Were you aware of this post earlier in this thread?
Yep, completely aware of it. I do not see how it bears any relation to your proposed alternate history. The US was at war with one remaining country in WWII when it did use nuclear weapons. Truman was not a madman trying to invade and threatening to annihilate his neighbors if they even thought about entering a defensive alliance. When members of the US military suggested using them after WWII short of being the only response to a nuclear assault from the USSR, they were usually ignored as madmen.
On top of that, the post you’ve quoted is pretty much the US’s general position as to how to proceed if Russia begins using nuclear weapons. There are different scenarios that might make the escalation happen over slightly longer time spans, but once you’ve shown you’re willing to use nuclear weapons in anything but an existential war in the time of ICBMs, our fate is generally sealed. It’s just a question of how many people on your side die vs. the number who die on their side.
And well, even the Russians seem to be realizing how stupid it is to rattle the nuclear sabre so loudly in the present day, If you’re willing to use them on others, you’d better be prepared to have them used on you. At that point, it’s just a question of who loses more. There’s no winning.
You don’t see how it bears any relation to Chronos’ post even though you are aware I just took what Chronos wrote and changed the name from Putin to Truman?
So from the rest of your post, you appear to feel the difference is that Putin would do it and Truman would not. Which seems kind of strange given that we know Truman is the only national leader who would order a nuclear attack.
Do you have any reason to think that if Putin used one nuclear weapon against Ukraine - a country he is at war with - he would then go on to use nuclear weapons against other countries he is not at war with? Why wouldn’t Putin just do what Truman did; use a nuclear weapon to win the war he is already fighting and then stop there? Why would “every major non-Russian city in the world gets nuked”?
And if it’s wrong for Putin to launch nuclear weapons against every city in the world, why isn’t wrong for us to launch nuclear weapons against every city in the world?
I’m not forswearing the use of nuclear weapons. If I was President and Putin actually started launching nuclear weapons all over the place, I would launch American nuclear weapons back at him. Which is no surprise; that’s been the official position of American presidents for seven decades.
But I wouldn’t launch a bunch of nuclear weapons at Putin because I imagine “he’s going to do it again, and again, and again”. That would just be me panicking.
No it isn’t.
The United States has said it will use nuclear weapons in response to a Russian nuclear attack against the United States or an American ally. We have never said we would launch a nuclear attack against Russia if they used a nuclear weapon anywhere.
Yes, it’s possible if, for instance, the country that uses nukes is fighting a defensive war, with the support of almost the entire rest of the world, and nobody else has any nukes at all, and even the country that does have them has only three of them, and the only way to deliver them is by relatively short-ranged airplanes. Under those circumstances, yes, it’s possible for a nuclear war to end with only a small number being used.
As I said, the world has changed some since then.
The end where magical rainbow unicorns take over the world and stop anyone from using any more nuclear weapons is probably the better one, but I don’t know enough about rainbow unicorn policies to say for sure.
If you know of any other scenario that ends that way, then let us know.
No, because as has already been explained, it’s a very different world, and has been since before my birth.
Yes, because he’s developing a pattern of invading his neighbors, and some of those are NATO members. If he’s willing to do it to get his way in Ukraine, he’s just as likely to do it in Finland or Sweden. If he does it there, eventually Warsaw is on the table.
Because Putin isn’t in an existential war, he’s in a war of conquest that he chose, and I’ve seen plenty of signs that he intends to invade other countries if he succeeds in Ukraine. The situations aren’t even remotely similar. Your edit would have made just as much sense if you’d substituted Col. Sanders for Putin.
Ukraine is getting billions of dollars in aid from us. They’re not a NATO member, but they are surely an ally.
And really, if you were president and Putin was dumb enough to nuke Kiyv: how long do you think it would be before he did hit a NATO ally with a nuclear weapon? I think it would be a pretty short wait.
My steps
- Declare Putin a war criminal and violating human rights / crimes against humanity
- NATO goes into Ukraine and also Crimea for good measure. Crimea is returned to Ukraine by NATO proclamation.
3a) Announce that once we wipe out the Russian forces there, we will march on Moscow unless Putin is handed over to NATO forces.
3b) Announce that any hint of Russian nuclear attack, whether strategic or tactical, will be met with complete nuclear retaliation against strategic sites that will glass the Motherland for the next 10,000 years. - Demand that the current Russian government structure that permitted Putin to take such control be dismantled. Maybe Maria Romanov needs to be placed in power as the new Czar.
Somewhere between step 2 and step 3, Putin will launch a first strike against the US. Others have estimated 500-1000 warheads would successfully impact US targets.
I didn’t see how that entered into your calculations.
That plan is fundamentally the same as my plan posted last week. The “calculations” is that if there isn’t some middle ground between “no nuclear war” and “total nuclear war”, we’re already fucked. At that point, it can’t possibly hurt to at least try a massive non-nuclear attack on Russia, since we always have the option of nuking them if the conventional attack fails to deter a full scale Russian nuclear launch.
That we ALWAYS have that option is the part a lot of people seem to be missing. Our systems for detecting a nuclear watch and responding in kind make it impossible for Russia to nuke us in such a way that we can’t nuke them back. No matter what happens in the time between the first strike in Kyiv, and the later full scale launch, we’ll be able to hit back.
Since we always have that option, it ultimately costs us nothing to at least try something else, and maybe just possibly the “something else” might work.
The way I see it, at some point, someone else in Russia has to finally figure out that Putin is about to get them all killed and act to stop him. If there’s literally no one in Russia who can stand up to Putin even at this extreme point, we’re already fucked.
So it’s magical rainbow unicorns now.
You do realize what I’ve been describing is the real world? We live in a world where people, including Putin, are not launching nuclear missiles.
You’re the one talking about an imaginary scenario where everyone decides to start throwing nuclear missiles around. Or to use your words:
All I have control over is how many of those nukes are aimed where. My options are either that every Russian military facility gets nuked within the hour, plus some uncomfortably large fraction of non-Russian cities, or every major non-Russian city in the world gets nuked.
Look around. That’s not the real world.
When - and if - Putin does actually attack a NATO ally, then the United States will fight him. But we should not start a war with Putin because we’re afraid he is going to start a war with us.
No, they’re not. Receiving aid from us does not make Ukraine an ally. If Ukraine was an ally, we would have American troops there fighting alongside them.
And I think it would be a pretty long wait. Putin’s had the ability to launch nuclear weapons since 2000 and he hasn’t done it yet.
We have the nuclear weapons at hand. If Putin fires a nuclear weapon at Warsaw or Berlin or London or New York, we can launch our counter-attack then. But what’s the reason for launching the “counter-attack” before Putin has launched the attack?
It seems highly unlikely that Putin wants the mutually assured destruction option either and world destroyed two or four times over seems to be a difference not worth parsing.
There would be different responses to:
- a strategic nuclear strike against a NATO ally;
- a strategic nuclear strike against someone else;
- a tactical nuclear weapon used against a NATO ally;
- and a tactical nuclear weapon used somewhere else.
The position that all should trigger the same MAD response, all are the same nuclear war, is Strangelovian.
Given that it is known that the first would trigger MAD it would only occur as part of a massive first strike. And of course as soon as it is detected the counterstrike is in progress.
The last would not earn a nuclear response. Not even sure a military one.
The other two are the tricky ones but likely not full MAD response.
It costs us a LOT. You guys are really discounting the advantage of being the attacker in a nuclear conflict. Launching a first strike means you get to get all your assets into place, your forces alert, your plan put into motion, your command at maximum readiness. You’re the guys who get to try to destroy as much as the enemy’s nuclear assets before they can be launched.
The other guys are the ones who have to react within a few minutes and decide what to do when the missiles are in the air, who may not be able to act quickly enough due to surprise or technical errors or general failure of the command structure, who may not have their launch platforms at high readiness.
Launching a second strike generally means you’ve been devastated by the enemy first strike. It’s worthwhile to have that capability, but it’s far, far worse than launching a first strike yourself, which has a far, far greater chance of reducing the total amount of incoming nuclear forces substantially than waiting until they nuke you and being able to launch a second strike.
How does this work? Do you think Putin won’t know we’ve launched a first strike until after our nukes hit Russia?
Our nukes will hit empty silos.
I think you are discounting the fact that even if a first strike manages to destroy a sizable majority of the other side’s assets, a very small fraction of either side’s nukes are enough to destroy each other’s major cities and kill off most of each other’s populations.
One Satan II getting launched and hitting is enough to wipe out Texas. The ocean submerged Status 6 is allegedly twice as big. American weapons are not as super sized but there’s still fries with that - meaning a small fraction left will fry them up just as well.
First strike or not it the mutually assured of destruction would apply.
It is a mistake to compare the Russian Federation and the USSR, but do note that it is well-documented that in e.g. the early 1980s the Soviet Union was truly worried about a US first strike (which had certainly been advocated by people like von Neumann in the past), with the predictable result that the world came that close to nuclear annihilation on multiple occasions. At any rate, it is not a great strategy when your opponent has a nuclear arsenal.
He’s not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.
Plus, in this scenario, Kyiv has already been nuked. Our nuclear forces will be on the highest alert they’ve ever been on in all of their history. Our response to a massive Russian nuclear strike in this case will give “hair-trigger” a whole new meaning.
Yes, but even when it was the USSR, growing up back in the 80s, it was generally assumed that Soviet missiles were less sophisticated than, and less reliable than, Western missiles. But that’s why they had 10000 of them. Even if 90% fail, they still hit us with 1000 nuclear warheads. That’s a civilization ending strike, period.
And “Let’s hope we (somehow) nuke enough of them quickly enough that we (somehow) get those 1000 nukes that actually work” doesn’t really strike me as a great strategy. We might have to do that based on the situation we find ourselves in, but maybe we should at least look to see if we have a slightly better choice first.
Not really.
Prof. Chalmers added that Sarmat was unlikely to make a big difference to Russia’s ICBM force due to its “already considerable destructive potential” – but said a single missile armed with 10 warheads could target areas as large as Texas or France, potentially killing millions of people.
However, “most inhabitants of either territory would be outside the blast and fallout radius, as would many towns and cities”, he said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-russia-arms/fact-check-russias-satan-2-long-range-missile-has-been-in-development-for-years-idUSL2N2VP1TF