A nuclear bomb goes off in downtown Los Angeles. Several hundred thousand people are killed instantly, the death toll from the fires, damage, radiation sickness, etc reaches 7 digits. This wasn’t a missle attack, the bomb was smuggled into the city and detonated at ground level. Within days the government (through a combination of intelligence and forensics) is able to determine that the terrorists were sponsored by Sweden. Sweden is a brutal dictatorship and “rogue state”. Are we right to respond in kind and kill millions of Swedish civilians? Should we only nuke military sites? Does it make a difference if Swedish military bases also double as orphanariums and hospitals? Would it be legal under international law? Is it right to respond to the mass-killing of innocent civilians with mass-killing of innocent civilians?
The U.S. maintains a nuclear arsenal in part to serve as a deterrent against nuclear and biological attack. If the United States is unwilling to use that arsenal after suffering a nuclear attack then they lose all value as a deterrent. Though I suppose one might argue that they didn’t really serve as a deterrent if Sweden managed to set one off in L.A. So, yes, I think the United States would respond with retalitory strikes against one or more targets used in conjunction with conventional forces designed to knock Sweden on her back. Would a lot of innocent people die? Yes, but as General Sherman said, “war is hell”.
I don’t know if it’s illegal under international law but I don’t know how many would care at that point. France, England, Russia, and China have nuclear weapons and I have little doubt that they would use it against Sweden if they were the ones attacked.
Marc
Get your stinking mitts off me you damn dirty Swede!!
I have absolutely no idea how the powers-that-be in Washington (DC) would react.
But, I do think that, and I paraphrase without knowledge of where this came from, that once the nuclear genie is out of the bottle…
Why would we not counterattack?
Once you start this shit, all bets are off. We, or any other country can take normal offensive attacks with normal offensive weapons.
But once you go nuclear, I think all bets are off and you have to destroy, completely destroy the enemy’s ability to do this again.
Again, I don’t pretend to know what the USA would do, but I sure do think I know what Israel would do. Your opinions may vary.
Sorry. I left out a key phrase up there…wasn’t trying to sidetrack the discussion.
It should be ten nukes (at least) for a nuke, frankly. The capital and all major industrial centers in Sweden should be destroyed in response, as a warning to anyone else thinking along similar lines.
Asking about international law in a situation like this, is like asking what Dr. Laura or the Ohio Stamp Collecting Association would think of targeting Sweden. Who gives a shit?
Anyway. Nuke them.
Perhaps, you’d even do us all a favour and consider doing a preemtive strike on Sweden?
I’d say “Pave Sweden.”, but that would take too much asphalt. But definitely wipe out their government and military facilities with multiple nukes. Bounce the rubble.
No more than they were right to kill millions of ours. That wouldn’t stop us from doing it though in the face of such an event. Maybe thats exactly what the ‘Swedish’ want…to bring about destruction so vast that their people will be forced to rally behind their government, will be united by a common enemy. However, I don’t think the ‘Swedish’ REALLY understand the sleeping giant they will have awakened by such an act…nor do I think they fully comprehend just what their destruction would unleash.
I seriously doubt that any stone would be left unturned in ‘Sweden’ if such an event happened and if it could be traced back to them. Oh, we probably wouldn’t use nukes in all cases (we might not use any at all)…but that would be cold comfort to the ‘Swedish’ when they realize what a nation like the US is capable if the gloves were ever thrown off. All they have ever seen in the past after all (as destructive as it is) is the US (Israel, Europe, etc) fighting with the gloves on and attempting to limit civilian casualties. Nuke one of our (or worst the Euro’s) cities though and I think the results would be rather surprising to those evil Sweeds.
Normally it would make a huge difference. We’d bend over backwards to try and NOT bomb targets in close proximity to such civilian buildings. However, in the event of millions of our citizens dead, a major US city complete destroyed? I don’t think many American’s would care. If it happened in Europe, I don’t think many of THEM would care either.
I started a GQ thread asking about the legality of the US invasion of Iraq. Thus far I have yet to receive an authoritative response. The best response so far indicates that there IS no solid body called ‘international law’, there IS no authoritative body who can make determinations on if something is or is not ‘illegal’ under said ‘international law’, and it seems its up to individual countries to determine what is or is not ‘illegal’…and what, if any, steps they will take depending on their thoughts.
The short answer is the US wouldn’t give a shit if it was or wasn’t illegal. A major US city would be a smoking puddle of glass, millions dead. You think we are going to care if striking back is illegal, or if The World™ is pissed that we blew up a hospital where some rocket launchers were trying to shelter?? That said, I imagine under the Charter we’d be perfectly within our rights…since we would rather obviously have been both threatened and attacked.
Not that it would matter much, as I said.
Is it right? No. Its not right…like it wouldn’t be right for them to have bombed a civilian target in the first place, with or without nukes. What it is is grim reality. Right or wrong wouldn’t enter into it, not at the time. Perhaps decades later when the revisionists got their hands on the events…THEN they would decide matters of right and wrong.
-XT
If we nuke Sweden, then where will import our IKEA crap from? :eek:
They have us by the short hairs.
Well, I took the OP’s use of ‘Sweden’ as a tactful way to avoid using the name of our REAL enemy…Belgium! So, I think our IKEA fix is safe. Might be a bit tough on dark chocolate sales though…
-XT
Your use of… that word… is so revolting that publication of it should be utterly forbidden in all parts of the galaxy.
Were I in charge, I would choose surgical strikes against Swedish national government and military as well as power plants, airports, and other critical infrastructure. Maximum disablement, minimum civilian death toll. That would presumably induce surrender from the remnants of the Swedish government. And that point, American forces would occupy the country and we would rebuild it much as we did with Japan and West Germany after WWII.
Of course not. Life is the foremost right, guaranteed by any meaningful theory of political philosophy. All policies must respect that fact. A war can only be just if the failure to wage the war would lead to worse consequences than actually waging it, even in cases of “total war”. In the above example, we could remove the dictator of Sweden without mass carnage and thus would have a moral obligation to do so.
How would this serve as a warning? The hypothetical situation has Sweden ruled by a “brutal dictator” who presumably cares nothing for the welfare of the Swedish common person. Thus, mass civilian death is no deterrent to brutal dictators in other nations when considering whether to nuke American cities; the only deterrent action would be killing the dictator.
Furthermore, in practice America has shown surprising willingness to slaughter civilians. We killed almost three million in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia without even having any provocation, so anyone else would surely assume that we’d be willing to engage in mass slaughter if we did have provocation. By the deterrent reasoning, we should have been the last country on Earth to get attacked. Instead, we collected the the worse terrorist attack in history.
Hey, if a weapon system existed that let you kill 1000 specific people with the push of a button, letting you target just governmental officials, senior military officers and leading industrialists, I’m all for it. Until then, I say nuke earns nukes. Maybe future “common persons” in other countries will be less inclined to tolerate dictatorships.
As I understand it, Israel can now use a missile to take out very precise targets with minimal collateral damage; I assume the American military has such toys somewhere.
Can we save some of the women? Please?
What, you mean as souvenirs? The Mongols when they had captured a town, would split the people in three groups, one with the men and old boys would be cut down, the women and old girls they’d take for themselves and the old and very young they’d let stay and tax. But I’m not sure international law would look kindly to such a practise – especially the taxation seems particular gruesome.
Without reprisals, a second attack is invited!
10 to 1 reprisals.
I think your guys used to do something similar…
Anyway, to be serious, I hope to hell that there wouldn’t be a retaliatory strike following incontrovertible proof of who nuked LA, but the only way the deterrent could possibly work is the realise that the nuke-bearing country is bellicose, or crazy, enough to do it.
I don’t think that’s how nuculear deterence was supposed to work. The idea behind having a nuclear arsenal was to let other world powers (specifically, Russia) know that, if it came to an all-out war, and we were losing, we’d still have the ability to annihilate their country. They were meant to deter nations that could not be detered by conventional warfare. Against a “rogue” or terrorist nation, one that could never hope to match us in conventional warfare, nukes are kinda pointless. We don’t need nukes to threaten to destroy their homeland. Our regular military is more than sufficient for the task. Further, in a situation like the one described in the OP, the entire world community would back an invasion of Sweden. It’d be Sweden against the combined militaries of virtually every nation on the planet. Nuking Sweden would not only be unnecessary, it’d be stupid. It would render thousands and thousands of acres of perfectly good land unihabitable for centuries. Much smarter, to say nothing of humane, to use our overwhelming military force to flatten the country’s military and industrial infrastructure, then rebuild like we did in Germany and Japan.
I’m inclined to agree with Miller. The only point of war is when diplomacy fails; that is to say, when you can’t get the other guy to do what you want any other way.
Nuclear weapons are not war; they are destruction, period. They’re big and impressive, sure, and it only takes one to destroy a city; there’s no real defense against them, and that is their sole usefulness.
Why nuke a country when you can do it in some other way? The only point in nuking Sweden would be if they had more nukes, and could use them tactically against invading forces, or if they had intercontinental ballistics and could target our cities if we invaded. Nukes themselves aren’t THAT magical; it has been argued that gifted high school students could build them (an exaggeration, yeah, but something to take into account).
When a gifted high school student can build a working intercontinental ballistic missile that is accurate enough to target any given thirty-mile radius, THEN we can really start worrying. This is why North Korea keeps squawking about their missile program.