An open letter to Congress and the American public:

At any moment, of any day or night, the USA has the ability to launch around 1000 nuclear strikes, each about ten to twenty times more powerful than the bomb that devastated Hiroshima. The time from order to launch is about five minutes for land-based missiles, fifteen for submarine launches. Launches are irrevocable: there is no recall or abort capacity, nor any effective defense. (1​, 2)

Legally, use of this arsenal is at the sole discretion of the president. No one else’s approval is needed and no one has veto power: launch orders are legally binding even if literally everyone else strenuously disagrees with them. This applies to first strikes as much as to retaliatory strikes. In short, as one expert has put it, “there is no [legal] wiggle room for evasion or defiance of the president’s orders. That’s true even if the national security adviser, the secretary of defense … and other top appointees and advisers disagree with the president’s decision. It does not matter whether the United States has already come under attack by nuclear or non-nuclear weapons. It does not even matter if the commander in chief simply orders the use of nuclear weapons on an ordinary day for reasons unknown to all but him or her. Under the president’s open-ended mandate to decide when the national interest is threatened, ordering up a nuclear strike is his or her prerogative, and obeying the order is incumbent upon the military servants of civilian authority”.  (3​, 4)

We submit that this is morally intolerable. Individuals should not have discretion over such massive power – literally over the fate of human civilization as a whole. The procedures governing use of the nuclear arsenal must be improved.

There are proposals for improving these procedures. One such proposal is H.R. 669, the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu (with 81 cosponsors). H.R. 669 amends our nuclear procedures in just one way: “the President may not use the Armed Forces of the United States to conduct a first-use nuclear strike unless such strike is conducted pursuant to a declaration of war by Congress that expressly authorizes such strike.” H.R. 669 has no effect on presidential powers after the USA has come under nuclear attack, nor on any aspect of presidential powers outside of nuclear weapons.  (5)

H.R. 669 is not the only proposal out there. (6​,7) Nevertheless, it is the alteration to the current system which has the most chance of enactment. And it is a genuine and significant improvement. We recognize that limiting presidential authority to launch nuclear first strikes has risks. But we submit that these risks are manageable, and are far less grave than those created by the current totally unregulated system.

We thus conclude that Congress must enact H.R. 669 (or something even stronger). If Congress does not act, the American people must demand that they do so. If we fail in our moral duty – if we passively let the current system stand, and there is a hasty or excessive presidential order to launch nuclear first strikes – we will all bear the guilt for having enabled it.

Fortunately, the president is unlikely to order nuclear first strikes anytime soon. However, there is a decent chance that at some point a rapid escalatory crisis will occur, making that prospect much more likely. When that happens, Congress and the public will be far more receptive to a law like H.R. 669. However, at that point it will be too late to bring it to their attention. We thus think there is great value in bringing attention to it now, in advance of such a crisis. Congress has the right, the ability, and the moral duty to limit presidential authority to launch nuclear first strikes. It is important for you to know that, and to inform others. At some point that information may be invaluable.