W.J. Hennigan writes:

Forty-five feet underground in a command center near Omaha, there’s an encrypted communications line that goes directly to the American president. To get to it, you need to pass through a guarded turnstile, two reinforced steel doors and a twisting hallway that leads to an ultra-secure room called The Battle Deck. It’s here, below the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command, or Stratcom, where military personnel stand by 24 hours a day awaiting a call the world hopes will never come: a direct order from their commander in chief — the president — to launch a nuclear attack.

The workstations in The Battle Deck are arranged stadium-style around 15 L.E.D. screens that glow with real-time information and maps. Hanging from the ceiling, a small digital display reads: Blue Impact Timer, Red Impact Timer and Safe Escape Timer, all set to 00:00:00. If a president were to order the launch of a nuclear weapon, the timers would start ticking, alerting everyone in the room to how long they have before American weapons hit the enemy, how long before the enemy’s weapons hit us and how long before the building and all the people in it are destroyed by the incoming nuclear-tipped missiles.

In the United States, it’s up to one person to decide whether the world becomes engulfed in nuclear war. Only the president has the authority to launch any of the roughly 3,700 nuclear weapons in the American stockpile, an arsenal capable of destroying all human life many times over. And that authority is absolute: No other person in the U.S. government serves as a check or balance once he or she decides to go nuclear. There is no requirement to consult Congress, to run the idea by the defense secretary or to ask the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his or her opinion.

That means the American president is charged with the physical safety not only of some 334 million Americans but also of millions of people in other countries who, out of necessity, must rely upon his or her prudence and steady nerves to make a decision that could alter the course of human history.

Of course, it is American voters alone who will decide in November whom they want to endow with that power. The two front-runners — President Biden, who is 81, and former President Donald Trump, who is 77 — would be the oldest candidates in the nation’s history to appear on their parties’ tickets. Over the course of the year, they will have to confront questions from voters about their mental acuity, competence and stamina to take on another four-year term.

These are vital attributes for a commander in chief in a crisis. Yet regardless of who wins this election, or the next one, the American president’s nuclear sole authority is a product of another era and must be revisited in our new nuclear age. [Continue reading…]