Many of the standards that guide today’s nuclear operations were born out of the Cold War. military with the legal authority it needs to stand in the way of a deranged president intent on starting a nuclear war for his own political benefit. Above all, adopting these changes would provide the U.S.
But new barriers to first nuclear use could reduce the risk of unintended escalation by making clear that the United States is not going to undertake a nuclear strike without either provocation or a deliberate process. Efforts have been made in the past to change the current protocol, but the prospect of a second Trump administration makes doing so all the more urgent.Įliminating the president’s nuclear sole authority would not impede America’s ability to defend U.S. If neither of these positions is yet Senate-confirmed under a president, then the authority might come from the speaker of the House or the president pro tempore of the Senate-second and third in the constitutional line of succession. Read: Trump soft-launches his 2024 campaignĬongress should work with the Biden administration to address this danger, writing new laws that prevent the president from initiating on his own authority the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict, and that require him to gain concurrence from a Senate-confirmed official such as the secretary of defense or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Congress and President Biden now have a narrow window to restrict the ability of any future president to launch nuclear weapons without consent from other senior officials, except in response to a nuclear attack on America or its allies.
If he wins the 2024 election, he will regain control of America’s 4,000-warhead-strong nuclear arsenal, capable of global destruction in minutes. Making that point even more clear, Donald Trump, who seems likely to run again for president of the United States, still talks loosely about threatening to use nuclear weapons, this time against Russia. Stability in the White House is not a given. Today, this presidential power-known as nuclear “sole authority”-is a dangerous anachronism that rests too much on the stability and indeed the sanity of any given president. During the Cold War, this was seen as stabilizing, a deterrent. This fear is based on his experience but also one simple reality: All American presidents since 1945 have had the unfettered authority to launch nuclear weapons at any time. President Joe Biden has sought to avoid having the United States or NATO dragged directly into the war in Ukraine for fear that the situation could quickly escalate to a nuclear war with Moscow.
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