US senators on Tuesday probed the limits of a president’s unilateral power to launch a nuclear attack, an increasingly weighty debate as tensions rise between an unpredictable US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The closely watched debate, organized and chaired by a prominent Republican Trump critic, addressed a hypothetical presidential decision to launch a nuclear first strike against an adversary.
“Let’s just recognize the exceptional nature of this moment,” Democratic US Senator Chris Murphy said during the hearing of the chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee.
“We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decisionmaking process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear weapon strike that is wildly out of step with US national security interests,” he added.
In the event of an ongoing or imminent nuclear attack, senators and expert witnesses agreed that the president had full authority to defend the nation in accordance with the US constitution.
Only the president can give the order to pull the nuclear trigger.
“Once that order is given and verified, there is no way to revoke it,” said the committee’s chairman, Senator Bob Corker, who described the hearing as the first since 1976 to focus on presidential authority over nuclear weapons.
Corker has broken publicly with Trump, saying last month that the president was setting the nation “on the path to World War III” with his statements about North Korea and verbal jousting with Kim.
In August, Trump issued an apocalyptic threat to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea and he took to calling Kim “Rocket Man” after a series of provocative missile tests.
Kim, no stranger to verbal jousting, branded Trump a “dotard.”
During Trump’s 12-day trip to Asia, where Pyongyang’s nuclear program was frequently discussed, Trump mocked the 33-year-old leader as “short and fat” and warned that misjudging US resolve as weakness would be “a fatal miscalculation.”
While some senators, including Democrat Edward Markey, expressed fear that in the age of Trump, an impulsive commander in chief has the power to unilaterally unleash a nuclear fusillade, the experts cautioned against legislative alterations that would broaden nuclear command authority to lower echelons.
“I think if we were to change the decisionmaking process in some way to — because of a distrust of this president, I think that would be an unfortunate precedent,” testified Brian McKeon, an undersecretary of defense under former US president Barack Obama.
One issue under debate was the concept of imminent threat, when the president believes a nation poses a sufficient immediate danger for the US to order a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
The three experts agreed there was no strict definition of “imminent,” suggesting that a missile on a North Korean launchpad might qualify, but that other scenarios might be less clear.
Robert Kehler, who headed US Strategic Command from 2011 to 2013, cited to a basic military precept: “The military is obligated to follow legal orders, but is not obligated to follow illegal orders.”
What constitutes a legal order? Kehler said the military principles of “necessity” and “proportionality” also apply to decisions about nuclear weapons.
However, when asked what he would do if he determined that a presidential nuclear order was illegal, Kehler hesitated about such a hypothetical.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “The human factor kicks in.”
In such a situation, the president could replace the commander in question or even the secretary of defense, McKeon said.
“But you’d have a real constitutional crisis on your hands,” McKeon said.
The discomfort among some Republican senators was visible.
“Our adversaries are watching,” Senator Marco Rubio said, warning against steps that raise any doubts about US presidential authority in a conflict.
“One of the things that voters think about [in US presidential elections] is whether or not they want to trust him with this capability,” Rubio said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not