A Senate hearing will be held Tuesday on the president’s ability to authorize a nuclear strike as tensions continue to rise between the US and North Korea.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised the question in recent months following President Trump’s “fire and fury” threats against the Hermit Kingdom and other heated moments with Pyongyang.
Since there’s technically not a single person on planet earth who could stop Trump from ordering a preemptive strike on the North — not even Congress — many fear that a momentary lapse in judgement or knee-jerk reaction could lead to all-out nuclear war.
“This discussion is long overdue,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said in a statement announcing the hearing, which is being held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Military experts are expected to testify during the proceedings, including General C. Robert Kehler — former commander of the United States Strategic Command — and Brian McKeon, who served as acting undersecretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Defense.
Lawmakers will ultimately discuss whether they feel President Trump is actually fit to hold the nuclear “football” — a military term for the device that carries the missile launch codes — despite his numerous rants on Twitter and the escalating rhetoric in his speeches.
“Do not underestimate us. And do not try us,” Trump said last week during an address at South Korea’s National Assembly in Seoul.
“Every step you take down this dark path increases the peril you face,” he added. “America does not seek conflict or confrontation, but we will never run from it.”
Tuesday’s hearing will be the first time since 1976 that the Senate or House “have looked specifically at the authority and process for using US nuclear weapons,” Corker said.
According to the Associated Press, the president has the power to order a nuclear strike without having to seek approval from military leaders or lawmakers.
“He doesn’t have to check with anybody,” then-Vice President Dick Cheney explained in December 2008. “He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts.”
If President Trump did decide to launch an attack on North Korea, experts predict that he would first hold an emergency conference with the defense secretary, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and other advisers before being briefed by the commander of US Strategic Command.
He would then verify his authorization using the nuclear football and security codes that he was given after being sworn into office. The codes are unique to him and contained on a small card known as the biscuit, which is kept on the president at all times.
Once they’re punched in, experts say the order would then be sent to the Pentagon and Strategic Command for launch.
“The technology of the bomb itself does not compel this sort of arrangement,” said Alex Wellerstein, historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology and expert on presidential nuclear authority.
“This is a product of circumstances,” he told the AP. “I think the circumstances under which the system was created, and the world we now live in, are sufficiently different that we could, and perhaps should, contemplate revision of the system.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis played down his role in the nuclear launch decision-making on Monday, telling reporters: “I’m the president’s principal adviser on the use of force.”
Asked whether he was happy with the current system as it was — with President Trump having full, autonomous power — Mattis simply said, “I am.”
His reluctancy to speak on the matter shouldn’t come as a surprise, seeing how US officials have always remained tight-lipped about nuclear strategies in the past.
Tuesday’s hearing will mark the second time in two months that Sen. Corker has publicly questioned the president’s authority.
In October, he led a similar meeting about the use of military force, which included testimony from Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
“The president’s de facto ability to initiate conflict has grown in an age of advanced technology, including the use of unmanned drones, and war from a distance, where large numbers of boots on the ground are not necessary to conduct a very significant military engagement,” Corker told the foreign relations committee.
With Post wires