I hope President Biden did not miss Jon Wolfsthal’s illuminating Dec. 26 op-ed, “An erratic president could launch a nuclear strike on their own. Now seems like a good time to change that.”
Opinion The president’s nuclear capabilities
Mr. Biden is no stranger to executive orders. According to Ballotpedia, he has issued almost 1,000 such presidential proclamations, notes and memorandums, including his recent pardon for those convicted of minor marijuana offenses on certain federal lands. Please, Mr. President, do for world peace what you did for a single toke.
Kitty Kelley, Washington
Jon Wolfsthal asserted that “whoever is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025, will immediately be vested with the sole legal authority to use the country’s nuclear weapons.” Nothing in the Constitution justifies such an alarming assertion.
It would have been news to George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention and maintained that the Constitution “vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore, no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until they have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.” James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated, “In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. … War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. … The strongest passions, and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.” James Wilson, delegate to the Constitutional Convention and future Supreme Court justice, explained to the Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention, “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress, for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large.”
There were no dissenting voices to these authoritative interpretations of the “declare war” clause.
The clause’s authors were not naive. They understood it permitted the president to respond to sudden attacks on the United States that had already broken the peace without awaiting congressional action. But the clause prohibits the president from starting a nuclear war. The prohibition should be fortified by a concurrent resolution warning that a violation would be treated as an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor by Congress, warranting the president’s removal from office.
The Constitution answered Mr. Wolfstahl’s worry 236 years ago.
Bruce Fein, Washington
The writer, an associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, is the author of “Congressional Surrender and Presidential Overreach.”
Can a president launch a nuclear strike on his own? The answer to that question is an emphatic no. Nuclear weapons are in all cases governed by a two-person rule. As far as the president is concerned, that means him and the secretary of defense.
The president does carry a special identity card (“biscuit”), but that doesn’t mean he would know how to order a nuclear strike. Which weapons and delivery systems? Nuclear-equipped submarines? Strategic bombers? Land-based missiles? Tactical nuclear weapons? And what about targets: Can he identify, with any precision, the industrial centers, population centers and agricultural areas that supposedly need to be destroyed?
Since 1970, the United States has relied on the Defense Support Program for early warning of an attack by a hostile power. The DSP has 23 satellites that will give an adequate warning time, currently classified, of missiles fired at the United States. There is never a need for an erratic president to order a preemptive strike.
Grant Gary Jacobsen, Woodbridge
Jon Wolfsthal made a good argument for changing the procedures for authorizing nuclear launches. In fact, lawmakers sent a letter to President Biden requesting that be done.
There are several features of the launch authorization process that would slow down an impulsive launch, if not prevent it entirely.
A president cannot simply provide the code and say “launch the weapons.” The president would quickly be asked, “Which ones”? There are a lot of nuclear weapons, and they can be delivered by aircraft, land-based missiles and submarine-launched missiles. The mixture is organized into a nuclear war plan. So the president would have to designate which option or combination of options. The choice would normally be made in consultation with military experts based on the current world situation. But if this were an “impulsive” move, the president would have to make the selection alone after studying the options (which implies no small understanding of the desired effect of a nuclear attack).
This nuclear weapon information is carried in a case (the “football”) that is at the president’s side constantly so that it can be used to make the right weapon choices. When this case is opened, all the levels of command involved, down to the bomber crews, launch control officers in silos and submarine commanders, would be notified to expect a launch order. Every person involved would be one of two who would double-check each other.
Although the president has the authority to order a nuclear strike, such a strike in the absence of any known threat or a nuclear attack on the United States would raise concerns at all levels involved in executing the strike. All levels of the military would be aware of the current world situation, so a sudden, unexpected nuclear strike for no apparent reason would certainly raise some questions. The president can order a strike, but anyone can choose not to carry out that order.
Stephen Marschall, Burke