Experts Warn It Would Take More Than One
General to Thwart "Illegal" Nuclear Strike
While a top U.S.
nuclear military commander made global headlines after he
stated plainly on Saturday that he would resist any order from President Donald
Trump that he deemed "illegal," including an unlawful directive to
carry out a nuclear strike, experts warn that individual objections such as
that could be overcome by a commander-in-chief determined to launch an attack.
Speaking at a security
convention in Nova Scotia, Canada, Gen. John Hyten, head of U.S. Strategic
Command, said that his role in the event of the president ordering a nuclear
strike would be to offer both strategic and legal guidance, but that he would
not betray the laws of war simply because Trump ordered it.
"I provide advice
to the President," Hyten answered when asked how he would respond to a
nuclear attack being ordered.
"He'll tell me
what to do, and if it's illegal, guess what's going to happen? I'm gonna say,
'Mr. President, that's illegal.' Guess what he's going to do? He's going to
say, 'What would be legal?' And we'll come up with options of a mix of
capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that's the way it
works. It's not that complicated."
But is it that simple?
As reporting by the Associated Press points out on Sunday, a simple refusal by even a top commander like Hyten might not be enough to stop a commander-in-chief bent on having such an attack carried out:
Brian McKeon, a senior
policy adviser in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, said
a president's first recourse would be to tell the defense secretary to order
the reluctant commander to execute the launch order.
"And then, if the
commander still resisted," McKeon said as rubbed his chin, "you
either get a new secretary of defense or get a new commander." The
implication is that one way or another, the commander in chief would not be
thwarted.
Hyten's remarks follow
a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last
week in which the president's authority to launch nuclear weapons was
held on Capitol Hill.
As Common
Dreams reported,
"Trump's behavior throughout his campaign and presidency has heightened
concerns about the threat of nuclear annihilation and has, for months, provoked global
demands that the U.S. Congress strip Trump of his nuclear authority."
While Hyten's comments
on Saturday likely brought some relief to those concerned about Trump's finger
on the nuclear button, Bruce Blair, a former nuclear missile launch officer and
co-founder of the Global Zero group that advocates eliminating nuclear weapons,
said there's an another important caveat that shouldn't be missed: The
Strategic Command chief, Hyten in this case, could be bypassed by the president.
A president can
transmit his nuclear attack order directly to a Pentagon war room, Blair told the AP.
And from there the news outlet reports, the order "would go to the men and
women who would turn the launch keys."