[purple-again]

A good read if you are interested in the topic. I do take exception with the constant tonal use of absolutes which seem to be trying to lead the reader to a false conclusion based on that false fear.

If the president (Biden or Trump) ordered a first strike nuke against Toronto or London there is a 0% chance it would happen. I personally doubt that an order against Moscow or Pyongyang would be followed either, but I wouldn’t argue with someone who wanted to take a position that those first strike orders would be followed.

My point is just that there is obvious a lot more...”human nuance” in the situation that the author is describing.

[Daniel_sk]

Yes. This is not an automated process, the president can't just hit a button to launch. While the generals have to obey the rules - they still can just say "no" if there is no logical explanation for the strike. Adding more safeguards could slow down the response in case of an actual attack and could do more harm than good. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42065714

[munificent]

> Adding more safeguards could slow down the response in case of an actual attack and could do more harm than good.

Retaliating doesn't actually do any good. It increases the body count on the other side, but does nothing to help those in the US about to be atomized. It's not like the missiles will collide in mid-air.

What matters is the believed threat of retaliation because that may prevent an attack in the first place. The optimal system in terms of human life and safety is:

1. All foreign governments 100% believe that the US has complete capability to retaliate with devastating force at a moment's notice and will do so with zero hesitation.

2. But the US actually has no such capability so that an accidental first strike on a false alarm is impossible.

The tension between those two is the hard part. :)

[DennisP]

International law is one consideration but under US law, the generals are not allowed to refuse a launch order. Possibly they would anyway, but it's a poorly designed system that in some circumstances relies on people stepping outside the system in order to prevent WWIII.

Retaliation is another matter, but we at least need more safeguards against a president launching first. A good argument can be made that we shouldn't allow first strikes at all.

[willcipriano]

> International law is one consideration but under US law, the generals are not allowed to refuse a launch order.

That is not my understanding from talking with people in the army. What I understand is that anyone in the armed forced is not only allowed, but required, to refuse a unlawful order given by anyone, even the president. Executing on a unlawful order is a crime and you can end up court marshalled or even executed if the outcome is bad enough. The Nuremberg defense ("I was just following orders") does not fly in the US military.

[chihuahua]

I wonder how someone who receives an order is expected to determine if it's lawful or not, especially within 60 seconds? Doesn't that require a court of law to decide?

[willcipriano]

I asked a similar question, my understanding is it's a matter of degrees. If you follow a unlawful order and say file paperwork the wrong way that probably won't result in a court marshal, if you burn down a village in a friendly country you most certainly would.

That said Congress is supposed to declare war so most of the wars we have been fighting for the past two decades are likely unlawful. I doubt you would be successful refusing to execute a drone strike on that basis. However if the president called up drunk one night and ordered your to bomb London, I suspect you'd be safe in that refusal.

[nabla9]

They are obligated to refuse illegal order.

For a use of nuclear force to be legal, it must satisfy customary requirements of necessity, distinction, proportionality, and avoidance of unnecessary suffering.

[modzu]

and independent, critical thinking is exactly what the military trains for

[AnimalMuppet]

I presume that was sarcasm, but it has some truth to it. Yes, the military trains for obedience. It also trains for independent thought. Your comms can be compromised, meaning you could be receiving information and orders from a hostile party. Or they could be completely cut off, and you could be receiving no orders, meaning you have to figure out what to do on your own. Or you could have a window of opportunity that lies outside the scope of your orders, and it could be gone by the time you get permission or approval. Or...

So, yes, the military does train for a degree of independent, critical thinking.

[jld]

The people receiving the orders are trained to understand that they do not/will not have full situational awareness. The president issues the orders and they carry them out.

The presidential football is basically a menu of strike options that are ready to execute. To launch a strike all the president needs to do is call the number in the book, authenticate himself using the a two letter challenge code, and tell them which strike from the menu to order. Targeting is preprogrammed and designed to eliminate any delay or nuance in the process.

The US has spent billions (trillions?) of dollars on its nuclear strike capabilities and the systems that order its use. To presume that these systems will fail precisely when they are called upon seems short sighted.

[anewaccount2021]

Speaking to people who have worked in Titan II silos (admittedly, long ago in the 70s), the opposite is true. They were conditioned to believe if they received a launch order, the US was already a cinder. The person I spoke to said he would "absolutely" fire if he had received an order.

[Denvercoder9]

The President doesn't directly speak to those in the silos, there's people in between.

[anewaccount2021]

Obviously - the point being, this command chain is optimized and conditioned for compliance.

[i_haz_rabies]

Why fire? If America is already gone, why retaliate? Revenge? What is there to gain? Retaliation would just make things that much more difficult for the rest of humanity, assuming the first strike didn't already make the earth uninhabitable...

[Jtsummers]

The purpose of a retaliatory posture is the foundation of MAD. If the posture, instead, is: We'll just rollover and die, then (the theory goes) there's reduced reason for others to avoid a first strike.

[i_haz_rabies]

Yeah, I understand the reasoning of MAD, but on like a thinking individual level... when you get the order and are under the impression that this is a second strike, why hit the button? MAD clearly didn't work at that point, so why fire? On the off chance that it was a small first strike and this is a limited second strike? I, at least, would rather run the risk of upsetting the doctrine than run the risk of destroying all of humanity.

[chihuahua]

Perhaps there are 2 kinds of people: those who think the way you're describing, and those who would hit the button to retaliate. I wonder if the people who end up sitting in the missile silo are selected for the job by asking them how they would respond.

[jki275]

They are absolutely selected for that.

[Scarblac]

Did you by any chance read the _Three Body Problem_ novels? It is partly about this problem, but I won't describe the details because of spoilers. Highly recommended.

[jjk166]

Contrary to popular belief, in the event of nuclear war we wouldn't all suddenly be vaporized. Especially today when the number of nuclear weapons is severely limited and there are credible missile defenses, in a first strike only a few major cities and military installations are going to be targeted. It's more important to hit DC 10 times to make sure some of them actually get through than it is to destroy, for example, Albuquerque. While you might seriously be looking at casualty numbers comparable to the whole of WW2 in a matter of hours, the vast majority of both populations would still be alive and relatively unscathed. If the other side still has their military capabilities while we do not, those survivors would be at their mercy. This is to say nothing of allied nations which may not have been targeted in the nuclear exchange but rely on our military for protection. Nuclear exchange is unfortunately merely the first part of WW3.

[anewaccount2021]

If someone in Russia has decided my family can be incinerated, I don't see why the favor can't be returned. I mean, if we had a mindset of "one human family", nuclear weapons wouldn't even exist.

[iso1631]

There are American citizens in Russia, you would be choosing to kill Americans for petty reasons.

[rhino369]

Revenge is probably reason enough.

But even a full Russian strike probably wouldn't 100% destroy the United States (and a full Chinese strike probably wouldn't even kill half of us unless society totally collapsed afterwards).

[dragonwriter]

> I do take exception with the constant tonal use of absolutes which seem to be trying to lead the reader to a false conclusion based on that false fear.

I don’t think that’s the purpose. It’s describing features of the protocol, which are the defined rules. Yes, humans deciding not to follow the rules can result in different results, but when we are discussing what the rules for use of nuclear weapons use ought to be, you probably don’t want to avoid considering improvements on the basis that that status quo is acceptable because, in the event that the rules currently in place would result in an outcome viewed as undesirable by certain key actors, there are points in the process where they would be able and likely to execute an unconstitutional coup d’état.

[roywiggins]

The entire system is designed to eliminate human nuance once the order is given. Exactly how successful it is is impossible to say, but it's designed to make carrying out the order both fast and straightforward.

The only tricky bit is if the President wanted to execute a nuclear plan that hadn't been devised yet. But if there's an existing one (attacking NK, Russia, Iran) then ordering a first strike is really straightforward with an absolute minimum of people in a position to refuse.

[hchz]

This article doesn't address important differences in the scenario in which a launch order is given out-of-the-blue, and when a launch order is issued following certain events.

[drtillberg]

I wouldn't count on military commanders employing "human nuance" within 30 seconds of receiving a direct presidential order. On the contrary, it's pretty amazing that with 2, 3, 4 or more nations on a nuclear hair trigger for multiple decades that the systems of deterrence and avoidance have so far been successful.

[Jtsummers]

The military drills into its officers and enlisted personnel the fact that they not only can disobey an unlawful order, it's their duty. A direct presidential order is not inherently lawful, and I'd expect most commanders (especially, in contrast to lower ranking enlisted or officers) to be able to respond appropriately.

[dragonwriter]

Even granting your position for the sake of argument, while the set of “orders to use nuclear weapons that the public would, in retrospect, consider catastrophically undesirable” and that of “orders to use nuclear weapons that would be clearly illegal” might overlap, the former is clearly not fully contained in the latter.

But I’m not sure we can take your position as true, anyway:

First, the historic lack of accountability for illegal Presidential orders or obedience to them both reduces the clarity (through absence of case examples) of the legality of such orders and reduces, due to incentive structures, the probability of any person choosing to be the one that takes a stand on the perceived illegality of such an order even were the legality relatively clear.

Also, given the War Powers Act, its not clear how any order to employ the military by the President (except domestically in a manner violating the Posse Comitatus Act) would be illegal under domestic law initially (which, for a nuclear attack, is all that is going to matter.) It might violate norms of international law like waging a war of aggression, but I think recent history shows that even if maybe you can trust the US military to resist some set of illegal orders, “orders to wage of war of aggression that is, nonetheless, authorized by US domestic law” is pretty clearly not within the scope of “illegal orders” for which that is true.

[jki275]

There's a bit of nuance to this.

An order is presumed to be lawful under military law. The burden of proving it unlawful rests on the person receiving the order. The default is to execute the orders given.

In the absence of some direct reason that it would be unlawful, a military person must carry out the order they are given.

Now of course, as you say, it is the duty of the one ordered to do something that is unlawful to refuse to carry out that order.

[dragonwriter]

Even granting your position, but while the set of “orders to use nuclear weapons that the public would, in retrospect, consider catastrophically undesirable” and that of “orders to use nuclear weapons that would be clearly illegal” do overlap, the former is not at all fully contained in the latter.

[duxup]

Word has it (supposedly sources inside the white house) due to Trump's habit of making impulsive statements / demands that sound like orders, the folks at the Pentagon put in place the expectation that orders went through some white house staff / filters / had to include written orders before they did anything extraordinary.

[neatze]

simple explanation; orders must be lawful.