Lawmakers show concern for
Nuclear Armageddon
Lawmakers
Introduce Bill Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons
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"Congress must act
to preserve global stability," said a congressman behind the bill.
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Lawmakers introduced a
bill in both houses of Congress Tuesday that would prevent the president from
launching a nuclear first strike without a congressional declaration of war. A
policy that was long debated — but never seriously pursued — during the Obama
administration has now become anything other than abstract after the election
of Donald Trump.
Sen. Edward Markey
(D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) introduced legislation meant to pry the nuclear football out of the president’s hands.
“Nuclear war poses the
gravest risk to human survival. Yet, President Trump has suggested that he
would consider launching nuclear attacks against terrorists,” Markey said in a
statement. “Unfortunately, by maintaining the option of using nuclear weapons
first in a conflict, U.S. policy provides him with that power. In a crisis with
another nuclear-armed country, this policy drastically increases the risk of
unintended nuclear escalation.”
Over the course of her
campaign against President Trump, Hillary Clinton repeatedly warned that “A man
you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” It
would seem Markey and Lieu agree.
Lieu, who has a paper sign reading, “Alternative Fact Free Zone” outside his office, took
aim at Trump’s ignorance. “It is a frightening reality that the U.S. now has a
Commander-in-Chief who has demonstrated ignorance of the nuclear triad, stated
his desire to be ‘unpredictable’ with nuclear weapons, and as President-elect
was making sweeping statements about U.S. nuclear policy over Twitter. Congress
must act to preserve global stability by restricting the circumstances under
which the U.S. would be the first nation to use a nuclear weapon.”
The bill is backed by
global disarmament groups and some former U.S. officials like William Perry,
former secretary of defense. But it’s still to be seen if the Republican
majority House or Senate would support a bill that could be seen to undermine a
Republican president, particularly given that some have already pushed to
authorize more presidential military force in the form of new AUMFs.
This isn’t the first
mention of such legislation — the idea of it has been mentioned on and off for
years, advocated by groups such as the Global Security Program at the Union of
Concerned Scientists. At a January event at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said he is “confident
we can deter and defend ourselves and our allies against non-nuclear threats
through other means,” adding that he “strongly believes” that “deterring and if
necessary retaliating against a nuclear attack should be the sole purpose for
the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”
But it’s no longer
academic. During the campaign, Trump made clear he had no idea what nuclear
weapons the United States has, but flippantly suggested using them on the
battlefield. He urged U.S. allies in Asia like Japan and South Korea to build
their own nukes, reversing decades of U.S. policy. In December, Trump declared,
“Let it be an arms race” with Russia. And while some read this as an
invitation for Russia to team up with the United States against emerging nuclear powers, there is little chance that
that could in turn lead to symmetrical nuclear disarmament, which Kremlin
spokesperson Dmitri Peskov has already dismissed as “totally unacceptable.”
As unacceptable, as
Markey and Lieu argued with their new legislation, as the sudden risk of
nuclear annihilation that has in recent months settled over the globe.
Photo
credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
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