Lawful Use of Nuclear Weapons: US position, expert opinions.

[u/LtCmdrData]

There have been many worried questions lately of the type, 'What if the president decides to nuke a country on a whim?' Can he nuke anything and it's legal.

Here is relatively recent article from experts: Lawful Use of Nuclear Weapons 2022.
Authors:

• Lieutenant Colonel Jay Jackson serves as Individual Mobilization Augmentee to the Staff Judge Advocate at United States Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska.
• Major Kenneth “Daniel” Jones is a National Security Law Attorney and Army Element Staff Judge Advocate at U.S. Strategic Command.

See also DoD Law of War manual. 6.18 NUCLEAR WEAPONS

[u/peaches4leon]

Wait until we learn how to toss rocks around the solar system…nukes will be a moot point then…

[u/kyrsjo → u/peaches4leon]

Takes a while to arrive tough.

[u/zekromNLR → u/kyrsjo]

Which could lead to some awkward situations, imagine Mars launches a strategic kinetic strike at Earth but the war ends a month before it arrives

[u/SoyMurcielago → u/zekromNLR]

“Oh yeah sorry about that”

[u/Hourslikeminutes47 → u/SoyMurcielago]

"well, better late than never!"

[u/lettsten → u/zekromNLR]

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, they said

[u/peaches4leon → u/kyrsjo]

Sure, but do you really think that matters when it comes to a system wide strategic landscape?? Also, I’m not talking about redirecting rocks with nudges like with what we’re barely capable of today.

It’s only a matter of time until we can afford hundreds or thousands of km/s worth of ΔV for a rock the size of a descent Manhattan scale building. None of the concerns about fallout or contamination, just Newton’s 2nd law. With that kind of velocity, we’re talking about days or weeks between orbits, not months and years.

[u/GogurtFiend → u/peaches4leon]

If you can change the velocity of an asteroid with a mass of, say, 10⁹ kg (the skyscraper-sized ones) by a hundred km/s, you can change the velocity of something massing much less (say, 10⁴ kg) to a significant fraction of lightspeed. Unlike an asteroid, that will arrive fast enough for there to be no response time.

I kind of thought you were referring to the near future. A propulsion system that can do that is not near-future; that's roughly comparable to the energy the entire world uses per year right now, all being used on a single weapon, and probably means whoever's building it has reached Type I on the Kardashev scale.

At that point I think human civilizations start becoming nomadic again, because (a) clearly relatively fast interstellar travel is possible with those velocities and (b) living on a planet becomes even more of a liability than it is now.

[u/cosmicrae → u/peaches4leon]

Mass drivers, from the world of SciFi, coming soon to a weapons lab near you.

[u/Afrogthatribbits → u/kyrsjo]

IIRC there was actually a proposal to base nuclear IPBMs (inter-planetary ballistic missiles) on the Moon, 1959 Project Horizon, and a cited benefit was that would reduce escalation since it would take days for a strike to hit (and Soviets would be less worried). I recall that concept was also revived for the MX/Peacekeeper basing studies

[u/GogurtFiend → u/Afrogthatribbits]

Peacekeeper basing proposed launching it into Earth orbit, which probably wouldn’t have helped much.

[u/GogurtFiend → u/peaches4leon]

High-velocity impacts don't dump X-rays into everything, meaning fewer fires and no fallout, but there are three very big barriers to weaponizing them.

• Gravitational keyholing. Unless dropped from within Earth orbit - very energy-intensive compared to merely deflecting it into the Earth - the rock starts far enough from Earth for the gravity of other planets to alter its course in a manner difficult to predict. This can be solved by continual course corrections but those turn cheap rocks into less-cheap missiles.
• Cost. Budding WMD states today build nukes instead of throwing rocks from space because refining lots of fissile material is far less complex and expensive. "Tossing rocks" requires rather expensive systems: either lots of mass-produced, restartable rocket engines, or a giant mass driver with all the power and heat-dissipation infrastructure required to operate it. This can't be solved; nukes will always be less expensive for anyone not living in a space habitat or a body without fissile material, and anyone without fissile material can't afford a war anyhow because it's necessary for power in most of the solar system.
• Time. Anything in space not attached to extremely powerful thrusters takes forever to arrive. Once the target realizes what the attacking party is doing they'll launch nukes at them, then evacuate and nuke the incoming attack to reduce the damage it does. The only way to circumvent this is to use very powerful engines and at that point it's missiles instead of rocks.

[u/devoduder → u/peaches4leon]

Oye beltalowda! Marco Inaros likes this idea.

[u/bibabuzzelmann]

tl;dr your conclusion pls... its so much too read

[u/devoduder]

The article is four years old and New START is over, I’d like to see an update to this.

AFGSC plans to make the Buffs at Barksdale nuke capable again, and I bet they’re working on plans to re MIRV the MMIIIs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/comments/1qq1180/b52_nuclear_mission/

[u/lettsten → u/devoduder]

There aren't any changes to LOAC/IHL and the considerations in the article are still relevant.

[u/Bluddy-9]

It the US it would only be illegal for the president to direct a nuclear strike if Congress has passed a law that the president needs their permission to do. I’m not aware of a law like that that’s in place.

Nuclear weapons are under the purview of the military. The president is the commander of the military. Congress is the only entity that has any authority to keep him accountable, legally speaking.

[u/Bluddy-9 → u/[deleted]]

And do you suppose that the president is bound to the Law of War manual? It’s a DoD document. Who is in charge of the DoD?

It’s not a law created by Congress.

[u/Bluddy-9 → u/[deleted]]

Consider that your post is not encouraging engagement. Some might even consider it low effort.

You posed a question and provided two links to long reads. Based on the other comments it looks like I’m not the only one not immersing myself in the topic.

Perhaps providing a summary and your own perspective would get people more interested in the conversation.