suggest they might use nukes, as Trump has done repeatedly, the candidate responded with a question: "Then why do we make them"?
This raises some very, very scary questions about Trump’s judgment. It suggests that he doesn’t know the basic way nuclear weapons are supposed to work — deterring attacks on the United States — and that he might be the first president since Harry Truman to order the use of nuclear weapons. The natural question to ask, then, is whether he could actually do that. The answer is deceptively simple: Yes, he can. No matter what.
The president has basically unconstrained authority to use nuclear weapons, a seemingly insane system that flows pretty logically from America’s strategic doctrine on nuclear weapons. The US needs a system to launch weapons fast for deterrence to work properly, which means one person needs to be able to order the use of nukes basically unencumbered. The president is the only possible choice. This entire system, however, is built around a basic faith in democracy: that the American people will elect a sober, stable leader who understands the seriousness of nuclear weapons. Someone not named Donald Trump...
The secretary of defense is required to verify the president’s order to launch. But he or she doesn’t have veto power. If the president orders a nuclear launch, the secretary is legally obligated to do it. He or she could theoretically choose to resign rather than carry out the order, but then it would fall to the secretary’s second-in-command to order the strike.
"It's up to the president," Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, tells me. "The advisers that make up the national command authority are obliged to obey and execute the order."
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/3/12367996/donald-trump-nuclear-codes
Obviously, this isn’t gospel; it’s a thirdhand report of a conversation that may or may not have happened. But it tracks with what Trump has said publicly. When MSNBC’s Chris Matthews told Trump in March that presidents shouldn’t suggest they might use nukes, as Trump has done repeatedly, the candidate responded with a question: "Then why do we make them"?
This raises some very, very scary questions about Trump’s judgment. It suggests that he doesn’t know the basic way nuclear weapons are supposed to work — deterring attacks on the United States — and that he might be the first president since Harry Truman to order the use of nuclear weapons. The natural question to ask, then, is whether he could actually do that. The answer is deceptively simple: Yes, he can. No matter what.
The president has basically unconstrained authority to use nuclear weapons, a seemingly insane system that flows pretty logically from America’s strategic doctrine on nuclear weapons. The US needs a system to launch weapons fast for deterrence to work properly, which means one person needs to be able to order the use of nukes basically unencumbered. The president is the only possible choice. This entire system, however, is built around a basic faith in democracy: that the American people will elect a sober, stable leader who understands the seriousness of nuclear weapons. Someone not named Donald Trump...
The secretary of defense is required to verify the president’s order to launch. But he or she doesn’t have veto power. If the president orders a nuclear launch, the secretary is legally obligated to do it. He or she could theoretically choose to resign rather than carry out the order, but then it would fall to the secretary’s second-in-command to order the strike.
"It's up to the president," Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, tells me. "The advisers that make up the national command authority are obliged to obey and execute the order."
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/3/12367996/donald-trump-nuclear-codes
