With increasing numbers of nations acquiring (internally or externally) nuclear munitions capacity I was wondering if possession of this capacity made the possessing entity essentially unconquerable (in terms of maintaining it’s lands and sovereignty) insofar as another nation would not rationally be willing to risk the amount of punishment a nuclear strike could unleash.
I know that these issues were discussed theoretically
15-30 years ago but it seems consideration of these questions has been out of the limelight for at least the last decade or more. Now that that future is here what is the real world consensus, or is this question essentially moot until a nuclear exchange actually occurs between nuclear armed opponents such as Pakistan and India?
You used “nations” and “rationally” together in one sentence. I’m not sure that’s valid.
Countries like China, the US and Russia might be impossible to conquer, but countries with limited strike capabilities could be conquered if you intelligence was good enough to take out their nuclear capabilities in the first blow.
In fact if you were daring enough, you might be able to conquer the US. Defeating an enemy can be achieved without firing a shot. Launch several dozen satellites, preferably in retrograde orbit, that are nothing but giant ball bearing release devices, from the lowest levels to 23,000 miles up. Tell the US that unless it surrenders, you will have release the ball bearings destroying every satellite and rendering the space near Earth unusable for such for thousands of years. Watch the Internet slow to a crawl as EVERYTHING, phones, Internet, network TV, etc. goes through the landlines. Goodbye cable TV. Goodbye cellphones. Goodbye pagers. Goodbye GPS. Goodbye spy satellites.
The last is important militarily. Although the military claims to have a backup if the GPS goes out, the money for training is constantly cut by congress and I expect the training hasn’t been performed what little material there is for implementing such a procedure is basically a bunch of files in the Pentagon. Also the CIA has drastically cut back it human resorces in foreign countries. If the spy satelites go out, the US is in deep trouble.
Why go in the back door when the front door is wide open. In other words, if you wanted to take over a country that is armed to the teeth with nuclear devices, do it by economic means. Buy them out so to speak, ruin the economic infrastructure. Compete with them on the international market, and when they’re ready to crumble you step in with your financial aid, install your overlords that are sympathetic to you, and now you “own them”.
It’s a little simplistic but you get the idea.
(IMHO)
Countries with a limited number of nukes (Like two or three, maybe more) could fight and win a nuclear war. Your enemy and his/her cities would be gone, and maybe a few of yours as well. Some countries seem more than willing to risk the losses.
It’s like this…
The bully on the block has been picking on you for a long time. You have acquired a hand grenade since your last encounter with the bully. The bully knows you have a hand grenade; will this keep him from picking on you? Probably, unless he is insane or a fanatic.
Therefore, the bully gets himself a grenade. He will start beating you up again (because he is a bully) and it is only a matter of time before one of you throws a grenade.
Now either one of you can rationalize tossing the grenade for any number of reasons:
You can throw it in the name of God, for your country, for your race, because you are scared, or for your sisters’ honor. This makes grenade tossing that much easier.
Scary isn’t it?
As has been hinted at, I think this is the sort of question that is somewhat unanswerable. Imagining that North Korea has nuclear missiles and the missile technology to launch them onto the US mainland, would that mean that the US could not win a war with North Korea? Well, in theory we could, since the limited amount of missiles North Korea could hit us with isn’t anything like the amount we could launch at them. North Korea might be able to wipe out the US west coast, but before it was done, their nation would be reduced to a sheet of molten glass and the US wins — in theory.
The reality of it is that civil unrest in the US would probably prevent us from doing so, the fact that South Korea wouldn’t look too good afterwards would prevent us from doing so (as well as other neighboring nations that might get hit by an errant MIRV warhead) and likewise for North Korea which wouldn’t really want to be a sheet of radioactive molten glass nor would it want to fight Mexico and Canada who wouldn’t be too happy about the strikes. Most likely, what you could say is that a nation that possesses nuclear weapons is unlikely to provoke a conventional war with another nuclear power and run the risk of the war escalating the nuclear conflict.
However, you never know. A nation that has the ability to squash civil unrest (or ignore it) might think differently and two minor nuclear powers might not have the capabilities for Mutually Assured Destruction and so may opt to use nuclear missiles on a tactical basis (say India and Pakistan).
I find it hard to believe that a significant portion, if any at all, of the internet takes up satellite time. Fiber cables cover the planet, why use satellites for line connected devices. I’m also curious how network TV could ever go through a landline, without some incredible amounts of bandwidth and coverter boxes. If there was a market for that and if it was feasible we’d see a lot more money going into the fiber infrastructure. As for pagers and cellphones please launch your garbage spitting satellites immediately.
pagers use satalites, cellphones don’t. cell phones use cellular relay stations, land based transmiting towers that transmit your signal down a regular old land line (well, most likely an isdn line) remember a few years ago when no one’s pagers worked for a few days? the geo-stationary satalite that services much of the US went out.
Yes. A small like Pakistan can be conquered. Do a pre-emptive strike throw 1-200 nukes at all their cities and nuke bases. Of course everyone would be dead then and you’d be left with a stinking radioactive country that no one could visit for a few years. But to answer the OP, yes.
The problem is, TV takes up so much bandwith that unless you planned to scrap network TV or return to the days of sending out most of the shows by truck. OK, cell phones wouldn’t be gone as such, but you wouldn’t be able to roam very freely with them. There’s just too much info foing coast to coast and abroad for the landlines to handle it if all the satelites went out. WAY, WAY, WAY to much, somethings going to give and everything will slow down tremendously. Or perhaps the whole system will collaps.