EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The concentration of nuclear authority in a single executive creates a structural democratic deficit. This brief identifies three dimensions of the problem: limited democratic participation in nuclear policymaking, inadequate transparency for public oversight, and the risks created by concentrated decision-making power. It recommends parliamentary review of major doctrine changes, minimum transparency standards, and legislative authorization for nuclear first use while preserving executive authority over retaliation.

Introduction

On 2 March 2026, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the most significant shift in French nuclear policy in three decades with the new forward deterrence approach: a warhead increase, an extended deterrence umbrella covering eight European allies and a decision to stop publicly disclosing France's arsenal size. All this without a single parliamentary debate, in France or in any of the countries affected. Surveys conducted just months earlier showed majorities in those same countries actively supporting the development of a European nuclear deterrent (ECFR, 2026). Citizens had opinions, but were not asked. Similar concentrations of authority exist across all nuclear-armed democracies, from the United States to the United Kingdom. Macron's announcement therefore matters not because it is uniquely French, but because it reveals a broader institutional pattern.

This brief argues that the concentration of nuclear authority in a single executive constitutes a structural democratic deficit, a gap between decision-making power and citizen oversight that was built into the nuclear order from its inception and has never been closed. Nuclear weapons are not simply a military matter because they are also a question of political legitimacy. The brief proceeds in three parts: background on how nuclear authority is structured and why citizens have always been excluded from it; analysis of three distinct democratic failures this produces; and three concrete recommendations for reform.

Background

The roots of this democratic deficit stretch back to the origins of the nuclear age. On 6 August 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing 70,000 people instantly. No public debate preceded the decision. No congressional vote was held. President Truman authorized the use of the most destructive weapon in human history through an executive order, acting on advice from a small group of military and scientific advisers, since the Manhattan Project had been kept secret from the American public, from most of Congress and even from the Vice President. That moment established a pattern that would shape the nuclear age, making nuclear authority concentrated in the executive and largely exercised outside normal democratic processes.

As the Cold War accelerated, this arrangement was codified. NSC-30 (1948), the first document formally granting presidential nuclear authority, established that the decision to use atomic weapons is to be made by the Chief Executive. A 2013 Department of Defense report to Congress confirmed that consistent with decades-long practice, the President, as Commander in Chief, has the sole authority to order the employment of U.S. nuclear forces (Lewis & Tertrais, 2019). In France, Article 15 of the Constitution makes the President head of the armed forces, and there is no formal requirement for the president to consult anyone before taking the decision to use nuclear weapons. In the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister writes "letters of last resort" upon taking office, and the Parliament does not vote on their content.

At the time, the logic behind this arrangement was clear, because nuclear deterrence requires instant retaliation and congressional deliberation cannot move at the speed of an incoming missile. Lewis and Tertrais (2019) argue that nuclear command systems face a basic problem: weapons must always be available when a legitimate order is given, but must never be used by mistake or without authorization. Western nuclear states responded by concentrating decision-making authority in a single political leader while introducing safeguards throughout the military chain of command. In the United States for example, military officers must follow strict verification procedures and two-person rules before carrying out a launch order. However, these safeguards apply only below the President. Once a presidential order is properly authenticated, it moves through the military chain of command to launch crews. No official above the President reviews the decision, and no official below the President has the legal authority to block it. As former Secretary of Defense William Perry noted, a presidential order can go directly to commanders and even the Secretary of Defense cannot stop it.

Robert Dahl (1985) described nuclear decision-making as a "technocratic guardianship domain", so an area of government largely shielded from democratic debate and public oversight from the very beginning. What is striking is not that this system existed during the Cold War, but that repeated efforts to reform it have failed. In the United States for example, the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act has been introduced five times since 2017. The bill would require congressional approval before a president could launch a nuclear first strike, yet it has never passed. The repeated failure of these proposals suggests that executive control over nuclear decision-making is not simply a historical legacy but a deeply entrenched feature of the system. 

Analysis: Three Democratic Failures 

1. The legitimacy gap

The main justification for executive sole authority is speed. If a country is under nuclear attack, a response may need to be ordered within minutes, leaving no time for parliamentary debate. This logic makes sense for crisis situations. It does not apply to peacetime decisions such as expanding arsenals, extending deterrence commitments, changing nuclear doctrine, or reducing transparency. Unlike crisis decisions, these choices are made without urgency, yet they remain under the sole control of the executive.

Parliaments are largely excluded from major nuclear policy decisions. As a result, parliamentary oversight of nuclear doctrine remains limited, even when decisions are made outside crisis situations. In the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, executives are not legally required to consult legislatures before changing nuclear doctrine (Lewis & Tertrais, 2019). In France, the president is not even legally required to consult the Defence Council. Although these arrangements were created for Cold War emergencies, they still shape peacetime nuclear policymaking today. As Born, Gill, and Hänggi (2010) observe, civilian control has often meant executive control rather than democratic control.

As Elaine Scarry (2014) argues, this is what the "thermonuclear monarchy" looks like in practice: not necessarily the use of weapons, but the unilateral governance of everything around them. When decisions of this magnitude can be made by a single elected leader without meaningful democratic involvement, questions of legitimacy inevitably arise.

2. The accountability gap

Citizens cannot hold governments accountable if they do not have access to information about government decisions.Yet nuclear governance often denies this minimum condition. Doctrine is classified, modernization costs are opaque, and the rationale behind major nuclear decisions is frequently shielded in the name of deterrence. As The Arsenal and the Ballot Box (2025) argues, the "deceptive politics of deterrence" removes the informational basis for democratic control, limiting citizens' ability to evaluate the actions of leaders who control nuclear weapons.

The NATO nuclear-sharing arrangements illustrate the problem. Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy host approximately 100 US B61 nuclear gravity bombs under classified bilateral agreements (Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor, 2024). Belgian governments have long followed NATO's policy of neither confirming nor denying their presence. As a result, parliament cannot effectively scrutinize what it cannot officially acknowledge. This is not just a secrecy problem. Oversight becomes difficult when the relevant facts are unavailable.

Some operational secrecy is clearly legitimate; publishing targeting plans or launch codes would be reckless. But total warhead numbers, broad modernization costs and general doctrinal thresholds are not operational secrets. They are the minimum information needed for democratic oversight. France's decision to stop publishing its warhead count illustrates how transparency gains can be reversed (van Buuren, 2025). More broadly, secrecy limits democratic scrutiny by restricting the information available to citizens and their elected representatives.

3. The structural risk

When institutional checks are absent, the only safeguard against catastrophic nuclear decision-making is the personality and judgment of whoever holds office. History suggests this is not a stable foundation. Citizens elect leaders, but they have no direct mechanism to influence or constrain nuclear decision-making once authority is concentrated in a single executive. The result is the most consequential decision a state can make ultimately rests with one individual.

Rose McDermott (2022) demonstrates that in the absence of organizational constraints, psychological vulnerabilities in leaders are amplified rather than buffered. The risks include impulsive decisions, miscalculation under pressure and overreaction to perceived threats. In most areas of governance, institutional checks help mitigate these risks. In the nuclear domain, many of those checks are absent.

These concerns become more complicated when unpredictability is treated as a strategic asset. Nixon's "madman theory" sought to convince adversaries that the president might be irrational enough to use nuclear weapons. The logic was straightforward: an adversary who cannot be sure a leader will act rationally may be more easily deterred. Yet democratic governance depends on the opposite principle. Citizens should be able to anticipate, evaluate, and hold leaders accountable for their behaviour. A strategy designed to strengthen deterrence may sit uneasily with democratic accountability. 

Historical experience demonstrates the danger. During Watergate, Nixon's behaviour became so erratic that Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger informally instructed military officers to check with him before executing any nuclear order from the President, an intervention with no legal basis and one that directly contradicted the formal chain of command. The system's only safeguard was an unofficial act of personal judgment exercised outside the law.

The Trump presidency exposed the same vulnerability in a contemporary context. Following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, General Mark Milley summoned senior officers and made clear he expected to be consulted before any launch order was executed. Speaker Pelosi sought assurances regarding nuclear authority on behalf of a concerned public. Yet, as nuclear policy expert Vipin Narang observed (2021), any formal attempt by military leaders to constrain a lawful presidential launch order would itself violate constitutional principles. The episode showed that even when senior political and military figures questioned the judgment of the commander in chief, there was no established institutional mechanism capable of intervening.

The standard counterargument deserves acknowledgment. Expanding the number of decision-makers involved in nuclear use may increase the risk of delay, miscommunication, or unauthorized action, and deterrence depends on adversaries believing that leaders can act quickly when necessary. This concern is legitimate in retaliatory scenarios. It is far less compelling in cases of nuclear first use, where no immediate time pressure exists. More importantly, it does not resolve the deeper problem revealed by the Nixon and Trump episodes: the system already relies on informal and extralegal judgment as its primary safeguard against catastrophe. Human judgment will inevitably remain central to nuclear decision-making. The real issue is whether it operates within meaningful institutional constraints. Most areas of democratic governance rely on institutional checks. Nuclear decision-making remains an unusual exception.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1: Require Parliamentary Review of Major Nuclear Doctrine Changes

National legislatures in nuclear armed democracies and NATO host states should establish a legal requirement for governments to notify and brief relevant parliamentary committees before implementing major nuclear policy changes. This should apply to decisions such as expanding arsenals, extending deterrence commitments, or changing transparency practices. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly should promote this standard with the goal of national adoption by 2028. Success would mean that no major doctrine shift can be announced without prior parliamentary review. 

Recommendation 2: Establish Minimum Transparency Standards for Nuclear Governance 

Nuclear armed states should adopt a common transparency standard through the NPT review process and regional institutions such as the European Union. At a minimum, governments should publish annual information on total warhead numbers, broad modernization expenditures and publicly available summaries of national nuclear doctrine. Progress can be measured against existing transparency practices previously adopted by France and the United States. 

Recommendation 3: Distinguish First Use from Retaliation in Nuclear Authorization Procedures 

National legislatures should establish separate authorization procedures for nuclear first use and nuclear retaliation. While the executive should retain the ability to respond rapidly to an incoming nuclear attack, a deliberate first strike should require legislative authorization. The United States already possesses draft legislation in the form of the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, which should be brought to a vote during the current legislative cycle. Similar measures should be considered by other nuclear democracies by 2028. Success would be measured by the adoption of such legislation in at least one nuclear-armed democracy. 

Conclusion

Of the three reforms proposed, mandatory parliamentary review of major nuclear doctrine changes is the most feasible. It addresses the legitimacy gap directly without altering launch authority or undermining deterrence, making it politically more achievable than reforms to nuclear authorization procedures. Its limitations should be acknowledged: parliamentary review does not guarantee transparency or meaningful influence over executive decision-making. Nevertheless, it represents a realistic first step toward reducing the democratic deficit in nuclear governance and creating the institutional foundations for more ambitious reforms in the future.

References

Dahl, Robert A. Controlling Nuclear Weapons. Syracuse University Press, 1985.

H Born, Bates Gill, Heiner Hänggi, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and Geneva Centre. Governing the Bomb : Civilian Control and Democratic Accountability of Nuclear Weapons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Loss, Rafael. “Suspicious Minds: Why Europeans Are Considering Their Post-America Nuclear Options – European Council on Foreign Relations.” ECFR, February 26, 2026. https://ecfr.eu/article/suspicious-minds-why-europeans-are-considering-their-post-america-nuclear-options

McDermott, R. (2022). Psychology, Leaders, and New Deterrence Dilemmas. In Narang, V. & Sagan, S. (eds.), The Fragile Balance of Terror. Cornell University Press.

Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor. “The Prohibition on Allowing Stationing, Installation, or Deployment,” 2024. https://banmonitor.org/tpnw-prohibitions/the-prohibition-on-allowing-stationing-installation-or-deployment-of-nuclear-weapons.

Rey, Je, G Lewis, and Bruno Tertrais. “The Finger on the Button: The Authority to Use Nuclear Weapons in Nuclear-Armed States,” 2019. https://nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Finger-on-the-Nuclear-Button.pdf.

Scarry, Elaine. Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing between Democracy and Doom. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Senate.gov. “Sen. Markey and Rep. Lieu Announce Legislation to Limit U.S. President’s Power to Unilaterally Start Nuclear War | U.S. Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.” Edward Markey, April 14, 2023. https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-markey-and-rep-lieu-announce-legislation-to-limit-us-presidents-power-to-unilaterally-start-nuclear-war

Sterre van Buuren. “The Arsenal and the Ballot Box: Scoping the Incompatibility of Nuclear Weapons and Democracy.” Perspectives on Politics, February 28, 2025, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592724002664.

Woodward, Bob, and Robert Costa. Peril. Simon and Schuster, 2023.