Trump’s exit is an opportunity to ditch the nuclear ‘football’

Among the most alarming episodes during Donald J. Trump’s tumultuous final weeks in the White House was an announcement by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, on 10 January: 

‘This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [General] Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.’

Almost half a century earlier, there had been a similar – though secret – alarm about another unstable president with his finger on the nuclear button. 

At the height of the Watergate Crisis in 1974, when president Richard Nixon, like Trump, was facing the threat of impeachment and (unlike Trump) was often drunk, defence secretary James Schlesinger secretly instructed the Pentagon that any nuclear strike ordered by Nixon must be personally approved by him. Chuck Hagel, who later served for two years as president Obama’s defense secretary, said recently: ‘I remember that episode very, very well.