Yes, Dorothy, He Really Can Nuke the World

Donald Trump is unique in so many ways, none of them good.

Mental health professionals have proclaimed him a nutjob, a malignant narcissist with sociopathic instincts. There's not been a lot of experience of American presidents in the throes of mental illness. Nixon under impeachment, yeah, but a lot of that was the booze talking. Still Henry Kissinger saw to it that Tricky Dicky could not get his hands on the nuclear launch codes and take the world down with him.

Recently there's been worries about the Mango Mussolini. That has prompted some senior US commanders to make reassuring statements about how they would not accept an illegal order to nuke the world. Gwynn Dyer writes that we should not believe the military brass.


Trump doesn’t have to consult ...any of his own military advisers before ordering a nuclear attack on North Korea , Iran or anywhere else. He just puts the launch codes into the “football” an aide always has nearby.

As Blair pointed out, it would only take a couple of minutes for the launch orders to cascade down the chain of command and reach the “commanders of the underground launch centers, the submarines and the bombers.”

It’s even possible that none of the people on duty who would have to execute the orders would be generals.

The generals would also get the order, of course, but as Blair said: “If they felt that it was a really bad call or illegal, and they wanted to try to override it, they could try to transmit a termination order, but it would be too late.”

Trump really could make a nuclear-first strike on North Korea all on his own. On this vital issue, there is no adult supervision.

This bizarre situation dates back to the early days of the Cold War, when both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had launch-on-warning policies because they feared an enemy first strike could destroy all of their own nuclear weapons and leave them helpless.

Later, both countries buried their ballistic missiles in underground silos or hid them in submerged submarines so they could not lose them in a surprise attack. They no longer had to launch on a warning that might be false: if there really was an attack, they could ride it out and retaliate afterwards.

But the U.S. never took back the president’s instant-launch authority, which is an oversight that needs to be rectified.
It would be a simple matter to restrict Trump’s unilateral launch authority to situations where there is hard evidence a nuclear attack on the United States is underway.

That is simple in legal and technical terms, but difficult, if not impossible, in political terms.