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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27147 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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Ostensibly POTUS has sole discretion in ordering a nuclear strike, but obviously that's not necessarily how things would go in a real situation. I don't know if the nuclear football relays an order directly to a silo or whatever or to the joint chiefs, but in any case someone who isn't trump needs to decide to push the button.

It goes right to the silos, and the people in the silos have been trained and selected specifically so that if they get the order to launch, they'll obey.

There's been several occasions in history where the guy in the silo did not push the button.

I don't believe that's accurate. There have been cases where officers on the ground have identified what they saw as false alarms, and chosen not to act in response. And there are cases where orders to ready nuclear weapons were issued in error and later retracted or aborted. My understanding is that in the latter case, the men in silos almost always obeyed their orders when they believed they were genuine.

POTUS lacks the legal discretion to start a war outside the structure of a previously congressionally approved war. Self defense side steps this, as does defense of Senate approved treaty allies. But he can't just order a nuke lobbed at any country at any time.

The War Powers Act and every war since Korea (if not even sooner) suggest otherwise. This is separate from the constitutionality of this

I don't think there's any reason to think that the president can't order a strike at any moment.

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