The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

by Fred Kaplan

It was sobering to some senior officers who watched the hearing that not a single senator, not even any of the Republicans, bothered to dispute the claim, openly expressed by some of the Democrats, that President Trump was “unstable” or that his very presence in the Oval Office—his everyday access to the button—made nuclear war more possible. General Kehler, sitting as a witness, may have been most flustered of all. It was up to Congress to set the rules on the procedures and safeguards for the use of nuclear weapons. If the members of Congress thought the president was unfit to command, then they needed to take responsibility and change the procedures; they couldn’t just toss it in the laps of the military. Worse still would be if they raised provocative questions about the president’s fitness, then did nothing, leaving the generals with a chain of command that no one could trust. Yet, he thought to himself, that is what this committee was doing.