Yes in both cases. Basically, this has been US policy for decades. Same goes for any other use of WMD against the US or allies…the response is supposed to be a nuke, assuming you could narrow it down to a single actor. If NK nukes a city then they will get several nukes in response, as well as a lot of conventional attacks on the infrastructure and C&C. Lil Kimmy 3.0 would probably eat a bunker buster if we could find him as well.
Everyone in the region would be unhappy, but if NK nukes someone they are already going to be in unhappy mode anyway. If you are thinking that NK nuking a US city would cause China to attempt to prevent the US from retaliating you are mistaken. I seriously doubt China would do more than protest, and probably not even that. Neither Japan nor South Korea would be opposed either.
Now…if the US was the initiator, then that could potentially be a whole other can of worms. Even then, I doubt China would seriously challenge the US, but they would be VERY unhappy in that case, and you never know. Japan and South Korea would probably be seriously considering their alliance at that point too, unless the US was acting to prevent something even more serious and had proof that this was the only way to prevent it.
My WAG is that many of the military bases that we know of getting hit by a tactical nuke, as well as other C&C and logistics points, then you get a bunch of conventional attacks that further take things apart. The US has the ability for a very measured response, so there would be no need to glass the entire country. But you can be assured that nukes would fly if the US or its allies were attacked with a nuke. Depending on what, exactly, was done it could go up from there and civilian cities could be targeted as well, but I seriously doubt that would be the case.
Of course, with The Donald in charge…well, it’s a wild card for sure.
Obviously, this would not be something which the two sides side down and agree upon. What signalling means can be seen from here.
The US assumed that the Soviets were looking at a situation in a similar manner. Hence, if the US took a particular action, the leadership assumed it would send a signal to the other side. In the event of a conventional way, the use of tactical nukes would send a signal to the other side. Using a single strategic nuke on a city would send another signal that the side was prepared to further escalate the situation, but had not gone with an all out response.
This is the idea of what the author of that article is calling a “signal city.” The US had decided that rather than nuke Moscow to let the Soviets know we were prepared for a full out strike, we would hit Kiev. After the cold war ended, apparently we found out they had decided on Boston as a similar target.
It makes sense (if anything makes sense in MAD) that rather than launch an attack on the capital, you hit a secondary city. However, as pointed out in my link, the signals would not nearly be as clearly received as what the sides believed.
In the event that NK uses one nuke but not more than that, the US has a range of options which they can select. They can go all out, a limited response or a nonnuclear response.
The question which one would convince the North Koreans to not use more of their bombs is currently keeping many people in Washington up at night this week.
I’m going to read through both those articles, but this is the first time I have heard of signaling in the context of use of weapons. I have always heard signaling used in the context of activities like bomber flights near an adversary’s territory or the visible fueling of liquid fueled missiles.
The weird thing about signaling by using actual nuclear weapons is that I can’t see how anyone would think it would work, especially during the Cold War. Both the US and USSR had first use policies, and at various points were convinced the other was waiting to carry out a sneak attack. The idea that we would detect a single ICBM launch or a single bomber nearing either territory, but the government saying, “Let us just see where this goes before we do anything” seems extraordinary. Especially because until quite recently, the reliability of sensors to figure out quickly where a missile was going just was not reliable.
The tactical use of a nuclear weapon as a deescalatory measure, I could see, but even that is fraught with peril. Anyway, I will keep reading.
:rolleyes:
In what universe would India nuke Pakistan because of an American refusal to retaliate against North Korea? Or Iran suddenly get nukes to attack Israel?
In play: of course the US would retaliate with full force and fury. The complete and utter destruction of N Korea as a nation. Will millions dead in the US after a full strike it would have to be no other way.
If someone drops a nuke on the US the US will drop at least one nuke on them.
I also think the rest of the world will most likely let it happen, but also think the nutball that attacked the US had it coming. 9/11 and Pearl Harbor both show that if you attack US territory you’re going to get a military response. The US has used nuclear bombs on cities in the past.
The devil is in the details - one nuke on a US territory (Guam, for example…)? Do we send back one bomb or several? That’s really the only question here.
One bomb dropped on Pyongyang isn’t going to screw up nearby countries. It’s not great but Japan, China, etc. even South Korea are sufficiently far away that any problems from fallout will more likely be public panic than actual damage. You’d probably want to evacuate pregnant women and young children out of any fallout area for a couple months in an abundance of caution. Glassing North Korea, however, will seriously piss off the neighborhood.
Depends on what kind of nuke and what time of the year. Looking quickly at the jet stream pattern looks to me as if depending on the time of year it could blow out to sea towards Japan or down towards South Korea (and right over Seoul). As to radiation levels, depends on the size and use. Air burst or ground level? Or even ground penetration? All are going to affect dispersion. IIRC, within a couple of weeks or even days, the levels drop below deadly, but depends on what you mean by ‘dangerous levels’. Might be that you can only spend a few hours in some areas for weeks or months. After that, it should fade down to where it’s still an issue but not immediately dangerous until within a few years it’s pretty much background except perhaps in some hot spots.
I don’t think it would be a major concern for the US in the wake of one of our cities having already been blasted by nuclear fire…that’s the question posed in the OP after all. It probably will be fairly moot wrt Seoul as well at that point, since assuming the NKs send a nuke our way they almost certainly will send one towards the South as well…or just open up with their 10’s of thousands of artillery pieces trained on the capital.
ETA: But I agree with what I think your broader point is. It will almost certainly screw up other countries, especially either Japan or South Korea (China too depending on how the winds are blowing). They will be inside the initial fallout dispersion zone for anything bigger than the smallest tactical nuke, so there will certainly be a non-zero number of deaths and injuries from that fallout.
I personally think it should be of some concern. As I said in my first post, if everything we want destroyed can be destroyed conventionally then you shouldn’t bring radiation clouds into the mix purely for symbolism.
As I’m glad I pre-emptively pointed out, I’m the idiot here. Here’s the article whose content I mangled. They were talking about civilians, not troops. Shoulda kept my dumb mouth shut.
That’s reassuring, then. The world is NOT completely batshit insane.
Pre-evacuating civilians is what you’d do if tensions ratcheted up sufficiently or you had credible intelligence indicators that war was imminent. There wouldn’t be much time to do it, I suspect; the time lag between when the government is sufficiently certain the balloon was going up and when it actually does probably isn’t very long, and I’m sure NK wouldn’t extend the courtesy of waiting until evacuations are complete before initiating their own personal Götterdämmerung.
It wouldn’t’ be a concern to us if LA, say, was already a smoking ruin. I don’t think ‘should’ would really come into it at that point. I’m not saying we’d just fling nukes around willy nilly, but you can bet that if a major US city was nuked (or, for that matter, a major Japanese city or major South Korean city), then Pyongyang would be hit by some kind of nuke…and probably several other targets in North Korea would be as well. AND we’d go after them with everything we have conventionally, but that would take time to organize and get going. The nukes, however, would be there in far less time. And sure, it would be symbolic in a way. But it’s US doctrine that if we are hit by a major WMD attack we retaliate…and the only WMD that the US officially uses for stuff like this is a nuke.
But the US could use a tactical nuke (might not, but could…), could calculate the different effects of different bombs and detonation points, and so forth. The US could look at the weather reports and wind patterns and perhaps choose to delay a response for a bit (although not very long) for a fallout pattern that would cause less harm. NK has one type of N-bomb, the US has many.
Also, if the US uses conventional weaponry there will be deaths and injuries from those as well. Whether from a bullet or radiation dead is dead and maimed is maimed.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki have both recovered from atomic bombings and are bustling, living cities. The sites of atomic bombs do not automatically become death zones.
Again, not saying it’s great or wonderful or that it should happen - but if NK drops a nuke on the US I don’t see anything other response other than the US lobbing one back in return. I’m just hoping it’s only one.
Sure, we do have a lot of options. And my guess is we’d use a lot of them to destroy NK. But if they nuke a US city they will get a nuke in return. Could be a tactical nuke, could be a strategic city buster. But it will happen and happen pretty quickly. Just like if a Russian city was nuked, or a Chinese city was nuked. If we didn’t (or they didn’t) then it would put into question whether we’d use them at all, which wouldn’t be a good thing. Part of this whole house of cards is the assurance that if a major US (or Russian, or UK, or French, or Chinese, or…etc) is nuked, a nuke is what you will get in return. It’s what has kept anyone from seriously considering using one since they were used the one and only time in WWII.
Only because of a self serving definition of “WMD” is used. The U.S. has a metric shitload of weapons that can cause mass destruction. And I question this doctrine’s absoluteness- if Iran snuck in a bio weapon, would the U.S. retaliate with a bioweapon? There’s plenty in the military labs, if the doctrine demands it.