The President's Weapon

Why does the power to launch nuclear weapons rest with a single American?

- Tom Nichols

In the summer of 1974, Richard Nixon was under great strain and drinking too much. During a White House meeting with two members of Congress, he argued that impeaching a president because of “a little burglary” at the Democrats’ campaign headquarters was ridiculous. “I can go in my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead,” Nixon said, according to one congressman, Charles Rose of North Carolina.

The 37th president was likely trying to convey the immense burden of the presidency, not issue a direct threat, but he had already made perceived irrationality—his “madman theory”—part of U.S. foreign policy. He had deployed B-52s armed with nuclear bombs over the Arctic to spook the Soviets. He had urged Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, to “think big” by considering nuclear targets in Vietnam. Then, as his presidency disintegrated, Nixon sank into an angry paranoia. Yet until the moment he resigned, nuclear “command and control”—the complex but delicate system that allows a president to launch weapons that could wipe out cities and kill billions of people—remained in Nixon's restless hands alone, just as it had for his four post-World War II predecessors, and would for his successors.

For 80 years, the president of the United States has remained the sole authority who can order the use of American nuclear weapons. If the commander in chief wishes to launch a sudden, unprovoked strike, or escalate a conventional conflict, or retaliate against a single nuclear aggression with all-out nuclear war, the choice is his and his alone. The order cannot be countermanded by anyone in the government or the military. His power is so absolute that nuclear arms for decades have been referred to in the defense community as “the president's weapon.”