What would happen if President Trump pressed the red button?

For the sake of historical accuracy, Eric Bahrt’s reference to the Cuban missile crisis needs to be corrected. 

In that crisis President Kennedy was just as threatening towards Russia as his gung-ho air-force chief, General Curtis Lemay, except his style was more polished. He put Russia on the radar for a US attack, while LeMay recommended an immediate attack on “the Russians in Cuba”. On the brink of declaring war, Kennedy ordered his navy to blockade Cuba and called on Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to immediately dismantle the Russian nuclear missile site there. 

US missile sites were put on alert to strike Russia. The world held its breath for 13 days in November 1962 before Khrushchev finally relented in return for Kennedy’s promise not to invade Cuba. As a result, Kennedy’s miserable failure with the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was recommended by his military hawks, was outweighed by this success of statesmanship.

Today we can take comfort from suggestions given by retired General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, that the US military would likely refuse to follow certain orders given by Donald Trump if he were elected to the White House. “I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” said Hayden. 

Unlike their counterparts in other countries, US military officers do not swear an oath of obedience to the commander-in-chief. Instead they take a pledge to “support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. It makes no mention of the president. That is what I call “checks and balances” – when no one has absolute power.

Relax, Eric. There’s fun to be had now that the unexpected has become the expected!

Songdej Praditsmanont