HE HAS BECOME the latest in a long line of generals to be lionized by the anti-Trump #resistance. Speaking over the weekend, Gen. John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, which is responsible for nuclear deterrence, revealed what he would do if he were ordered to carry out a nuclear strike.
“I provide advice to the president,” Hyten told an audience at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada. “He’ll tell me what to do, and if it’s illegal, guess what’s going to happen? I’m gonna say, ‘Mr. President, that’s illegal.’” Hyten continued: “Guess what he’s going to do? He’s going to say, ‘What would be legal?’ And we’ll come up with options of a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that’s the way it works. It’s not that complicated.”
At first glance, Hyten’s statement may sound comforting to those who stay awake at night, worrying about Trump’s small hands hovering over the nuclear button. Last week, for the first time for more than 40 years, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the president’s authority to launch nuclear weapons. “We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile … that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said at the hearing.
Senior members of Trump’s inner circle seem to share those concerns. In October, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported that “one former official even speculated that [chief of staff John] Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. ‘Would they tackle him?’ the person said.”
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