“I’m not saying nuclear deterance was a perfect plan. But which is worse? A 95% chance of a Soviet-American conventional world war which would kill about fifty million people with only a 5% chance of peace or a 95% chance of peace with only a 5% chance of a Soviet-American nuclear war which would kill about a billion people.”
Well more a one sided nuclear war than a conventional one, as the Soviets would presumably still have had nukes even if the US had stopped making them post WW2.
MAD wasnt really a choice as such, as long as you arent willing to let the other side win by default.
The U.S. nuclear arsenal in 1946 was in no conceivable way comparable to the arsenal of an ICBM-armed nation with hundreds of vastly more powerful nuclear weapons.
The Soviet conventional threat in 1946 was a significant deterrent to using the very few small nuclear bombs the USA had at the time. Today no conventional forces in the world would be a match for the nuclear arsenal of the United Kingdom, much less the United States.
MAD, remember, wasn’t actually conceived of until quite some time after the development of nuclear weapons (and the acronym was invented by someone who thought it stupid.) American policy until the 1960s was one of unilateral, genocidal nuclear attack in response to any Soviet conventional attack; “Massive Retaliation,” as it was called at the time. MAD wasn’t accepted doctrine until it was apparently to both sides that second strike capability was too safe and too devastating to make a nuclear war winnable - a development largely created by the introduction of ballistic missile submarines, which weren’t a going concern until the 1960s.
Do you feel that the U.S. is incapable of taking on any of the other nuclear-armed states if we had no nukes? How about North Korea? Do you think that the Russians or the Chinese would throw their weight around and threaten a nuclear strike if we challenged them?
It depends on the nature of the conflict, but it would certainly represent an enormous strategic disadvantage that would colour all international affairs.
Well, yes and no. The “small scale brush war” that was the Second Indochina War and its associated war-by-proxy on the Indochinese Peninsula was of a scale (measured in material provided and tonnage of ordnance dropped) that should accord it major war status. But in general, major land wars in Eurasia that were a common feature of pre-WWII geopolitics were not seen, and arguably because most nations of Europe were firmly allied with either the Warsaw Pact or NATO, with the political decisions to wage war being heavily controlled by the two major superpowers. That model doesn’t work in a game with highly balkanized nuclear powers that is progressively emerging following the end of the Cold War.
“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.” – Gen. Buck Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove or; How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
Those throwing around Assured Destruction (or “MAD”, so dubbed by the apologists for Herman Kahn and other critics of nuclear deterrence as the sole prevention strategy against nuclear exchange) need to delve deeper into the basic assumptions and theory of AD. AD is a marginally stable strategy with just two active players, and becomes demonstrably unstable when three or more players are in the game. It also doesn’t provide a stable response when there is distinct non-parity between players, or if the verifiability and rationality criteria are not suitable assumptions. In other words, if you have parties that will “play dirty” (sneak attack of uncertain provenance) or can’t be relied upon to act in their own best interests, the tenets of AD just don’t hold.
Nuclear weapons have been, first and foremost, political weapons from their very inception. They were intended to be used more as a threat than a necessary and justifiable level of force, and there is a persuasive argument that the use of atomic weapons upon Japan was done primarily to demonstrate their destructive potential to the Soviet Union and forestall anticipated post-war expansion rather than any need to cow the Nipponese. There is no use of nuclear weapons by any nation that is not made at the chief executive level by policy, except as dictated by automated response plans (as parodied in the “Plan R” plot device in the abovementioned Dr. Strangelove).
Although there are nuclear weapons designed with the intent to be used to achieve a tactical objective, there is a strong argument to be made that any use of nuclear weapons has strategic implications. Unlike conventional weapons, for which the effort for deployment increases linearly or greater in relation to the destructive power, it is not significantly harder to deploy a large (>100kT) boosted fission or thermonuclear fusion weapon than it is a very small (<10kT) fission weapon. This, combined with the sheer destructiveness and near impossibility of defending conventional forces from a nuclear attack, put nuclear weapons in a special category, i.e. weapons of mass destruction. The effort necessary to effect total war (destruction of not just military forces and logistical lines, but production facilities, civilian populations, government functions, et cetera) with conventional weapons is still significant even for a major power, necessitating the muster of a fleet of bombers and millions of pounds of ordnance. The same or even greater level of damage can be performed by a single, relatively low yield nuclear weapon. A single large MIRV-capable ICBM like the Russian R36M ‘Satan’ or the American LGM-118A ‘Peacekeeper’ could literally destroy the metropolitan centers and sustenance resources of a small nation.
From the standpoint of a nation which possesses nuclear weapons, it makes sense upon being attacked to return with equal or greater damage, preferably striking at communication junctions or the weapon deployment facilities themselves to prevent further attack. This solution leads to the inevitable conclusion that it is better to engage in all-out war rather than risk losing response capability of a limited exchange, so the use of any nuclear weapon should be considered a strategic action. This line of reasoning leads back to Assured Destruction, but in fact, no nuclear power has ever had a comprehensive nuclear response plan that adhered to the tenets of AD, and the very existence of “battlefield nukes” pretty much voids an overarching intent to rely upon AD as a reliable strategy.
Returning to the question posed by the o.p., it was argued during the Cold War buildup that the increasing stockpile of weapons and delivery systems–the triad of land-based ICBMs, submarine based SLBMs (“41 for Freedom”), and SACs massive strategic bomber force (“Peace is Our Profession”)–were necessary not only to assure retaliatory capability but also to offer a flexible response. It can be posited that much of this was driven out of manufactured fear, fed by a massive capital investment in the infrastructure necessary to develop the technology and manufacturing methods to produce such weapons (which also gave us semiconductor mass production, reliable space launch vehicles, and the Internet). Certainly in the post-Cold War environment when the fear of attack has significantly diminished, so has the impetus for maintaining weapons and delivery systems, and the active stockpile has decreased to a fraction of its peak size.
Can we and should we decrease it further? Regardless of how small you make the stockpile, there is a marginal cost associated with maintaining the industrial base needed to support weapon system maintenance and functioning. There is no economic rationale for decreasing the stockpile lower. On the other hand, there is the matter of having the moral high ground; it is very difficult for the United States (and other nuclear states) to insist that other nations not proliferate when we possess a large arsenal without the intention to decrease it. Both from a security and “keeping up with the Jones” aspect, the development of nuclear weapons just makes sense. Some nations will no doubt develop and deploy weapons regardless as they achieve that technical capability.
From a practical standpoint, it is difficult to imagine that the US and other major nuclear powers will ever fully disarm; there’s too high of a “clinch factor” in taking the risk of being blackmailed into capitulation by a nuclear weapon-wielding nation without the ability to respond, even though we would have no rational, realistic need for the actual application of nuclear weapons. (Talk of ‘bunker busters’ is a red herring, as nuclear weapons are not well-suited to this role for reasons that have already been discussed.) However, an effort to progressively reduce stockpiles among all nuclear-capable nations and control the proliferation of weapon-enrichment capability certainly reduces the anxiety regarding this threat, and of the ability for some rogue agent to acquire and make devious use of weapons.
You should probably read that Wiki article. Based on your comments, I’m not sure you understand how they work; they don’t go through ventilation shafts, etc, they go through concrete and direct the forces into the ground. And of course we never used nuclear bunker busters in the Gulf War, nor did we in OIF.
You’re right I don’t know exactly how far down they go, and I don’t think you do either since I’m quite sure the answer is highly classified (despite what may be out there in the press).
The point is, it’s a viable use for nuclear weapons in the forseeable future, and probably the most likely scenario I can envision where they might get used - a pre-emtive strike on Iran’s up-and-coming nuclear weapons program.
The only reasonable way to measure the size of a war is in percent of GDP spent and its impact on the homeland. For WW II (and WW I for the European powers) this was major - for was since then, not so much. It seems much more analogous to the colonial wars of the 19th century. Lots of bullets, little impact on the home.
As for alliances, the alliances in place before WWI and WWII caused local disputes to spread into worldwide ones. Good thing to have happened in 1939, probably not so good in 1914. Without nuclear weapons, how long do you think West Berlin would have held out?
Maybe I’m missing your point here. Are you saying we did have a major nuclear war? Because otherwise, I’d posit that MAD is a demonstrably successful policy.
You do seem to be missing the point. (Mutually) Assured Destruction was never “policy”, and even if this scheme can be credibly applied to the Cold War conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over the period of time that the tenets of it were nominally satisfied (roughly between the mid-'Sixties and the dissolution of the Soviet Union) it does not apply to the current situation in which there are multiple (and an increasing number of) players with varying levels of capability. Waving “MAD” around as a trump card to any discussion about nuclear weapon proliferation and disarmament is like applying Salic law to a discussion of modern elective democracy.