Democrats in the House and Senate on Tuesday again introduced legislation that would require the president to obtain a congressional declaration of war before launching a nuclear first strike.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) pushed the same proposal in 2016, but their bills never made it past the committee level. The lawmakers said this week the election of Donald Trump as president made passage of the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017 even more critical.
“It is a frightening reality that the U.S. now has a Commander-in-Chief who has demonstrated ignorance of the nuclear triad, stated his desire to be ‘unpredictable’ with nuclear weapons, and as President-elect was making sweeping statements about U.S. nuclear policy over Twitter,” Lieu said in a prepared statement. “Congress must act to preserve global stability by restricting the circumstances under which the U.S. would be the first nation to use a nuclear weapon.”
The House and Senate bills use the same language, under which “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.” The legislation defines first-use nuclear strike as “an attack using nuclear weapons against an enemy that is conducted without the President determining that the enemy has first launched a nuclear strike against the United States or an ally of the United States.”
Then-President Barack Obama late last year was said to be considering a “no first strike” rule for the nuclear deterrent, but reportedly backed off in the face of opposition from senior members of his Cabinet.
Lieu’s bill was directed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Eight Democratic House members are co-sponsoring the legislation.
Markey’s legislation is in the hands of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It currently has no co-sponsors.
Representatives for both lawmakers did not respond to requests for comment about the bills’ likelihood of becoming law under a GOP-controlled Congress and Republican president.
In an interview with NS&D Monitor, former National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks this week played down the likelihood of the Trump administration accepting such a restriction.
“The last administration took a serious look and rejected it, and they rejected it because: A, it’s unverifiable, and B, it’s not very meaningful because if a president ever has to face the question of using nuclear weapons, which is probably the most fateful decision in human history, he or she is not going to say, well four years ago I had my U.N. ambassador make a speech saying that we were going to do no-first-use,” Brooks said.
