Quote:
Originally Posted by CroFlames
I think extremism is on the rise in the USA because of the post truth era where anything the leader wants you to believe you believe. This particular leader is so ignorant to history and obviously diplomacy, he may in fact be interested in superpower on superpower warfare. He might launch a nuke on N Korea if Kim says Trump has a little dick. This of course leads to everything you described.
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Please don't make me defend Trump, I'm not sure I'd be good at it. However my sense is that he isn't interested in Superpower on Superpower war at all. He's interesting in pushing bluffs, but I doubt that he'd pull the trigger on it, and we've kind of seen that so far with him. Also in terms of nuclear launch processes, it would be difficult for him to launch any kind of attack without justification in terms of an attack on the US or one of its allies using a WMD.
If you look at US Nuclear Launch procedures, its important to note a few things.
The first step of a launch order is the confirmation that the US itself is under attack. In order to convene a conference the threat has to be confirmed as a medium to high confidence of threat. At that point the conference is called with the President and his advisors.
Its important to note that the US does not have a "No first use" policy when it comes to Nuclear Weapons.
The Conference includes the Sec Defense, Sec State, NSA, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Commander of Strategic Forces (Omaha).
The Commander will brief the President and his staff on options and consequences. This briefing is kept to 30 seconds under an imminent attack, but can go longer for first use.
The clock does start ticking here, under a attack threat, the President has 6 minutes to consider. Under a per-emptive launch, there is no clock.
The President will then decide on his options and SIOP if necessary and issue the order, at that point he has to authenticate using his pres elected Gold Code.
At that point the launch message is formated and sent out to the various commands, this launch order goes to the Silo/battlefield/submarine commanders. The message contains preprogrammed codes and it becomes a key turning operation as the launch computers already have their firing requirements and targets which are fed to the missiles.
This whole episode is supposed to take less then two minutes.
There is certainly need to reform the nuclear launch process ie have to have a declaration of war from Congress.
There is also a study of adding the Sec Def and Head of the Joint Chiefs to force a vote on any launch.
Right now while there's not a check or balance, Trump just can't push a button and send missiles into the air. If the order is un lawful or unrequired the process can be stopped. IE the Commander of Strategic Forces (Omaha) could refuse the order to launch and the process would stop right there. Any of his cabinet members ie Sec Def, Joint Chiefs, could declare the order to be illegal, and at that point the process would have to stop and there would be a Congressional investigation.