WHAT’S THE STORY?

HIS gold apartment and model wife might be indicators of wealth, but Donald Trump’s ultimate status symbol is actually a bulky briefcase. Known as “the football”, it gives him the ability to initiate Armageddon whether he’s at home, on the golf course, or in a foreign hotel room.

THE FOOTBALL AND THE BISCUIT

TO launch nuclear weapons from Washington, Trump would retreat to the White House Situation Room to give orders. Elsewhere he’d use the “the football”.

Weighing 45lbs and carried by a military aide, this metal briefcase enclosed in black leather is always within reach of the President when he’s on the move and acts as a mobile command post.

It contains a menu of nuclear strike options, a list of secure locations in America where he might shelter, instructions on using the Emergency Alert System, authentication codes and communications equipment.

He also carries “the biscuit”

on his person, a credit-card sized piece of plastic bearing nuclear codes. Known as the Gold Codes, these allow him to verify his identity to launch officers.

Although the President should never be separated from his football and biscuit, such incidents have occurred. When Ronald Reagan was rushed to hospital after his attempted assassination in 1981, leaving his football behind, medics cut his suit open and the biscuit was discarded on the floor. It has also been said that Bill Clinton misplaced the biscuit for weeks, and that Jimmy Carter sent his off to the dry cleaners.

GIVING THE ORDER

HAVING selected his preferred holocaust from the menu, Trump would communicate the relevant orders to launch officers.

With land-based Minuteman missiles, two officers would confirm both the President’s identity and the authenticity of the code he’d issued. They would then each retrieve a key, insert them into the control panel, and turn them simultaneously. The two keyholes are sufficiently far apart so that one launch officer can’t proceed on his own. A two-man rule applies.

On submarines, the commanding officer and executive officer would agree the codes are valid then retrieve their launch keys from safes which are locked until the order comes and issues the combination.

Everything is designed to act swiftly as there may be only minutes left before incoming missiles hobble any chance of retaliation.

WHY IS IT DONE THIS WAY?

AMERICA’S nuclear weapons are ready to launch within minutes. Arguably, there is no need for this constant state of readiness. It was required during the Cold War but the Soviet threat no longer exists, and the prospect of a surprise nuclear attack is surely minimal. Yet the weapons remain on hair-trigger alert.

This leaves little time for careful thought. During the Cold War, America thought it was under attack on several occasions, not due to enemy action, but because of errors, with early warning systems misinterpreting the rising moon, research rockets, and sunlight on clouds as incoming missile salvos.

In one such incident in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was woken in the middle of the night and told nuclear missiles were approaching.

As he waited for confirmation, and readied himself to make an awful call to the President, he decided not to wake his wife as he thought it kinder that she die in her sleep. The phone rang again: It had all been a false alarm caused by a malfunctioning 46-cent computer chip.

With America’s nuclear weapons locked into a system designed for speed, there is little time for a considered response but there’s been enough, so far, for luck.

ANY CHECKS ON TRUMP’S POWER?

THERE is nothing to stop Trump from launching nuclear weapons because the system assumes the Commander In Chief will be rational and open to advice from experts.

Consider the hours of secret tape recordings made by JFK as he and his advisers agonised over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The transcripts show a man desperate to explore every angle and weigh up contradictory advice, eventually arriving at the precise solution.

Would this happen with Trump, a bullish man who has placed friends and relatives around him and who has already shown disdain for expertise?

There is a weak nod to power sharing in that Trump needs his Secretary of Defence to verify any order to launch, but should the Secretary disagree the President can simply sack him.

But there may be more subtle ways of controlling a nuclear Trump. There have been worries in the past about a President’s mental stability, namely in the closing days of Nixon’s presidency when he was drinking heavily and seemed depressed. His secretary of defence, James Schlesinger, quietly made it known to military chiefs that any nuclear orders from Nixon should be passed to him before any action was taken. There remain two more extreme options. One is mutiny.

Daniel Ford’s book The Button says when the order is given, “launch crews could decide not to turn their keys and theoretically you could move that behaviour up the chain of command”.

There is also the ability of the Vice-President, together with a majority of the Cabinet or Congress, to use Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to declare the President unfit.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

CONCERNED Democrats have introduced legislation to curb Trump’s nuclear ability.

The Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017 would prevent him issuing a first strike without first securing a Declaration of war from Congress.

It probably won’t become law but the attempt is a worthy gesture, highlighting the ridiculous situation of permitting an impulsive man who has demonstrated staggering ignorance of nuclear weapons policy to put our civilisation at risk.