The air force general in charge of US Strategic Command, and therefore nuclear weaponry gave a talk recently in which he addressed the possible scenario in which a president orders a nuclear strike without good reason.
No, I don’t think Trump is at all likely to order a nuclear strike. He is demented with behavioral disturbance, but that illness does not seem to me to make it at all likely that he would do this particular highly irrational thing, order a nuclear strike. But, obviously that possibility is not unthinkable, or the commander of STRATCOM would not think it necessary to reassure the good people of the US and the world that he’s got that possibility covered, that he and his colleagues would deal with such an event by talking Trump down. The general says he would point out that an unprovoked nuclear attack would be illegal, and Trump and he would then discuss what alternative actions would be legal and reasonable responses to whatever caused Trump to order the use of nukes.
It's all well and good to talk about this scenario of Trump ordering a nuclear strike for no good reason, then letting sane people like the general talk him out of it after a calm, rational discussion. But for Trump to back down would be to admit that his original order was illegal or insane. That isn't going to happen. It's not clear that Trump actually is demented enough to order a nuclear strike, but if he is, which is the whole premise of this discussion, then clearly he will not accept that his order was insane.
What actually happens if an officer refuses a Trump order to drop a nuke, is that Trump relieves him or her of their duties, and keeps meeting refusal to obey the illegal order in the same way until he finds someone who will carry out his order. Unless stopped, it would end as the Saturday Night Massacre ended, in that eventually Trump would find his Bork.
The real dilemma an officer faces if ordered to nuke without cause, isn't whether or not to personally follow the illegal order, it's how aggressive he or she is legally required to be to prevent the illegal order from being carried out by anyone.If you refuse an order on the theory that it's illegal, your duty to stop the illegality/insanity only stops with your refusal if your superior withdraws the order, doesn't try to get anyone else to carry it out. But if the crime is still in progress because you've been relieved and your superior is trying to find someone who will follow the illegal order, you have a duty to stop the crime by relieving your superior of his command. If he then refuses to stand down, you have the duty to detain him.
I say"detain" rather than "arrest", because presumably the working theory will be that Trump is demented with behavioral disturbance, and ordering a nuclear strike creates an immediate danger to self and others. The result is the same as for a crime in progress, you summon whatever law enforcement has jurisdiction. The distinction only changes what sort of custody the cops deliver the offender to, jail vs psych ward.
Hopefully, they've already gamed this out at the WH, and Kelly and the Secret Service and the WH physician are all on board with the action plan to have Trump committed if he does order a nuclear strike. But hope is not a plan. A plan would be for the cabinet and Congress to do their duty and remove an obviously demented president from an office whose powers include the first use of nuclear weapons.
The failure of cabinet and Congress to do their duty means that any officers in this nightmare scenario in which they will be required to save the world from a nuclear war,will not be able to rely on cabinet and Congress doing their duty in the aftermath. Trump has to be kept from resuming his duties and powers in the aftermath, or not only will he seek vengeance on the officers who had him carted off to the psych ward, sticking their necks out to do the right thing and prevent nuclear war will have proven to have been pointless, because Trump will just make sure he has yes-men in place before he tries again.
This nightmare scenario, should it occur, has a fair probability of ending with a military takeover of the govt. The system will have failed to keep someone with dementia from the WH. It will then have failed to remove that person's finger from the nuclear button after his performance in office left no doubt that he is demented -- despite the 25th amendment making it the clear duty of the VP and cabinet and Congress to remove a demented president. The system will have displayed a critical, fatal error, an error that the "legitimate"actors refused to deal with, leaving it to the military to clean up after its fecklessness. Why should the officers left to clean up this mess defer -- at the risk of their own lives if the cabinet and Congress lets Trump resume his duties -- to the feckless idiots who created the mess?
We, quite rightly, do not believe in military takeovers of govts. But I think that reasonable preference might make us believe in a false stereotype of the military taking over only to satisfy a lust for power. Whether or not such unworthy and dangerous motives are at play, what we often see in reality is that the military only takes over because it has a reasonable belief that it is the only competent, functional institution left in a society that can run the govt. Think Pakistan recently,or Turkey a century ago, for examples. Think Caligula or Nero. In none of those cases was the need for the military to take over from a corrupt and incompetent civilian regime nearly so pressing as the need to prevent a nuclear war.
Let me repeat. I don’t think it at all likely that Trump will order a nuclear strike. If he did,I don’t think that would justify a military takeover of the US govt. But if this scenario did occur, I would have to admit that reasonable people might conclude that our preferences for civilian control of the military and democratic control of govt had been rather pointedly refuted.