Limit Trump's Ability to Launch Nuclear War before It's Too Late
There's still time for Joe Biden to do the right thing
Honestly? The chance that Joe Biden will limit Donald Trump’s ability to launch a nuclear weapon whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wants, is close to zero.
As readers of this newsletter know, Biden has been a complete failure on nuclear policy. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try. This week, Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Ted Lieu wrote Biden one last time, urging him to “put guardrails on presidential authority to start nuclear war.” He could do it with the stroke of a pen. Even on his way out the door. “We must never again entrust the fate of the world to just on fallible human,” They wrote.
Markey and Lieu have led the fight for nuclear sanity for many years. I was there at there press conference in 2019 when they introduced the bill that they now urge Biden to implement. I was proud then to hear the head of the Council for a Livable world, former Rep. John Tierney, explain the danger.
“There are those who would argue that we should have a thermonuclear monarchy — that one individual, one executive, should be able to make the decision about whether or not we fire off nuclear weapons. That is not the way our founders structured our Constitution — they made very clear that an act of war would be initiated by Congress. I think this bill reiterates that very clearly, to make sure that people know that, yes, we always reserve to our executive the right to respond, if our allies, our forces or our country is attacked. But in terms of initiating a nuclear war, there is no legal, there is no military and there certainly is no moral basis for believing that that power ought to rest in one person — essentially a thermonuclear monarch.”
Their bill has never come up for a vote. But they persist. As they should. Here is their new letter to President Biden. They are as clear, concise and eloquent as anyone can be in explaining the danger and detailing the solution.
December 12, 2024
Dear President Biden,
Under the U.S. Constitution, only Congress can declare war, and there is no clearer act of war than the first use of nuclear weapons. But current U.S. policy gives the president unilateral authority to launch a nuclear first strike, sidelining Congress from this most consequential decision. As the coauthors of the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act — proposed legislation that prohibits any U.S. president from launching a nuclear first strike without prior congressional authorization — we urge you, in your remaining time in office, to change this unconstitutional policy. We first introduced this act during the Obama administration not as a partisan effort, but to make the larger point that current U.S. policy, which gives the president sole authority to launch nuclear weapons without any input from Congress, is dangerous. As Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, it is more important than ever to take the power to start a nuclear war out of the hands of a single individual and ensure that Congress’s constitutional role is respected and fulfilled.
The president’s ability to singlehandedly launch a nuclear first strike has concerned ourmilitary and Congress since the dawn of the nuclear age. During the Watergate crisis, then-Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger was so concerned about President Richard Nixon’s mental state and alcohol consumption that he told military commanders that if Nixon ordered a nuclear strike, they should check with him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger first. California Senator Alan Cranston phoned Schlesinger, warning him about “the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust.”
More recently, two days after the January 6, 2021 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley took the extraordinary step of ordering his staff to come to him if they received a nuclear strike order from Trump. “You never know what a president’s trigger point is,” Milley reportedly told the officers.
But current U.S. policy does not allow the Defense Secretary or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reject a legitimate first use order; their role is purely advisory. The president can unilaterally make a launch decision and implement it directly without informing senior leaders. If Milley and Schlesinger both felt they had to break the rules to save the world from possible destruction, these rules must change.
Mr. President, with just weeks left in office, you can safeguard the system against Donald Trump or any future unstable president, and make it constitutional. We urge you to announce that henceforth it will be the policy of the United States that it will not initiate a nuclear first strike without express authorization from Congress. In a situation where the United States has already been attacked with nuclear weapons, the president would retain the option to respond unilaterally.
Such a policy would provide clear directives for the military to follow: A president could order a nuclear launch only if (1) Congress had approved the decision, providing a constitutional check on executive power or (2) the United States had already been attacked with a nuclear weapon. This would be infinitely safer than our current doctrine. As two former high-ranking U.S. national security officials recently wrote: “Requiring that presidents consult with others before making the most fateful decision in human history would make the United States and the world a safer place.”4
President Biden, as an important part of your legacy, you must put guardrails on presidential authority to start nuclear war. We must never again entrust the fate of the world to just one fallible human.
We thank you for your attention to this critical issue and stand ready to support your efforts in any way we can.
Joe-What a novel idea; limiting the power of a troglodyte being able to bring the world to the brink of war. I have come to the conclusion that Biden is a hollow man, professing ideals but acting contrary to those ideals.
That he would take such a courageous step is folly.
That shouldn’t stop you from trying and I’ll certainly support the effort.
Tom
This is my open letter to the nuclear weapons experts community, scientists, politicians and other interested parties requesting that they stop sending letters of any kind, because...
This method of communication is a proven failure in accomplishing the stated goal.
In fact, communication and information by any means has been a failure in making the world safe from nuclear weapons. This is proven beyond any doubt by the real world evidence of 75 years of such efforts, which have not led to anything other than a more dangerous planet.
Yes, such efforts are born of good intentions, by good people. But the good intentions do not rise to the level of caring about whether a chosen tactic actually works. And actually, it's a little darker than that, because the deliberate use of known ineffective methods allow the letter writer to feel, and claim, that they are doing something useful, when actually, they are not.
This comment, like all my comments, is part of the same self induced illusion. While I'm writing such words I FEEL like I'm accomplishing something, when I know from long experience that this comment won't be read, and if it is read, readers won't get it, or act on it in any way. I understand the self delusional pointlessness of letters by sending them myself. The letters sent by prominent people are no different, because they too are self delusional, and will accomplish nothing.
All of the above, the longstanding patterns of ineffective behaviors which have consistently failed for 75 years, have to be denigrated, defeated, swept away, and revealed to be impotent, before we can turn our attention to anything new, anything that might have some possibility of working. Such as....
Leverage.
Nobody with any power or influence is applying any form of leverage on policy makers for one simple reason, whatever they might think or say, they don't believe nuclear weapons are a serious issue. Here's evidence of that....
In WWII millions of American families sent their cherished sons off to fight on foreign battlefields, perhaps never to return. Millions of American families put at risk that which was most precious to them because they believed that fascism was a serious threat.
When it comes to the nuclear threat we face today, nobody with any form of power or influence will put anything at risk. Nuclear weapons experts won't risk their professional reputations, the politicians won't risk their careers, and scientists find the idea of going out on strike to be laughable. These aren't bad people. That's not the problem. The problem is that, unlike the American families who sent their sons off to fight and die in WWII, today's cultural leaders...
DO NOT GET IT. But they are sure that they do. And so they are content with an ineffective response to the threat like letters.
There's a question each of us can ask ourselves to discover whether we really get that nuclear weapons are a serious threat. What specifically, what exactly, are each of us willing to put at risk?
In the 1940s American mothers put their children on the line.
What are we going to do?
More letters?