Nuclear retaliation has on the order of minutes to respond before the launch sites are non-operational. As such, nuclear weapons launches are actually on something of a hair trigger, to the point where several famous incidents in the past related to artifacts on radar and others have nearly resulted in nuclear annihilation.
Case in point: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/the-administration/290410-the-need-to-reform-the-nuclear-weapons-launch-approval
To initiate a launch of weapons of mass destruction, it requires the approval of the National Command Authority (NCA). That’s an impressive sounding name, but the NCA consists of only two people: The President and his political appointee, the Secretary of Defense.
Congress can reject a President’s use of force, but only two months later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Command_Authority
While the President does have unilateral authority as commander-in-chief to order that nuclear weapons be used for any reason at any time, the actual procedures and technical systems in place for authorizing the execution of a launch order requires a secondary confirmation under a two-man rule, as the President's order is subject to secondary confirmation by the Secretary of Defense. If the Secretary of Defense does not concur, then the President may in his sole discretion fire the Secretary.
It's quite interesting how the American nuclear doctrine is different from ours.
In our doctrine, instead of relying on hair-trigger launching before enemy hit, it's assumed that such thing won't actually happen, due to various reasons including the unreliability of technical warning systems causing false alarms, so the number of nuclear assets left alive
after the enemy's massive first strike must therefore be enough to nuke the enemy back through their still-intact anti-missile defences. Hence, larger focus on more survivable nuclear delivery systems (like road-based launchers, strategic bombers, or submarines) and non-POTRF-based systems for transferring nuclear codes to anyone still alive.
Both, in the end, proably want good relations with Russia
That's the weirdest accusation I've seen of Hillary Clinton as of yet. Usually, people always say that she'll be too aggressive with Russia and start WW3, or that she'll at least be harder on Russia than Obama. Neither her supporters nor her detractors have entertained the idea of her being "buddy-buddy" with Russia.
Hell, that's probably the only real reason why I support her for POTUS - an unreliable "friend" like Trump is significantly more dangerous than a reliable enemy like Hillary. To say that she'll suddenly reverse her position of Russia, despite no indications to the fact, is... quite paranoid.
Yes. I mean, that's old stuff, but... the thing I'm saying that Hillary is exactly what you're saying - reliable. She isin't going to risk real confrontation with Russia because it would be retarded and might end really badly for both parties. While saying that she would be happy to sell rest of Ukraine/Poland to Putin is tinfoil, this is no way a good thing for Eastern Europe. Not to mention that most of what she's doing seems to be reffering to Syria while Ukraine gets at best mentions of "helping strenghtening Ukraine to defend itself". So, basically, she goes "we're not saying we won't help you but you're really on your own".
I'm pretty sure that the
perestroyka "reset" piece of bullshit was actually Obama's idea. Clinton's foreign policy is better known here for obliterating the shit out of Gaddafi due to legalese "no-fly zone" manipulation, and angering Russia a lot in the process.
Seriously, if you've tried to claim Clinton as being "friendly to Russia" in Russia itself, you'd get laughed at. She's been dubbed as a "warhawk" here ever since 2011.
@alway: Yeah, the way it's set up, nothing short of an all out mutiny would stop a presidents orders to launch a nuke, unless the president him/herself cancel the launch. Though this is an all out barrage scenario, may play out differently for dropping one or two bombs on a target.
If at this point the idea that all-out mutiny is in order in case of nuclear war is fucking required then I am worried about humanity. Even retaliation strikes should not be done by any sane person - the enemy already fucked himself by nuking half of the world and the point should be the survival of human race, not trying to get senseless venegance on the dudes from other side of the world. The idea of the stick should be there, but the actual stick should never be used unless in really special occurences (UFO invasion, Nazis from Earth core or something).
Such policy will, ironically enough, result in much higher chances of nukes actually being used, and used successfully. If the enemy gets to nuke you without getting nuked back, they've fucking
won, and won
big.
And no, it'll be waaaay less than "half the world" in such situation. India, Africa and Latin America are not likely to be nuked in most scenarios which don't involve indiscriminate world depopulation due to being neutral players in NATO-Red Dragons conflict, and those already make about half of the world in population.