Pre-delegation authority is the practice by United States presidents to empower military commanders to initiate nuclear attacks in various circumstances. This authority is typically kept classified, so the American public has always been told that the president has the sole and exclusive authority to start nuclear war. It is not publicly known to what extent, if at all, the current U.S. president has pre-delegated their nuclear authority. [1]
The practice began in the 1950s under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and would continue through at least the administration of Jimmy Carter. [2] [3] It was only officially revealed to the public in 1998 when his instructions enacting the practice were declassified. [2] Similar practices exist in other nuclear states, such as the Soviet Union and now Russia's Dead Hand system.
In his 2017 book, The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg described "the most compelling and legitimate purpose" of pre-delegation authority to be "to assure that the Soviets (or now, Russians) could not paralyze our retaliatory forces by a 'decapitating' attack on Washington, D.C., or by attacking the president wherever he might be." [4]
While the United States has a formal line of succession to the president, given that many of them would also be in Washington D.C., it is possible that many of them would also die in a decapitating attack, leaving it unclear who the new president was. [5] In 1981, Brent Scowcroft pointed out that aside from the Secretaries of Defense and State, the potential successors were "almost completely unacquainted" with nuclear command and control. [5] Having pre-delegated to explicit people would allow for them to be specially protected and given nuclear codes and plans ahead of time. [6]
Academic Peter Feaver testified to Congress in 2017 that pre-delegation authority "may thwart an enemy's first-strike planning, for example, but, it would raise the risk that a weapon might be used in an unauthorized fashion or by someone confused in the fog of battle." [7]
In the 1940s under President Truman, the "United States Policy on Atomic Warfare" (NSC 30) concluded that, "The decision as to the employment of atomic weapons in the event of war is to be made by the Chief Executive when he considers such decision to be required." [8] [9] That policy would be overruled in 1956 by a new "Basic National Security Policy" (NSC 5602/1), which introduced the idea of pre-delegation authority. [8] It stated, "Nuclear weapons will be used in general war and in military operations short of general war as authorized by the President. Such authorization as may be given in advance will be determined by the President." [10]
President Eisenhower issued secret pre-delegation instructions in 1957 in a memo titled "Authorization for the Expenditure of Nuclear Weapons", which allowed some commanders to use nuclear weapons in specific circumstances if he could not be reached. [8] [11] For example, this meant Admiral Harry D. Felt, commander in chief of Pacific Command (CINCPAC), had such authority for some part of every day as communications were regularly out between CINCPAC headquarters in Hawaii and Washington, D.C. [12] Felt further delegated this authority to the next level of command (typically a two-star rank) under similar conditions, which included ships and bases in the West Pacific that also regularly had communications outages with Hawaii. [12] [13]
The instructions were drafted by the Defense and State Departments, but based on declassified memos, the National Security Archive described Eisenhower as playing a "central role in the review process" to avoid "reckless or accidental use of nuclear weapons". [11] After taking office, President Kennedy declined to override Eisenhower's instructions, leaving them in place during the Cuban Missile Crisis. [11] [14] In 1964, President Johnson approved redrafted instructions that were "basically the same as those approved by President Eisenhower". [15]
Starting in 1965, authority was delegated to the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) "only under severe restrictions and specific conditions of attack". [16] In 1976 Congressional testimony, retired Vice Admiral Gerald E. Miller explained the rationale for this delegation: [17]
Because of the aspects of our early nuclear capabilities and our great concern for the Soviet capabilities, we built warning systems, which have already been mentioned, such as [the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System]. We were concerned about our ability to respond. We did not have as good warning systems then as good as we have now. There was concern about being able to respond rapidly enough, and the authority was delegated.
In October 1968, Johnson approved changes to a plan known as "Furtherance", which had previously authorized automatic full nuclear attacks against both the Soviet Union and China in the event an attack left the president dead or unavailable, regardless of whether the attack used conventional weapons or who it was perpetrated by. [18] The new plan directed commanders to "avoid a nuclear holocaust" in favor of a "limited response against the appropriate country". [19]
Nuclear security expert Bruce G. Blair said that around 1993, President Clinton and his defense secretary, William J. Perry, "rolled back" pre-delegation authority. [13] However in 1998, The Washington Post reported that sources told them "some elements of pre-delegation still exist". [2]
Specific details about pre-delegation authority are largely kept classified, though the public occasionally received hints about pre-delegation. When asked about the topic in 1985 by The New Yorker, Assistant Defense Secretary Donald Latham said, "There are contingency plans. I just really can't discuss them," while Desmond Ball described pre-delegation authority as "one of the most closely kept secrets." [20] Ellsberg however considered it paradoxical that it was kept so secret, explaining that it is more important for deterrence that the enemy knows about pre-delegation so they would believed that a decapitating attack would fail. [4]
Since the end of the Cold War, some of those policies have been made public. Following Freedom of Information Act requests from the National Security Archive, the government partially declassified some memos from the Eisenhower and Johnson administrations in 1998, officially confirming pre-delegation authority publicly for the first time. [2] More documents were released in 2001. [11]
Congress has also conducted public oversight hearings on the topic. In March 1976, the then-House International Relations Committee conducted a hearing titled "First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Preserving Responsible Control" in which Miller testified about pre-delegation to NORAD. [16] [21] Miller also testified that he was "unable to confirm the allegations" that Eisenhower had pre-delegated his authority, stating that he had "serious doubt that such delegations were made". [17]
Forty years later in 2017, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing following President Trump's threats to use nuclear weapons. [21]
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis, was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis lasted from 16 to 28 October 1962. The confrontation is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.
The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), formally known as the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground. It is also abbreviated as the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (NTBT), though the latter may also refer to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which succeeded the PTBT for ratifying parties.
Continuity of Operations (COOP) is a United States federal government initiative, required by U.S. Presidential Policy Directive 40 (PPD-40), to ensure that agencies are able to continue performance of essential functions under a broad range of circumstances. PPD-40 specifies certain requirements for continuity plan development, including the requirement that all federal executive branch departments and agencies develop an integrated, overlapping continuity capability, that supports the eight National Essential Functions (NEFs) described in the document.
Nuclear blackmail is a form of nuclear strategy in which one of states uses the threat of use of nuclear weapons to force an adversary to perform some action or make some concessions. It is a type of extortion that is related to brinkmanship.
Daniel Ellsberg was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study, they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that Lyndon B. Johnson's administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress."
The defense readiness condition (DEFCON) is an alert state used by the United States Armed Forces. For security reasons, the US military does not announce a DEFCON level to the public.
Charles Erwin Wilson was an American engineer and businessman who served as United States Secretary of Defense from 1953 to 1957 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Known as "Engine Charlie", he was previously the president and chief executive officer of General Motors. In the wake of the Korean War, he cut the defense budget significantly.
The Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) was the United States' general plan for nuclear war from 1961 to 2003. The SIOP gave the President of the United States a range of targeting options, and described launch procedures and target sets against which nuclear weapons would be launched. The plan integrated the capabilities of the nuclear triad of strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), and sea-based submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The SIOP was a highly classified document, and was one of the most secret and sensitive issues in U.S. national security policy.
The nuclear football is a briefcase, the contents of which are to be used by the president of the United States to communicate and authorize a nuclear attack while away from fixed command centers, such as the White House Situation Room or the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Functioning as a mobile hub in the strategic defense system of the United States, the football is carried by a military aide when the President is traveling.
Able Archer 83 was a military exercise conducted by NATO that took place in November 1983. It simulated a period of heightened nuclear tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, leading to concerns that it could have been mistaken for a real attack by the Soviet Union. The exercise is considered by some to be one of the closest moments the world came to nuclear war during the Cold War. It was the annual Able Archer exercise conducted in November 1983. The purpose of the exercise, like previous years, was to simulate a period of conflict escalation, culminating in the US military attaining a simulated DEFCON 1 coordinated nuclear attack. The five-day exercise, which involved NATO commands throughout Western Europe, was coordinated from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) headquarters in Casteau, Belgium.
The United States was the first country to manufacture nuclear weapons and is the only country to have used them in combat, with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Before and during the Cold War, it conducted 1,054 nuclear tests, and tested many long-range nuclear weapons delivery systems.
The United States government classification system is established under Executive Order 13526, the latest in a long series of executive orders on the topic of classified information beginning in 1951. Issued by President Barack Obama in 2009, Executive Order 13526 replaced earlier executive orders on the topic and modified the regulations codified to 32 C.F.R. 2001. It lays out the system of classification, declassification, and handling of national security information generated by the U.S. government and its employees and contractors, as well as information received from other governments.
Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following his landslide victory over Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential election. Four years later, in the 1956 presidential election, he defeated Stevenson again, to win re-election in a larger landslide. Eisenhower was limited to two terms and was succeeded by Democrat John F. Kennedy, who won the 1960 presidential election.
A nuclear briefcase is a specially outfitted briefcase used to authorize the use of nuclear weapons and is usually kept near the leader of a nuclear weapons state at all times.
A strategic nuclear weapon (SNW) refers to a nuclear weapon that is designed to be used on targets often in settled territory far from the battlefield as part of a strategic plan, such as military bases, military command centers, arms industries, transportation, economic, and energy infrastructure, and countervalue targets such areas such as cities and towns. It is in contrast to a tactical nuclear weapon, which is designed for use in battle as part of an attack with and often near friendly conventional forces, possibly on contested friendly territory.
The Gold Code is the launch code for nuclear weapons provided to the President of the United States in their role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In conjunction with the nuclear football, the Gold Codes allow the president to authorize a nuclear attack. Gold Codes, as well as a separate nuclear football, are also assigned to the vice president in case the president is incapacitated or otherwise unable to discharge the duties of office pursuant to the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Gold Codes are arranged in a column and printed on a plastic card nicknamed "the biscuit".
Proud Prophet was a war game played by the United States that began on June 20, 1983, and was designed by Thomas Schelling. The simulation was played in real time during the Cold War. Proud Prophet was essentially played to test out various proposals and strategies, in response to the Soviet Union's military buildup. There were advocates for a number of strategies, which varied from demonstration nuclear attacks, limited nuclear war, and decapitation attacks. It was not possible for the United States to pursue each of these strategies. President Ronald Reagan and his administration were faced with the dilemma of figuring out how the United States should respond to the Soviet Union's large nuclear programs, while finding which strategy would be most effective.
A nuclear close call is an incident that might have led to at least one unintended nuclear detonation or explosion, but did not. These incidents typically involve a perceived imminent threat to a nuclear-armed country which could lead to retaliatory strikes against the perceived aggressor. The damage caused by international nuclear exchange is not necessarily limited to the participating countries, as the hypothesized rapid climate change associated with even small-scale regional nuclear war could threaten food production worldwide—a scenario known as nuclear famine. There have also been a number of accidents involving nuclear weapons, such as crashes of nuclear armed aircraft.
The United States foreign policy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, from 1953 to 1961, focused on the Cold War with the Soviet Union and its satellites. The United States built up a stockpile of nuclear weapons and nuclear delivery systems to deter military threats and save money while cutting back on expensive Army combat units. A major uprising broke out in Hungary in 1956; the Eisenhower administration did not become directly involved, but condemned the military invasion by the Soviet Union. Eisenhower sought to reach a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, but following the 1960 U-2 incident the Kremlin canceled a scheduled summit in Paris.