Well, like I said, if ANYbody launches a single nuke nowadays, EVERYbody launches. So, I don’t think it should be “Mutually Assured Destruction”, but rather “Stupid”.
Not quite sure I understand your reasoning there, SPOOFE.
So if Russia and China go to war with nukes, we’re obligated somehow to lauch at someone? Who would we attack, and why?
If Russia and China went to war, then Democracy’d already probably be out of style anyway. I’d say sit back and see what they do to each other, then pick over the ruins and see if we can salvage any of it… provided we’re all still here…
Wevets, ever see “War Games”? It’s kinda outdated, but here’s the reckoning…
If any country is willing to launch missiles at another country, all the other countries would be justified in assuming that they’d be the next target… and they’d probably want to eliminate the first aggressor. Ergo, if one launches, they all launch. Not a given, of course, but a likelihood.
Get my pitcher of margueritas out of the refrigerator (I keep a batch ready for just such an emergency), open up my lawn chair and watch the show!
I personally would “push the button”
Even though I have always had a passion with everything russian.Not to say I agreed with the Soviet goverment, just a deep respect for the people and culture.
Yep, I would push the button. Then grab my shoes and start stomping the grin of them stinking cockroaches faces.
Osip
Shit! I probably missed it too! Guess I’d better cancel my plans tonight, start collecting my precious bodilly liquids, and get my commie-killing knife…oh wait, you guys were kidding…
OK, as I see it, there’s two possibilities: Either MAD works, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, it’s an easy decision, I don’t launch. If, on the other hand, it does work, then Russia would not be sending missiles at us, so therefore what I’m seeing, high confidence level or not, must be a mistake. It’s an easy decision, I don’t launch.
Yes, we made it through the Cold War, but I find it hard to believe that it was MAD that saved us. Unless anyone else can come up with a better explanation, I say that it was just plain luck.
Adding to all the other considerations is the fact that nobody would launch nuclear missiles at the U.S., anyway. If they wanted to nuke us, they’d smuggle the bombs over (just HOW many miles of coastline do we have again?), put them in minivans, and have a bunch of guys drive them into downtown parking garages and take the subway to the airport. Precise, reliable, untraceable, and no advance warning before BANG. This is the scenario that sometimes keeps me up at nights, and makes me glad I’m currently in the middle of nowhere.
I would launch.
Hi SPOOFE,
I’m not really convinced that many nations would be able to afford being involved in a nuclear conflict they could avoid. Even a single hit on a city would probably be considered too great a cost for involvement, even if the stated goal was to prevent an aggressor.
Bismark once said that the Balkans weren’t worth the blood (or maybe it was the bones) of a single Pomeranian soldier. Would the U.S. consider the outcome of a Chinese-Russian war so valuable it would risk nuclear retaliation on its territory? We’re justifiably squeamish about involvement in conventional conflicts. I think intervention in a nuclear conflict would be right out.
Even a power like India, which has no missiles or aircraft capable of reaching the U.S., could retaliate through a nuke in the hull of a Liberian-flagged freighter sailing into New York harbor. I think the consequences are too great to consider that policy.
Wevets…
Think of it this way… say Russia launches at the US. China, sensing their own opportunity to get ahead, sees Russia as vulnerable, so they launch at Russia, and since they also don’t want to be a target themselves, launch at India/Pakistan, who in turn launch at China and whoever else they think of… and so on. Either way, there’s gonna be a lot of missiles in the air with a lot of different logos on 'em.
The initial problem right now with the idea of a suitcase nuke (not that the threat isn’t real) is that most groups willing to go through with such a scheme don’t have the resources to get/build one. Contrary to popular belief, it’s really not that easy to build a reliable and safe (for the builder’s) suitcase nuke. Weapons-grade plutonium is hard to come by.
Anyway, if you were President of the US, you would have sworn to uphold the duties of the office of President… which includes retaliating in the case of nuclear attack.
The Powers that Be don’t have a specific obligation or duty to launch missiles… the obligation that they DO have is to see to the destruction of the government which attacked us. The most effective way to do this would be to NOT launch a follow-up nuclear attack. Consider two scenarios:
- Russia launches on us, we immediately retaliate (within 20 minutes). Both countries are severley crippled, but NOT destroyed-- The USSR and the US are both big places; neither has the resources to completely destroy the other. Whatever remains of the US media reports, of course, that Russia struck first and we retaliated; meanwhile, the spin doctors at Pravda don’t have too hard a time claining that the US launched an unprovoked attack, and it was Russia who retaliated-- the launches were only 20 minutes apart, after all.
- Russia launches on us, and we do nothing (or at least, nothing to them-- We’d still be trying to do whatever possible to save our citizens). Now, Pravda doesn’t have that spin: Russia launched missiles, and it demonstrably wasn’t due to retaliation. How the heck do you explain that to the masses? No government can survive if the entire citizenry view it as being made up of mass murderers. The government which ordered the attacks would collapse.
I disagree with the “lauch at everyone” scenario because nations tend to want to win wars, rather than call in more enemies against them. It is conceiveable that Russia and China could survive a nuclear war with each other. Not likely, IMHO, but conceiveable. It would not increase their chances of survival for (to pick one) Russia to try to win a nuclear war against both China and the U.S., not to mention the U.K., France, India, and all the other nations you say they should simultaneously lauch against.
In addition, even if they decided to fight all the nuclear powers at once, only the Russians and the U.S. have the arsenals measured in tens of thousands of warheads (maybe just thousands, depending on how disarmament has progressed since I got my info) to attempt to take on multiple opponents in a nuclear war. The next most numerous nuclear arsenals, those of the PRC, UK, and France, are thought to number in the hundreds, not thousands, of warheads. These numbers would be insufficient to take on the whole world at once. The smaller nuclear powers like Israel, India, and Pakistan, are thought to number in at less than a hundred warheads. Also too few to take on the world.
You must be responding to a different poster. My scenario involved an oceangoing freighter, which can carry thousands of tons of cargo. Surely you agree that the Indians or Pakistani are capable of building a warhead that weighs less than a thousand tons? 
Your copy of the Constitution must read differently from mine. This is not enumerated as one of the duties of the President. Retaliating will not save America is the missiles are already inbound. Nuking Moscow will not save one American life at this point (and it might end a few too!)
In any case, even if I were President, I would consider my duty to give the human race a better chance at survival by not detonating more nukes as a higher calling than my duty as Commander in Chief.
Excuse me. Even as President, my duty would still be to see to the best interests of the American people and the people of the world. I’m convinced those interests would be served by not laying waste to the rest of the world.