In his yearly New Year ’s Day savoir-faire , North Korean authoritarian Kim Jong Un warn the U.S. not to attack his country . " The entire mainland of the U.S. is within the chain of mountains of ournuclear weaponsand the atomic button is always on the desk of my office , " Kim articulate , according toNBC News .
Kim ’s utterance was just one of many in the North Korean regime’slong history of making bellicose scourge , thoughrecent North Korean advances in missile capabilitymay have made it seem a little more chilling . But what was even more startling was U.S. President Donald J. Trump ’s response the next Clarence Shepard Day Jr. . " Will someone from his eat and nutrient famish regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button , but it is a much larger & more knock-down one than his , and my Button works ! " hetweeted .
Trump ’s retort may have conduce some Americans to wonder whether he actually has a " Nuclear Button " on his desk in the Oval Office , similar to thebox with the ruby-red buttonthat he utilise to consecrate one of the legion Diet Cokes that he consumes each day . ( " Everyone does get a little nervous when I press that button , " Trump once joked to a visiting Financial Times journalist . )
But residuum promise that he does n’t actually have such a button , a fact concede by the White House wardrobe secretaire in a Jan. 3 press briefing :
newsperson : The President bang that there ’s no existent one atomic button . You ’re say it is actually bigger . But the realism is —
Ms. Sanders : The President is very well cognizant of how the mental process works and what the capacity of the United States is . And I can tell you that it ’s greater than that of North Korea .
For those who interest about Trump ’s temperament , his tweet probably impart back retentivity of the 2016 presidential cause , when aTV adfor his opponent Hillary Clinton sport a former atomic launching officer , who admonish that the scene of Trump controlling the nuclear armoury " scares me to end . "
Nevertheless , the process of set in motion anuclear attackisn’t something that can be initiated plainly with the tap of a finger . As the Union of Concerned Scientists’All Things atomic blogdetails , instead of a button on his desk , Trump has something called " the football . " It ’s a 45 - hammering ( 20 - kilogram ) pitch-black leather suitcase with an aluminum frame , carried by a military officer who perpetually accompanies him everywhere he goes . It contains a untroubled communications system and a manual of launch selection created by the Pentagon for the president to pick out from .
The Football
But in parliamentary law to use those option , the president would have to be able to evidence to the officers who actually would behave out the attacks that he ’s who he says he is . To do that , he would use special atomic codes , which are written on a 3 - by-5 - column inch ( 7.6 - centimeter - by-12.7 - centimeter ) circuit card that ’s call in " the cooky . "
Once the chairman validated himself and issued his purchase order , officers in the Pentagon’sNational Military Command Centerwould go sending out encrypted messages to the submarines , bomber and projectile installations that actually would have a bun in the oven out a nuclear attack . FromBloomberg.com , here ’s more particular on what steps would precede the presidential order , and what would befall afterward .
As Sanders explain in the pressing briefing , Trump would acknowledge all this . So the " push " is more of a metaphor for the president ’s power to establish a nuclear attempt , which is derived from hisconstitutional authority as commander - in - chief . The founding Church Father , of grade , never picture the development of weapons that could vote down million of people and perhaps pass over out human civilization altogether , and today , some wonder if it ’s a bad idea to give one person that much control condition over the world ’s fortune . U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu , D - Calif. , in reality introduced legislation in 2017 — just a few days after Trump ’s inauguration — that wouldprohibit a Chief Executive from initiating a nuclear first strikewithout first obtaining authorization from Congress , but the note never made it out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee .
A Short History of Nuclear Threats
So far , Harry Truman — who gave the go - ahead to drop atomic dud on Japan in 1945 — has been the only president to habituate that authority . Nuclear historianWilliam Burr , senior analyst for the National Security Archive at the George Washington University in Washington , D.C. , has documented the"nuclear taboo " — i.e. , the reality that going atomic would have terrible outcome — that has deterred presidents from Truman onward .
That ’s not to say that presidents have n’t threatened to apply nuclear weapons . " In former November 1950 , after the Taiwanese intervention in the Korean War , Truman — unknowingly , I believe — made what some saw as a nuclear threat , " Burr explain in an e-mail . Truman also rattled the nuclear saber by deploy bombers with atomic potentiality — but without existent nukes — to Great Britain and Guam , he says .
Burr also says that Truman ’s replacement , President Dwight Eisenhower , and his secretary of state , George Foster Dulles , " made explicit threats during the Taiwan Strait crises in 1955 and 1958 and during the 1959 Berlin crisis . On one occasion during the Vietnam War Secretary of Defense [ Robert ] McNamara made what amount to a nuclear threat . "
But presidents gradually stopped talking in populace about going nuclear . " As the U.S. lost nuclear superiority start in the 1960s and the atomic danger increase , presidents became more cautious , " Burr says . " Reagan made the famous statement during a wireless sound check about " bombing " Moscow , but that was a mistake ; he never made atomic threats because he realize the terrible peril of atomic war and was in person institutionalize to nuclear abolishment . " Since then , presidents have made less explicit threats against foe , using terms such as"all alternative are on the table,“he billet .
But even so , Trump ’s willingness to invoke the metaphorical atomic button — and to sport of its sizing — sets him apart . " No president has publically made nuclear threats to prick a strange policy opponent in the way that the current president has , " Burr order .
Hopefully , the confrontation between Trump and Kim will continue a war of Word , and not one involving thermonuclear payload .
