Did he not follow orders, or did he not launch because he was authorized to make a choice, and he made the right one?
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Interesting comment about the ball bearings. The fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany in WW2 was partly an attempt to destroy the ball bearing factories there. But you probably knew that.
Interesting. I consider anything but all-out war makes no sense. Maybe this would be a good GD topic.
Of course, you could combine those two statements and conclude that no war makes sense.
No war makes sense, and it isn’t good for anything.
But if you find yourself in a war, you can give up, go all out, or something in between. I’d go with all out.
This topic came up in another thread started by your ruggedly handsome hero (yours truly!) about proportionality in war. I couldn’t get my views down in a format coherent enough to post but I’d be interested in the thread you considered starting as a GD topic.
For the record I’d be of the opinion that you use the minimum force necessary to achieve your aims but I recognise the difficulties with and arguments against that idea.
It depends upon whether Mr. Jenkins lost an ear or somebody wants to turn your Mama into soap.
In any war you face two phases: 1) Winning. 2) Dealing with the aftermath. The more force you apply to Phase 1, the more likely you win. The more force you apply in Phase 1, the more difficult phase 2 will be for you whether you won phase 1 or lost it. As winner or as loser you’ll face very different problems. But in either case the more force you’d applied the tougher the problems you’ll have.
So the optimal strategy is to apply *just *enough force to win. Given the imponderables inherent in war, you overapply force to *ensure *you’re sure you’re gonna win.
Then you deal with the simplest, easiest, possible post-war scenario.
IF we develop weapons which can A) reliably kill 100% of the enemy population, and B) not pollute the enemy countryside, THEN going really fully all-out & annihilating the enemy in detail will become the new optimal strategy. I’ll leave the moral implications of this development as an exercise for the reader.
Say it again, y’all.
(Anyone hearing a big whooshing noise right now should probably click this: Edwin Starr - War (Original Video - 1969) - YouTube )
All-out war makes sense only if you find yourself in a cage-match type war. These kinds of wars are extremely rare and typically a symptom of your political system having failed utterly. If a war must be won at any price, your leader should probaly run a pizza-place r something.
Most wars are simply not worth winning at any price.
Neat little bit of trivia…in the opening scene of the movie ‘Wargames’ as the two missile officers are going into the bunker they are having a conversation about weed. One of the guys is mentioning to the other something about the “finest sensimilia”. I don’t remember the exact quote since its been a while since I have seen the movie. I have no idea what it means…I’m sure real SAC missile launch officers were/are not potheads. Just something I never picked up on the first half dozen times I saw that movie.
Very Interesting thread! I love Cold War History.
What some people are missing here is that the whole point of ICBMs and SLBMs is strategic deterrence. If the weapons are actually ever used, then they have failed in their primary purpose.
That being said, the only way that strategic deterrence works is for a nation’s potential adversaries to firmly believe that the weapons will in fact be used in a counterattack if the adversary attempts a “first strike” attack.
As LSLGuy noted, to a certain extent you simply compartmentalize. Another thing that is done is endless drills.
Many years ago, I served on a patrol on a ballistic missile submarine. We received orders to conduct launch drills every few days during the patrol. After dozens of launch drills, an actual launch would have seemed like much the same. Incidentally, the actual targets of the missiles was not common knowledge on board.
For what it’s worth, I firmly believe that if the order came to launch the missiles, the orders would be followed.
Just resurrecting this thread to pay homage to a man who fought bravely in a good war and who gave an honest answer. RIP.
Denis Healey died today, it just occured to me a lot of readers of this board won’t know.
Denis Healey was a complete and utter disaster.
That may or not be true. But he was a beach master at Anzio, and served well. So he fought, and fought well, in the defining war of the 20th century. And he gave an honest answer when he was asked if he would ever use Britain’s nuclear weapons.
That was a really irresponsible thing for him to say. Even he wouldn’t have launched the nukes, he should give the impression he would have. Stating otherwise undermines the credibility of the UK’s nuclear deterrence.
One of the points of launching your nukes - perhaps even the main point - after you’ve been attacked is to deter the next nuclear war.