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Donald Trump returned to the White House medicated and declared his illness a gift from God.
It has given life to an old debate.
Many military experts now want to stop the president’s right to order a nuclear strike alone, writes the New York Times.
The current order has existed in the United States since after World War II. Only Congress, the Senate, and the House of Representatives can decide to start a war. But when the weapons became so fast and could travel so far, it was decided that the president would have his own power to respond to a nuclear attack.
The firing codes of the American nuclear arsenal are hidden in black bags that always follow the president wherever in the world he is. One of the so-called “nuclear soccer balls” is stored stationary in the White House.
The scheme is controversial and has long been criticized by various military experts and groups who want to reduce the nuclear threat in the world, writes the New York Times.
Photo: Photo: AP
The shooting codes are kept hidden in these bags, the “nuclear balls”, which always follow the president.
Concerns in military circles
The debate gained renewed momentum when Donald Trump was taken to the hospital with the coronavirus and treated with heavy drugs. Unlike when Ronald Reagan underwent surgery in 1985 and when George W Bush underwent medical procedures in 2002 and 2007, Trump chose not to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution and to transfer responsibility to his vice president.
This raised concern in military circles both inside and outside of government, writes the New York Times.
Many have reacted to the fact that Donald Trump was treated with Dexamethasone, a drug from the group of corticosteroids, which is used for seriously ill COVID-19 patients and can cause serious side effects. According to doctors, the medicine can give a feeling of euphoria and invincibility.
“A nuclear crisis can occur at any time. If such a crisis occurs when the president’s ability to make decisions is jeopardized, the outcome could be catastrophic,” writes Tom Z Collina, policy director for the Plowshares Fund, an interest group working against nuclear threats around the world.
May have been affected
Last week, Trump was treated with Dexamethasone after returning to the White House: he conducted lengthy phone interviews, persistently tweeted about everything and recorded videos in which he repeatedly downplayed the danger of the coronavirus, calling the disease a gift from God, attacking politicians. . opponents and first stopped a financial aid package to say the next day that he wanted an even bigger package than the Democrats.
Photo: Alex Brandon / AP TT
Donald Trump in the White House, just after returning from his hospital stay.
This has led doctors, and even employees on their own staff, to suspect that their behavior was influenced by the medication.
“The thing here is that dexamethasone can make you paranoid and confused,” says Vipin Narang, a professor at the Massachusetts Institution of Technology who has researched the command order around nuclear weapons.
– We don’t know how much he got. And if he gives an order in the middle of the night and there is no one to stop him, we depend on his military aide not passing the order or on the duty officer in the central military command to stop him, he says.
Johan Styrud, chief physician at Danderyd Hospital, told Aftonbladet last week about treatment with the steroid cortisone:
– Gives you a bit of speed, you could say.
I spoke to the portraits
The current system stipulates that the military only has to confirm that the order actually comes from the president. Otherwise, don’t get in the way.
Presidential office officials with whom the New York Times spoke did not comment on whether special measures were taken regarding Donald Trump’s treatment of the virus. But several anonymously point to the stories surrounding Richard Nixon’s last days in the White House in 1974. Then he must have been quite drunk and walked around talking about the portraits on the walls.
The staff must have feared he was mentally unstable and went so far that then-Defense Minister James R. Schlesinger ordered the military to ignore White House orders on nuclear weapons if they didn’t go through him or the secretary of state first. Kissinger. However, no one has officially confirmed this information.
At a security conference in Munich this year, high-level military experts felt the difficulties of making quick decisions regarding responding to a possible attack. The volunteers had a 15-minute window to make a decision, while a jumble of data surrounding the possible attack arrived. Some data indicated that it was a false alarm, but it was uncertain.
“The last finger I want on the nuclear button belongs to a president of medicine,” Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project in Washington, tells the New York Times.
Other nuclear weapons countries have different regulations on how and to what extent they can be ordered. Russia requires two out of three designated military commanders to sign its codes before a response to a military attack can take place.
This weekend, Trump declared himself fully cured of the coronavirus. On Monday, his doctor confirmed for the first time that the president has tested negative in recent days.
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