Amid fears that war with North Korea may erupt, a congressional hearing was held on Tuesday, for the first time after forty years, to discuss the authority President Donald Trump has to launch a nuclear strike.
The hearing was held by Senator Bob Corker, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, just as Trump is concluding his 12-day visit to Asia where North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were in the focus. Both Democrats and Republicans raised questions regarding the president’s authority to launch nuclear weapons and terminate international agreements.
In the course of the past few months, Trump and Kim Jong-un have exchanged insults on several occasions, the last one on Sunday when the president called the North Korean leader “short and fat.” Trump has also threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on the isolated regime and pointed out that the U.S. has “military solutions” should Pyongyang decide to threaten them, raising concerns among lawmakers.
Last month, Corker said Trump was leading the U.S. “on the path to WWIII,” even though he pointed out that the hearing was not intended to criticize the president, Reuters reports. During the hearing some Democrats clearly expressed their concerns about Trump’s remarks and rhetoric.
“We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests,” said Senator Chris Murphy.
However, according to retired General Robert Kehler noted that the military can decline to follow orders they believe are illegal, even though it remained unclear how that process would work.
“The U.S. military doesn’t blindly follow orders,” Kehler said.
Some senators asked that legislation was passed to limit presidential nuclear authority, but Corker refused the idea for the time being.
“I do not see a legislative solution today, but that doesn’t mean that over the course of the next several months one might develop,” he said.
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