Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

More Rules for Launching Nukes Won't Make U.S. Safer

It's not just about Trump: Decades of worry about a president's ability to strike alone haven't returned a better solution.

September 15, 2017 at 3:40 PM UTC

By Stephen L. Carter

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

Power in the president's hands.
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“We have taken every step man can devise,” said President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, “to insure that neither a madman nor a malfunction could trigger nuclear war.” Apparently lots of people are starting to doubt that this is true. The latest entrant is an op-ed article this week in the New York Times. The authors, Jeffrey Bader and Jonathan D. Pollack, call for legislation requiring that “a small group of officials” give unanimous consent before the president can use nuclear weapons, at least if the U.S. is not itself under attack.

Reading their thoughtful argument made me feel old. Some 30 years ago, the Federation of American Scientists offered a nearly identical proposal, differing only on the membership of the committee. I have taught about this and related questions for decades in my course on the ethics of war, and written about it more than once.1505484402819