Senate Foreign Relations Committee head Bob Corker (R-TN) has announced that the committee will be holding hearings next week discussing the question of presidential authority to unilaterally use nuclear weapons.
Though a lot of the reporting in painting this as Sen. Corker having problems with President Trump, the senator says that the hearings, the first since 1976 on the issue, are “long overdue.”
There isn’t a settled legal structure for how the US would use nuclear weapons as an aggressive act, which mostly rests on the historical assumption they’d be used purely in a retaliatory way. US officials, however, have long resisted ruling out a nuclear first-strike as an option.
This is becoming a growing issue because of the growing number of wars the US is finding itself involved in, and because of growing talk of a possible US attack on North Korea, a war which almost certainly would have a nuclear component.
This has already spawned legislation in both the House and Senate trying to bar the president from preemptive nuclear strikes without Congressional authorization. These bills, however, have struggled to get an airing from the leadership.
The Senate hearings could solve that, allowing many in the Foreign Relations Committee to air their thoughts on the possibility of any US president just deciding to nuke somebody some day. If there’s at least some consensus that this would be undesirable, it may force the leadership to allow specific bills to advance.
I’d say it’s good news that Congress may decide the president needs their authorization to launch nukes. It’s the next best thing to a ban on using nukes. By the time Congress gets around to agreeing about anything that doesn’t involve Israel or Congressional pay / benefit increases, the “war” will have long since been over.
That would make the US susceptible to a crippling first strike. I can just imagine the Senate convening while nukes are on the way, while they are on one of their many vacations.
If anyone believes that the Congressional leadership might constrain the President’s nuclear ambitions in any way or take the authority out of the Congressional leadership’s hands to control the narrative, think again. Just as they are loath to circumscribe their own powers, each and every one of them has this wet dream that they might someday be the one who wields the nuclear power from the White House (see Pence’s elevation to sainthood) so restricting the Emperor’s power is not likely to happen. Besides, Corker has a target on his back and is now a pariah, as far as the President and Senate Leadership is concerned.
I expect Trump to take this personally.
Your last line is the most insightful. Trump will very likely take this personally, and say some colorful things publicly. Even congress might get from this, after the appropriate public uproar, that Trump is seriously considering nuclear first strikes, little good reason required. Of course, no reason is a good one to start a nuclear war. It was a very dubious but defensible decision to nuke Japan when no other nation had nukes they might use in response, or with similar justifications. Now it’s far messier.