The head of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee is dissatisfied with current legal checks on the President’s authority to launch nuclear weapons, he said in a hearing Wednesday, during which he otherwise offered no other indication that he was eager to disrupt current nuclear weapons policy.
The President’s sole authority to launch U.S. nuclear weapons is a question “that at least bears discussion,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), chair of the subcommittee, said during the hearing. King billed the hearing as a chance for the public to hear “diverse set of viewpoints” about nuclear deterrence.
As U.S. law stands today, the only thing that could prevent someone other than the President from stopping an order to launch nuclear weapons is if the president’s order to launch nuclear weapons is illegal, King said.
“That doesn’t satisfy me,” said King, who wondered whether it might be better to designate “some group of people,” including the President, to decide whether the U.S. should ever launch nuclear weapons.
“We’re talking about the fate of civilization,” King said during the evening hearing.
The full Armed Services Committee might not mark up its 2022 National Defense Authorization Act until July, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the Committee chair, said in late April.
On Wednesday, weeks before the start of the Joie Biden administration’s nuclear posture review and weeks after the release of the administration’s first budget request, which mostly stays the course on the ongoing 30-year nuclear-modernization program, only six of the 12 members of the strategic forces subcommittee showed up for Wednesday evening’s hearing.
Among those that did, some professed to be unmoved by witness arguments for minimal deterrence, such as eliminating the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet or halting the National Nuclear Security Administration’s program to built two new factories for plutonium pits.
“I find the argument and notion [of getting rid of ICBMs] almost irrationally irresponsible, but give it your best shot,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told Tom Collina, director of the disarmament advocating Plowshares Fund and one of four witnesses at the hearing. “It’s highly unlikely you’re going to convince me.”
Collina did give it a shot, repeating oft-used arguments that nuclear-tipped ICBMs are vulnerable to surprise attacks, making them a reliable way to strike an equally armed adversary first, but unreliable for convincing such an adversary not to strike the U.S.
There was some bipartisan resistance to Collina’s argument from Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a first-termer who, before his astronaut days, was a naval aviator.
“I, like Sen. Sullivan, am unconvinced,” Kelly said.
