How was this is MUTUAL assured destruction?
I don’t see how the terrorist scenario is comparative in any way to a typical MAD scenario. North Korea, for example (The most frequent “rogue” nation in examples) doesn’t have nearly enough nukes to enter a MAD scenario. In this Murder Chit scenario, it’d be like cashing in a “black-eye-and-bloody-nose” chit on someone with a full “kill-you-dead” chit. Yeah, you’ll bloody them a bit, and piss them off, but that’s it. Or if you’re talking terrorists with nukes (Since your posts are a little vague…), same thing. Those aren’t even close to being MAD scenarios. They’re suicide attacks that do minimal damage (And yes, I mean minimal. Blotting out a city will hurt, sure, but it’s not going to stop the entire United States dead in its tracks, or just about any other country).
And another way that it isn’t the same. You said that a condition of those Murder Chits was that someone using them could suffer NO legal retribution for its use. So that terrorist group, or group of fanatics, could have one member cash in their chit. That’s not like nuclear proliferation. That’s more like handing every single third-world countryin the world about a thousand ICBMs. Then you might get something closer to that Murder Chit scenario (Not identical, but getting there). Just picture the “fun” if the Taliban had a good-sized collection of ICBMs ready to launch, hmm?
So how did MAD happen, then, Pheonix? Did we all miraculously get enough nukes to decimate a nation, or did we acquire them through time and effort? By the “Rogue State” logic, we should have been launching nukes (or the Russians should have been) as soon as we got a few. Yet only two uclear weapons were ever used in history (AFAIK) for striking another nation. How do you reconcile this?
Eesh… You should pay a bit more attention to history if you’re going to try and use it for an example.
When nations were first getting nukes, they didn’t have nearly enough to cause a MAD scenario. No balistic missiles, no nuke-missile subs, just conventional bombers carrying a single nuke each. The possition of the US millitary in 1950 was that they had enough nukes to cause damage, but neither force the Soviet Union into suing for peace, nor prevent them from taking western Europe by conventional forces, and this was even after the Russians had begun making and testing their own nukes (There was only a 4-year gap between US and Russian development of nuclear weapons). The only effect that firing off a nuke attack would do is have a chance of minor damage (You have to get past their air patrols, and if you’ve made it, you’ve destroyed maybe a couple cities, out of the whole country). This was an era where long-range bombing was risky, and the US didn’t have a huge number of nukes to start off with. Plus you have to deal with the pressure from all the other nations. Unlike your Murder Chit scenario, everybody is going to know you tried to nuke them, and they’ll be mighty pissed… Kind of the national equivelant of a lynch mob, and without the police there to stop them.
Before the Soviet Union got nukes, the US couldn’t risk an attack, because the relatively primative delivery systems had a good risk of failure, and there weren’t enough weapons to ensure enough losses on the enemy to make a conventional war winnable (Not to mention the political instability it would all cause. Straight into WW3, and that fresh after WW2 nobody wanted that). The best they could be used for is to boost a conventional war effort. And what reason did the US have to attack the Russians prior to 1949 and the russian development of nuclear weapons?
Then the russians got the bomb, soon afterwards, and both sides started building up. Delivery systems improved, as did destructive power and number of weapons, with both sides building up to counter the other’s build-up. This is where MAD came in, because both sides built up more or less simultaneously, and could each do about the same degree of damage to eachother. And even without that, they were two first-world countries, relying heavily on other countries both economically and socially (The entire cold war was as much a political contest as a millitary one, with both nations trying to win others over), and the negative effects of a first-strike overweighed the possitive ones. Politically, nukes were much more effective as bluffs than as actual weapons. They do something you don’t like? Rattle your saber and tell them not to do it. Even if the country doesn’t have nukes, you don’t want to use them, because everyone else will get pissed… But you can sure threaten (Gee, a topic that’s even been in the news lately…).
And why do you assume the Soviet Union would be the one to launch a first strike? The US was in a better possition for a first strike (As far as military possition goes, that is) than the Soviet Union was, for the entire durration of the cold war… A fact that lent a lot of support to the idea of a US first-strike in some people’s minds. And it was strongly suggested to attack around 1949-50, before the Soviet Union could amass a significant nuclear arsenal, but it was determined that the US didn’t have enough of an arsenal to tilt a war enough in their favor.
How in the world do you consider MAD and these Murder Chits to be similar, considering all this? MAD was not simply a nuclear-strike deterent, it was a war deterant. If one side attacks the other, in any way, both sides loose. These Murder Chits are only the equivelant of MAD in regards to other Murder Chits. Like I’ve said before, if you want to avoid the Murder-Chit “MAD” scenario, simply kill the other person like you would have anyway. Plenty of people get away with it every year already. Unlike the Murder Chits, you have a chance of getting away with it clean. And hey, you can even take out more than one person durring your life that way, nice bonus. The only people I can see this benefiting is those fanatics that are already planning on dying to accomplish their mission, and want to assassinate some highly-protected individual. I can guarantee you, if the Murder Chits were passed out now, the next 50 presidents wouldn’t last an hour.
Oh yeah:
We did.
You even noted that in your own post, so I don’t see how you missed it. The thing is, we picked a nation that had no ability to return in kind, or even launch an effective attack with conventional forces, which was completely unlike Russia’s possition.
You claimed NK doesn’t have enough nukes to enter a MAD scenario. And yet you also mentioned that the US had nukes like that, too, but didn’t use them when we had the chance. I paid fine attention in history; my point is that MAD is a false cause. It didn’t stop anyone from doing anything. We still kill each other the same way we always did; if nukes changed anything, I haven’t seen it. When countries all across the world have had the chance to use nukes to strike—before they had enough to decimate a population re: mad—they haven’t.
Or would have, I mean… sorry…
You misunderstand what I was saying. When the US first had nukes, nobody else had them. This isn’t the same as NK getting nukes when a half-dozen other countries already do. NK can’t nuke without getting a bunch of other (Nuke-capable) countries pissed at it. I mean they don’t fit a MAD scenario because they can’t threaten “Destruction” on anyone else – But the US, for example, can certainly threaten NK with it if they use nukes. Again, the threat is probably more usefull, anyway. Even though NK couldn’t hurt the US directly with nukes, the disruption in the area would definatly hurt the US economically and politically.
WW2 and the development of the atomic bomb marked the last time two major powers have overtly fought eachother in open warfare. Prior to that, Europe was averaging a major war every, what, 30 years or so? The 1940s, before everyone had nukes, totaled the most deaths in war for the decade out of the entire century, if not all of history. 57 million, 60% of them civilians. We havn’t topped that, even with two major powers threatening war, with millitaries that vastly out-powered any in history. I don’t think we’ve even come close.
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You didn’t pay much attention to my post, did you? They didn’t because there was nothing to gain. Such as my example of why the US didn’t think a pre-MAD first-strike would be effective; It’d piss them off, and do very little damage. It would also anger many other nations, too.
So how about I pose a question to you. You keep suggesting that nobody was going to use nukes anyway. So, why not? If one country had enough ballistic missiles to completely wipe out one other major country (Or, cause massive damage to many many countries), why do you think they wouldn’t use it? Just use the incredible power as a huge bartering force, tell other countries what you want them to do, maybe flatten a city or two as an example, and threaten to wipe out a few major cities of any country that moves against you (Hmm… Pretty close to the US’s nuclear history, isn’t it?). So, why do you think they wouldn’t do that?
Oh, quite the contrary! People are going to kill anyway. If they didn’t plan on decimating everything, nukes were superfluous.
So let them have them. Right? Why not?
Ah, so it had nothign to do with MAD at all?
This thread reminds of a SF story I read recently that proposed a method for ‘legal murder’ - an individual could declare their intention to murder someone, whereupon they were transported to a penal colony on the Moon where they served their sentence before committing the crime. Of course, you could leave at anytime if you changed your mind - I can’t remember the length of the sentence, but it was substantial - something like 20 years in a genuine prison, not a hotel! Anyway, once you had served your sentence-in-advance you were entitled to murder one person of your choice.
The author proposed that the murder rate became very low following this plan, for a couple of reasons:
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It takes a mighty, burning hatred to sustain someone through 20 years of digging tunnels on an airless rock; most people cooled off and cancelled their ‘sentence’ pretty quickly.
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Even the few that completed their sentence often found that they were more interested, after 20 years, in re-entering society than in hunting down their intended target. Others preferred to enjoy the fear and power associated with possessing a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, and never ‘cashed it in’.
No, not poison - how about a small bomb? One that gives you 24 hours to try to track down your ‘murderer’ and make sure you’ve got them in a big bear hug when the bomb goes off.
Talk about Reality TV! :eek: