Nuclear Decisionmaking

Apparently, there is a British nuclear-armed submarine at sea, at this moment, with instructions from Prime Minister Gordon Brown locked in a safe, telling the commander whether or not to use the on-board weapons to retaliate of England is destroyed in a devastating attack.

It seems like a deeply improbable scenario. But it's true, and Ron Rosenbaum lays out the dilemmas of nuclear-decision making in a haunting Slate piece on the Letter of Last Resort today. I found this fascinating for a number of reasons. First, the scenario itself harkens back to an age of nuclear anxiety that I, as a member of Generation Y, find incomprehensible. Second, it's so deeply personal: only the sub's commander has access to the letter, he can only read it if he's informed British leadership has been decapitated, and he's not supposed to tell anyone what it says if he ever has occasion to read it. When British PMs leave office, their Letters of Last Resort are destroyed unread.

But what does this all have to do with our government, you ask? And rightly so. It turns out Rosenbaum interviewed some of the American submariners who were responsible for firing nuclear missiles if it came to retaliation back in the late 1970s. I'm not going to quote that portion of the piece so you'll have to actually go read it. But suffice to say, it's an amazing illustration of how the biggest policy decisions come down to the single person who is actually pulling the trigger.