Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
Then educate me.
This says there are several steps that must be followed. Yes, nobody has the "legal" authority to stop him, but there are several people in between Trump and the actual triggering mechanism that fires the missile. They could simply refuse to carry out the order. As mentioned in the piece I link to, if we were launching 50 missiles, one person not going through with it wouldn't do much but stop one missile. However, if were were only firing a few, it could be effective.
My point in all of this is that Trump doesn't just have a switch he can flip and start firing missiles. If he wakes up one day pissed off at South Africa and wants to nuke them there are people who could physically stop him from doing it. They might be breaking the law to stop him but they could. |
I apologize for being curt with you, I was dealing with the anti-American and got carried away.
Your point is valid, trump isn't in the silo or on the submarine but you're discounting the extreme importance placed on following orders and chain of command within the MIlitary. The system is setup to preempt another attack from nuke country, so yes, he couldn't simply order a nuke attack on SA. He certainly could on NK or Russia. The military is based on following orders, not questioning them. That's a court marshall.