House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took another step in the direction of destroying the U.S. President yesterday when she reported to the Democratic Caucus that she had spoken with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about denying President Donald Trump access to the codes for launching nuclear weapons. “This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable President from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” she wrote in a letter published by CNN. “The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy.”
What Pelosi is demanding is a clear assault on the President’s Constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief. The Congressional Research Service, in a “Defense Primer: Command and Control of Nuclear Forces,” updated Dec. 3, 2020, declares right at the outset: “The U.S. President has sole authority to authorize the use of U.S. nuclear weapons.” This authority, it says, “is inherent in his constitutional role as Commander in Chief.” Nobody, not Congress, not the military, has the right to take that authority away from the President, short of removal from office via Constitutional means. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/IF10521.pdf
Experts consulted by various news media outlets also stressed that while there are no limitations on the President’s authority, the system is designed such that, with the exception of a retaliatory strike in response to an all out nuclear attack on the U.S., it’s actually quite difficult for the President to launch a nuclear attack out of the blue because then other considerations apply, including the laws of armed conflict.
“There is no mythical red button. That mythical button doesn’t exist. That is a Hollywood thing,” a senior military official, who was not authorized to speak, publicly told Politico. “It is a very complicated process. We have legal advisers in the room on both sides — on the military side and on the civilian side. The laws of armed conflict, the law of war, play a big role in this — ethical proportionality and all that.”
Another unnamed official indicated that Pelosi’s statement shows she has no idea what she’s talking about. “The way the nuclear arsenal is employed, it is not that easy for a crazy President to go and launch nukes,” the official said. “That’s kind of a silly thing to say.”
