By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Presidents Shouldn’t Make the Biggest Decision by Themselves

In the decades since their invention, nuclear weapons have become much more lethal. Blasts once measured in kilotons are now measured in megatons, and warheads once dropped by slow-flying bombers are now delivered by fast-flying and deadly-accurate ballistic missiles. Over the same period, the number of nuclear-armed states has grown from one to nine. Roughly half of today’s global nuclear inventory lies in the hands of Russia, China, and North Korea, all of which represent threats to the United States. Nuclear risks have multiplied, and the scenarios for the use of such weapons have grown ever more complex.

Yet today, as in past decades, U.S. presidents have the sole authority to make the most consequential decision the country may ever face. Not only might any president be overwhelmed by the gravity of a nuclear threat (or the appearance of one); but even when facing no imminent threat, a president of unreliable temperament might choose to unilaterally launch a nuclear attack with huge and deadly consequences. Without consulting any other official, presidents can order a nuclear strike against another country, even if that country has not threatened or attacked the United States. In reality, the only checks on this singular power of the president are the military officers charged with transmitting and executing the president’s order. They could decide to disobey the command because it violates U.S. or international law. But it is hard to imagine an officer doing so. In a moment of acute crisis, the fate of the world could rest solely on the shoulders of the president. Expecting one fallible human being to bear the burden of such power and responsibility is dangerous and unnecessary.

With the growing possibility that a state or nonstate actor might actually use nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies, Washington must refresh the procedures through which the president can make the ultimate, fateful choice. In a fraught moment 62 years ago, President John F. Kennedy consulted with a body of senior officials during the Cuban missile crisis. Cooler heads prevailed and Kennedy averted nuclear war. As nuclear threats proliferate, the United States could reduce the risk of a catastrophic miscalculation if it required the president to consult, when possible, with a team of official advisors before sanctioning any use of nuclear weapons.

 

The Speed Fixation

For much of the last eight decades, the United States’ nuclear decision-making process has prioritized speed and efficiency above more considered calculation. The process has its origins in the 1960s and 1970s, when the Soviet Union developed increasingly lethal nuclear weapons that could be launched in a massive “bolt from the blue” attack: an assault as surprising as Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941 but far more devastating, in that the Soviet Union could target U.S. leaders, command and control centers, and a significant portion of the country’s nuclear arsenal and thereby make it impossible for Washington to retaliate against Moscow effectively. To deter such a Soviet attack, U.S. officials designed policies and procedures for nuclear use meant to ensure that if the Soviet Union were to strike first, the United States would still maintain an effective command and control network and have nuclear forces sufficient to launch retaliatory strikes of their own. Washington wanted Moscow to understand that it could not hit the United States with impunity. Speed was a top priority in contending with such a scenario: experts estimate that the president could have less than ten minutes of deliberation before having to order a nuclear response.

Washington’s process for authorizing the use of nuclear weapons is straightforward. Using the “nuclear football,” a briefcase that contains the United States’ atomic war plans and enables the president to communicate with the military, the president selects from several attack options developed in advance and issues a launch order to the Pentagon and the United States Strategic Command, the military body responsible for strategic nuclear deterrence. The order is then relayed to the nuclear forces via an Emergency Action Team at the Pentagon, where it is verified to ensure it originated with the president. The Pentagon then passes along the order in a short message, and the order is executed by Strategic Command. This process was devised to allow the president to retaliate against a surprise nuclear attack within minutes, but it can also be used to launch a nuclear first strike. In other words, the president could, without consulting any other human being, launch a nuclear weapon—with incalculable consequences for all of humanity.

Today, it is all too easy to imagine a crisis in which a president orders the use of nuclear weapons in the face of a perceived threat and explains the decision to Congress and the public only after the fact. Should Russia, for instance, hit Ukraine or a NATO ally that supports Ukraine with a nuclear weapon, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened he might be willing to do, such an attack could trigger a reflexive, immediate nuclear response from the U.S. president. So, too, could fabrications of warnings of a nuclear attack against the United States, spread through a cyber intrusion by state or non-state actors or even accidentally by artificial intelligence, trigger a nuclear response? No matter who occupies the Oval Office, the president could end up making a hasty decision without consultation, potentially leading to global catastrophe.

A White House military aide carries the nuclear football in Washington, March 2023

 

Cooler Heads

The complexity of nuclear threats demands a more rigorous process for pulling the nuclear trigger. Indeed, the existing process, designed in another era to deal with a very different threat posed solely by the Soviet Union, no longer fits the most likely escalatory scenarios today. Indeed, it only increases the chances of a mistaken or ill-considered use of nuclear weapons by a U.S. president. The decision-making process should require more systematic consultation, so that the president is not alone in wading through the many available options for nuclear use.

To be sure, the Constitution grants the president alone the authority to command forces and direct the conduct of military operations, and it is important that the president retain this authority under any reforms to update and strengthen the structure of nuclear decision-making. But no president should have to—or want to—make a unilateral decision to use nuclear weapons when there is sufficient time for consultation. Unfortunately, the current process gives the president exactly that dangerous authority.

The Cold War offers one useful example of presidential consultation during moments of potentially catastrophic escalation. In October 1962, Kennedy convened an Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or “ExComm,” a group of senior and former U.S. officials, to develop responses to the secret construction of missile sites in Cuba by the Soviet Union. Over days, the group helped Kennedy conclude that he should authorize an American blockade to prevent the shipment of Soviet nuclear missiles into Cuba, rather than a conventional military strike that could well have set off a nuclear war. That example provides a blueprint for a more effective process through which presidents would receive the thorough and timely advice they need to inform any order they issue to use a nuclear weapon when time allows it. Deliberation with a small and select group of experts and advisers would maximize opportunities for the development of alternatives to nuclear use.

To be sure, such a process would be impractical in the event of an imminent or ongoing nuclear attack on the United States. In that case, presidents must act as quickly as possible, even if that means not taking the time to speak with their advisers. In the case of a nuclear attack outside the United States, the president may have more time to consult with others. The president should also consult with advisers in the case of a limited nuclear explosion within the United States, or a nuclear attack on American forces abroad.

The consultations in the executive branch should include the vice president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, and the attorney general. The Speaker of the House and House minority leader, along with the Senate majority and minority leaders, would also be included so that senior elected representatives of Congress, endowed by the Constitution with the authority to declare war, could help inform the president’s decision-making. This would ensure appropriate consideration of strategic, military, diplomatic, and legal issues, both domestic and international.

In addition, at the beginning of a new administration, a president should convene a small group of senior officials, chaired by the secretary of defense, along with the secretary of state, the attorney general, and the director of national intelligence, to review and, if necessary, update the pre-planned targeting options that would be provided to the president in the event of a nuclear crisis. This review would ensure their consistency with existing civilian and military nuclear use guidance.

 

Handing Over New Reins

New, clear guardrails for presidential nuclear authority have been proposed before. Nuclear threat experts Sam Nunn and Ernest Moniz have previously suggested a similar system of consultation and targeting review. But no administration has put it in place. President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek re-election gives him a unique opportunity to pass on a reformed nuclear decision-making process to his successor. Using a presidential decision directive, an executive order setting national security policy, Biden could establish these new procedures while preserving the presidential authority to act unilaterally when time does not permit for consultation, thereby effectively enshrining an ExComm, an ad hoc body in Kennedy’s time, into the U.S. nuclear use protocols.

Biden has the authority to put these new guardrails in place by his successor’s Inauguration day in January 2025, marking the first time presidential guidance would be issued to update the process for nuclear use authority—a significant achievement. Of course, Biden’s successor could reverse this new directive and reinstate unconditional sole authority. But establishing a new protocol will set an important new precedent, and its dismantling would almost certainly ring alarm bells in Congress and among the public. No responsible commander-in-chief would dismantle a process for consultation with a small group of senior administration and elected officials when making the most consequential decision of that leader’s presidency, and potentially the country’s history. Indeed, action by a president to reinstate unconditional sole authority over nuclear decision-making could and should lead Congress to write such nuclear safeguards into law, with strong public support.

In 2003, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, reflecting on the enduring lessons of the Cuban missile crisis, warned that “the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.” “Is it right and proper,” he asked, “that today there are 7,500 strategic offensive nuclear warheads, of which 2,500 are on 15-minute alert, to be launched by the decision of one human being?” During the most harrowing nuclear crisis in history, Kennedy assembled the ExComm to try to mitigate the danger McNamara would later cite. Although the world looks much different now than it did during the Cold War, with new rivals and alliances and a more complex set of imperatives guiding geopolitics, it is no less dangerous. 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.

 

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