What Exactly Would It Mean to Have Trump’s Finger on the Nuclear Button? Donald Trump, December 1. That's in my opinion that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.
Some people believe that Trump himself is the maniac, the madman with nukes that appears in Trump. But these points are not mutually exclusive. What would it mean to have Trump?
We don't really know, but we do know this: In the atomic age, when decisions must be made very quickly, the presidency has evolved into something akin to a nuclear monarchy. With a single phone call, the commander in chief has virtually unlimited power to rain down nuclear weapons on any adversarial regime and country at any time. You might imagine this awesome executive power would be hamstrung with checks and balances, but by law, custom and congressional deference there may be no responsibility where the president has more absolute control. There is no advice and consent by the Senate.
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There is no second- guessing by the Supreme Court. Even ordering the use of torture. The image of a commander in chief simply pressing a button captures none of the machinery, people and procedures designed to inform the president and translate his or her decisions into coherent action. Although it remains shrouded in secrecy, we actually know a great deal about it, beginning with the president. If we shine our light at the tactical and timing considerations of how a first- or second- strike attack would unfold, and at the inner workings of the nuclear decision process from the standpoint of the White House, we gain a much better idea of a presidential candidate.
And here it is essential to consider a candidate. Decisiveness is important, but so is prudence.
Let us say the president is awakened in the middle of the night (the proverbial 3 a. Since the flight time of missiles fired from launch stations in Russia or China to the White House is 3. Western Atlantic Ocean (Russian subs historically favor a patrol area to the west of Bermuda), the steadiness and brainpower of the commander in chief in such circumstances are serious questions indeed.
The voting public must ask whether a given candidate would remain calm. The closest we came to such a call occurred in 1. Colorado lit up with indications of a large- scale Soviet missile attack. President Jimmy Carter.
The second call reported an all- out attack. Brzezinski was seconds away from waking Carter to pass on the dreadful news and convince him of the need to order retaliation without delay (within a six- minute deadline). Brzezinski was sure the end was near. Just before he picked up the phone to call Carter, Brzezinski received a third call, this time canceling the alarm. It was a mistake caused by human and technical error. A training tape simulating an all- out Soviet attack had inadvertently slipped into the actual real- time attack early warning network.
The impending nuclear holocaust was a mirage that confused the duty crew. He would have only a few minutes to consider the reliability of the attack report and decide whether and how to retaliate. If the attack is real, and he hesitates, a president will likely be killed and the chain of command decapitated, perhaps permanently. During the short countdown to impact, he also will be advised by the head of the Strategic Command in Omaha (or the officer on duty that night if the four- star head of Strategic Command cannot get onto the conference call on time) that the incoming attack will destroy the bulk of the U.
S. Furthermore, he will hear that the loss of this land- based force will mean that the goals of the U. S. How does the candidate process ambiguity? Does he or she interpret ambiguous or contradictory data in black- and- white terms or in ways that reinforce his or her bias?
Does the candidate rush to conclusions? Does he or she appear to place too much stock and faith in the performance of technical systems, such as the sensor systems in early warning networks, and underestimate the fallibility of people and machines? It is of course not unreasonable to believe that the nuclear responsibilities of any president are above the pay grade of every living human being. The only real protection against nuclear disaster is total elimination of nuclear weapons. And yet until that far- off day we expect our president at least not to act rashly under pressure, and to ensure with near- absolute certainty that the United States never launches a nuclear strike on the basis of spurious indications of an incoming attack. It is possibly asking too much, however, because even the most level- headed commander in chief simply cannot process all that he or she needs to absorb under the short deadlines imposed by warheads flying inbound at the speed of 4 miles per second.
The risks of mistaken launch based on false warning, human error in control systems, and panic in the face of imminent death are very real and probably inherent in the hair- trigger nuclear postures of the United States and Russia. Most presidents during the Cold War lived in dread of this moment knowing all too well the attendant risks.
Ronald Reagan expressed incredulity that he would be allowed only six minutes to decide whether to trigger Armageddon based on blips on a radar screen. There is no guarantee that the next president will exercise due caution when the balloon appears to have gone up.
Although no president during the atomic age appears to have ever lost his grip on reality to such an extent that an insane nuclear act might have resulted, top advisers to President Richard Nixon tried to constrain his launch authority during the Watergate scandal that ultimately forced his resignation. His secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, quietly instructed the Pentagon war room to double check with him if Nixon contacted it to order up a nuclear strike.
Alcoholism in a future nuclear monarch is of course quite beyond the pale. Trump. Can we trust a President Trump to remain grounded and sensible under extraordinary pressure in a crisis that appears to be crossing the nuclear Rubicon? Yet a harried decision to launch on warning in the belief that the United States is under nuclear attack is not even the most plausible scenario a President Trump might face today. That is more likely to be a crisis that escalates by design or inadvertence to the nuclear brink and then spins out of control.
But close calls have been fairly rare. The next president will become embroiled in ongoing low- boil nuclear standoffs with Russia, China and North Korea that could morph quickly into a full- blown nuclear crisis. In such situations, actions thought to be defensive and reassuring to allies are often viewed as offensive by the opponent, whose reaction starts another cycle of action- reaction.
The United States and Russia today are entwining themselves in this trap over Ukraine, U. S. Military buildups with nuclear dimensions are underway, and nuclear threats have been made explicitly by Russian officials including Putin and implicitly by each side. Both Putin and President Barack Obama are reminding each other, to a degree we haven.
One finger would be an active digit ready to point up or down for an attack to his nuclear commanders. Other fingers would shape the size and composition of U. S. Additional fingers would determine nuclear actions taken in his absence or demise by presidential successors from his vice president, the Cabinet that he appoints or by generals to whom he may pre- delegate his launch authority. As with his predecessors, Trump. Today, the nuclear deluge he could command would consist of thousands of weapons, each 1.
Hiroshima. The city of Moscow alone lies in the bore sights of more than 1. U. S. As long as the president can establish his or her true identity by his or her personal presence in the Pentagon. It must be obeyed as long as it is constitutional. It does not matter whether the United States has already come under attack by nuclear or non- nuclear weapons.
It does not even matter if the commander in chief simply orders the use of nuclear weapons on an ordinary day for reasons unknown to all but him or her. At the apex of the nuclear chain of command, the operators of the arsenal have trained, exercised and managed nuclear forces to respond dutifully to orders from the president, even an order that comes out of nowhere. Everything revolves around this one individual. The president selects a war plan from a pre- prepared menu of target countries (identified earlier) and three target categories (nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, military- industrial facilities that are generally located in or near cities, and leadership redoubts ranging from the Kremlin to remote bunkers in the hinterlands).
This menu is elaborated at length in a . It is also reduced to a one- page cartoon- like menu for ease of comprehension and selection, an innovation of President Jimmy Carter, who found the long version too complicated to decipher within the few minutes of decision time that might be available in many circumstances. Just prior to his inauguration, a President Trump would receive a top- secret briefing on the contents of the . On Inauguration Day, a President Trump would inherit Obama. This is what he would see: On a day- to- day basis, the U. S. Given a couple more days to get ready, the number of deliverable warheads would grow to nearly 2,0. In either case, these arsenals would allow for extensive strikes against opposing nuclear forces, war- supporting industries and key command posts of the opponent.
The following estimates the number of aim points in these and other nations, by target category: Russia: Weapons of mass destruction (5. Moscow alone would encompass 1. China: WMD (1. 30 aim points), 6. North Korea, Iran, Syria: Each country would be covered by many dozens of warheads targeted at North Korea (5. WMD, 1. 0 leadership and 1.
Iran (4. 0 WMD, 1. Syria (2. 0 WMD, 1.