In Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, “Peril,” there’s a haunting account of how Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and chief military adviser to the president, fearful that Donald Trump was unstable, took steps to limit his ability to launch a military strike or deploy nuclear weapons that could ignite a politically-driven war.
The book also details Milley’s two phone calls made to reassure Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army that the U.S. had no intention of launching a strike against China. The first call was placed on Oct. 30, 2020, after Milley reviewed intelligence suggesting China believed the U.S. was preparing for an attack. The second call was placed after the Jan. 6th pro-Trump insurrection at the Capitol that attempted to overturn the results of the U.S. presidential election.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Tom Collina, director of policy with the Ploughshares Fund who talks about the harrowing events recounted in Woodward and Costa’s new book, Peril and the urgent need to implement safeguards to prevent future presidents from having the unilateral decision-making power to launch a nuclear holocaust.
Tom Collina and former Defense Secretary William Parry are co-authors of the book, “The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump.”
TOM COLLINA: This story starts with a policy that most Americans don’t even know about, which is that the president of the United States has sole authority to launch U.S. nuclear weapons. All of them at any time, with no oversight from anyone else in the government. When people are asked, Do you think this is true? Most people say no. They think that the secretary of defense has to sign off or the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or Congress. But in fact it’s solely up to the president. All the president has to do is pick up the phone or pick up a communications device and this thing called the nuclear football that presidents carry around or have with them by them 24/7, 365 (days of the year), and call into the war room of the Pentagon, give a code identifying themselves and then give the order to launch.
It’s that simple. So when you combine that ultimate Godlike power with a president who’s become unhinged, like President Trump clearly was during and after the Capitol Hill riot, you’ve got a tremendously dangerous situation. And the first person to, you know, raise the alarm on this was the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi — who over two days, I guess this was around Jan. 8 — called the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Milley. And she asked him, you know, do you have safeguards to prevent an unstable president from starting nuclear war? And at that time, the account from Gen. Milley was, “Don’t worry, we’ve got this covered.”
And what we’re finding out now, as we get more detail from the Bob Woodward and Costa book is, we get more of the story, which is that Gen. Milley, the way he provided that supposed safeguard was to bring all the members of the war room essentially together and say, “If you get a call from the president to start nuclear war, you got to check with me first. I’m in the loop, make sure you bring me in the loop.”
And this was, I guess, his effort to be able to reassure Nancy Pelosi that he had safeguards or checks on what President Trump might do. The irony here is that Gen. Milley had no such authority. So here you have Gen. Milley inserting himself into the process and saying, “This shall not happen unless I approve it.”
He was completely breaking the rules. And I would argue for all the right reasons, right? He was in an impossible situation. He was breaking the rules because our policy makes no sense. It makes no sense to let an unhinged President Trump, decide the fate of the world. But that’s the debate we’re having right now. Was it moral? Was it right for the general to step in like this? I think it was. But ultimately the bigger question is, does this policy need to change? And I think, yes, it definitely does need to change.
SCOTT HARRIS: Tom, the experience of the Trump presidency and the events that occurred after Jan. 6, certainly bring home to the American people that repairing a dangerously broken system regarding the president’s sole power to launch a nuclear war needs repairing — needs urgent repairing. Review for our listeners, what President Joe Biden can do, what Congress can do right now to start that process.
TOM COLLINA: Sure. So, there’s really two aspects to this. One is the president’s sole authority, and the other is the sole authority to launch first. So you can take two approaches to that. One is you can say there’s no more sole authority for first use. The president has to consult with Congress, and there is a bill in Congress called the Markey-Lieu bill. President Biden could just declare this tomorrow. He could say that I’m not going to use nuclear weapons first, unless Congress or a subset of Congress agrees with that position. And there would no longer be sole authority for first use. There would now be shared authority for first use between the executive and Congress.
The other approach that Biden could take is just to declare “no first use.” That the United States will never launch nuclear weapons first. That would still allow retaliation, right? Because “second use” is still allowed, but no president would ever be able to launch nuclear weapons unless the United States had already been attacked and both of those rules provide much more clarity to people like Gen. Milley, than our current situation.
Remember poor Gen. Milley, he’s floundering in this situation where President Trump can do whatever he wants and Milley thinks he’s unhinged. And so the general is trying to find roundabout ways, break the system to try to make sure that the president can’t do something that’s going to end the world.
The military can’t be the decider on this. It has to be a civilian decision. So what the military needs is rules to know whether an order is legal or illegal. But, right now, what we’ve left them is this gray area where they have to insert themselves. And, it’s becoming a situation where the military is deciding, in this case, you know, not to launch or to try to stop a launch. That is not the military’s role. So we need to fix these rules, bring it back into civilian control and make it very clear to military officials what’s legal, what’s not legal.
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