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U.S. NEWS Monday 20 noveMber 2017
Trump era sparks new debate about nuclear war authority

istration, said a president’s new secretary of defense rity Forum in Canada that
first recourse would be to or get a new commander.” he would refuse a launch
tell the defense secretary The implication is that one order from a president if he
to order the reluctant com- way or another, the com- believed that order to be il-
mander to execute the mander in chief would not legal.
launch order. be thwarted. Hyten also predicted that
“And then, if the com- The current head of Strate- the president would then
mander still resisted,” gic Command, Gen. John ask him for options that Hy-
McKeon said as rubbed Hyten, said Saturday at the ten judged to be legal.q
his chin, “you either get a Halifax International Secu-
Gen. Robert Kehler, USAF (Ret.)
former Commander United
States Strategic Command,
testifies before Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearing
on North Korea on Capitol Hill
in Washington.
(AP Photo/Pablo Monsivais)
By ROBERT BURNS
AP National Security Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s
hard to overstate how thor-
oughly the U.S. military has
prepared for doomsday —
the day America gets into
a nuclear shooting war.
No detail seems to have
been overlooked.
There’s even a designated
“safe escape” door at the
nuclear-warfighting head-
quarters near Omaha,
Nebraska, through which
the four-star commander
would rush to a getaway
plane moments before the
first bomb hit.
Procedures are in place
for ensuring U.S. nuclear
weapons are ready for a
presidential launch order
in response to — or in an-
ticipation of — a nuclear
attack by North Korea or
anyone else.
There are backup proce-
dures and backups for the
backups.
And yet fundamental as-
pects of this nightmare se-
quence remain a mystery.
For example, what would
happen if an American
president ordered a nu-
clear strike, for whatever
reason, and the four-star
general at Strategic Com-
mand balked or refused,
believing it to be illegal?
Robert Kehler, a retired
general who once led that
command, was asked this
at a congressional hearing
last week.
His response: “You’d be in
a very interesting constitu-
tional situation.”
By interesting, he seemed
to mean puzzling.
Brian McKeon, a senior pol-
icy adviser in the Pentagon
during the Obama admin-