While I was working in West Germany during the old Cold War, I
became a member of a two-person nuclear weapons control team. My fingers never
got anywhere near a launch button or a warhead; I was merely part of the
chain-of-custody structure – a small redundant cog in a very big machine.
During our orientation briefings, an Army Lieutenant Colonel related an anecdote about how the concept of two-person nuclear weapons control came into being. The story is likely apocryphal, but it's amusing in a macabre sort of a way, and it’s revelatory about the dangers of human fallibility.
It seems that when John F. Kennedy visited a US Army base in West Germany in 1963, he was shown a truck-mounted Honest John nuclear-armed missile.
"Who’s in charge of this thing?" Kennedy is supposed to have
asked.
"I am, sir," replied an Army officer.
"How does it work?" asked the President.
"It’s simple," the officer said. "I just insert the firing
key, turn it, and off it goes."
"Where’s the key?" Kennedy asked, his eyes growing wide.
"I’ve got it right here in my pocket!" said the officer. He
proudly showed the key to the President, or so the story goes, and the rest is
history.
The point of course is that we’re foolish if we ever let anything of importance rely on a single point of human failure. In the case of nuclear weapons, we’ve developed safeguards so that no single person can cause them to be used – with one critical exception.
Imagine the leader of a nuclear-armed nation. The leader is beginning to behave erratically as he loses his grip on power. World events are not going his way, and he is increasingly agitated. He becomes desperate, and he threatens to do what only he is authorized to do: Order a nuclear attack on his enemies. The chief of his armed forces becomes alarmed. He calls his counterpart in a rival nuclear-armed nation and assures him that although his boss may be unstable, no attack is imminent. Despite the rants of his superior, the general insists that he will not allow anything catastrophic to happen. He hopes that his counterpart believes him.
The general in this case was Mark Milley, and his boss was of
course Donald Trump. The date was October 30, 2020, four days before the U.S.
presidential election. Milley called his Chinese counterpart General Li
Zuocheng, concerned that false information about a surprise US attack was
making its way to China. Milley had to repeat his assurances to General Li
after the events of January 6, 2021. Only Milley knows what he would have done
if Trump had ordered an attack, nuclear or otherwise; He nevertheless came
under fire for his perceived breach of the proper chain of command – a chain
that ended with a single weak link named Donald Trump.
As the horrible events in Ukraine unfold, the world is now on edge because of another potentially unstable head of a nuclear state. We fear that a Dr. Strangelove moment
may be upon us, and that Vladimir Putin is morphing into a modern-day amalgam
of Premier Kissov and General Jack Ripper. We hear the rants of an increasingly
desperate dictator, and we fear that he will lash out at us like a cornered rat – a nuclear-armed rat. Putin has been caught by surprise
at how the world has turned against him and his brutal viciousness, and there
are no assurances that he won’t use any means at his disposal as he attempts to
achieve his objectives. We can only hope that there is a General Milley on his
staff, but so far, no phone calls have been forthcoming.
If Planet Earth manages to get past this moment of nuclear tension, as we have narrowly done so many times in the past, perhaps we should rethink the strategies that we employ to "defend" ourselves. Perhaps it is no longer viable for a single individual, even a head of state, to be allowed to order the use of nuclear weapons.
How would we ever realistically implement such a constraint? In the United States, only the President can authorize the use of nuclear weapons, but other officials are required to verify those orders before the weapons are released. In theory, anyone in that chain who determines that the President's orders are unlawful can refuse to comply with them, but the President is free to circumvent anyone who gets in the way. The 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution allows the President's authority to be suspended if he or she "is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his (or her) office," but doing so requires the cooperation of the Vice President and the majority of the President's Cabinet.
The 25th Amendment was never envisioned as a nuclear safeguard, and it's unclear if any of the USA's foes would view it as such in a time of crisis. But what if the United States required two people to authorize the use of atomic weapons? To order a nuclear strike, the President must issue a set of codes that are only available to him or her. What if a second set of codes was also required? If General Milley had been in possession of such a set when he called General Li, perhaps his words of reassurance would have carried greater weight and lessened the chance of accidental conflict.
Would such a scheme be of any use in countries like Russia, China, or North Korea, whose leaders are surrounded by sycophants? Probably not, unless perhaps the person in possession of the second set of codes was vetted by the international community. To do that, we'd have to rely on the old Russian "Trust, but verify" proverb that Ronald Reagan so often quoted to Mikhail Gorbachev. Doing so would require resolve, diligence, and perseverance. It would require us to band together and isolate nations that refused to comply with the rules for membership in the nuclear club. It would not be easy, and it might not succeed. But if the world keeps tolerating the leaders that it’s been tolerating, we may find that we have no other choice than to try.
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