Time to cull the herd.
- go back to sleep
Well, if it’s 1983, you’re Ronald Reagan, so that kinda works.
Yes, but how does a president know that before making his decision?
I know, and I understand where you’re coming from, just pointing out that in the scenario as presented the offer really was genuine, shouldn’t the President take this into consideration before launching an all out strike? That maybe the Soviets are telling the truth? In addition what his sources are also telling him is that the incoming strike is limited, just as the Soviet Premier states.
And again is there anything to be lost by waiting? If you initiate a retaliatory strike using the targeted missles then you haven’t wasted/lost part of your fighting capability and inflicted equivalent damage on your target. And you still have the intelligence and monitoring capabilities intact to tell if the Soviets are escalating and within a timeframe that you can react appropriately.
Basically what I’m asking is there any compelling reason for the US to immediately react with full-scale retaliation when everything the President is receiving is telling him that the incoming Soviet strike is limited, even if the Soviet leader is lying and its merely the opening stages of a wider conflict? And if he isn’t you’ve just initiated a full-scale civilisation-destroying war when you didn’t have to.
By 1983, each side knew that full scale nuclear strikes would be civilization ending. However, each side was still extremely distrustful and were constantly looking for ways to “win” this type of war.
If I’m the Prez in my skivvies after having been awaken, I am presented with the following information:
- Fucking nuclear weapons are heading towards American soil and millions WILL die.
- The Soviet Premier, who has proven himself to be a lying shitstain on humanity, one who won’t engage in discussions with capitalists pigs like me, is giving me some (at the time) unbelievable story that it is not his fault and to please be patient.
Given that information, I think it is a ruse to keep me guessing so that when the full volley comes, we may not have time to respond in kind. IOW, this is what the Soviets have come up with to “win” this type of war and their strategy counts on me holding off and chasing my own tail listening to conflicting and confused reports from my staff.
The only way I see this turning out well is to retaliate now and hope that the Soviets will be caught by surprise and not get off their entire arsenal. Or I could wait until a couple of major cities are destroyed and then assess my options after the rest of the missiles are airborne, and a lot of the important cogs in our defense are gone.
And (obligatory) I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed in this exchange, but I estimate the American dead to be 10 to 20 million. Tops. 
The Soviet system was officially known as Perimetr (informally as “Mertvaya Ruka” or “Dead Hand”). It was primarily intended to act as a survivable backup command, control, and communications (C[SUP]3[/SUP]) system analogous to the US Emergency Rocket Communications System (ERCS, which deployed UHF transmitters atop a Blue Scout or Minuteman II vehicle to transmit launch orders in the case of a disarming first strike) but with additional provisions that the system could be activated prior to an attack with various measures to detect an incoming strike and transmit attack orders without human intervention. The degree to which this latter system was ever implemented is subject to debate, and the system itself wasn’t deployed until 1985 so it technically doesn’t fall under the timeline of the o.p. However, to answer the question appropriately does bear consideration of the relative sizes and capabilities of US and Soviet nuclear arsenals as of 1983.
Despite Kennedy campaigning to the White House on the premise of a “missile gap” which placed the US at a numerical disadvantage, the truth was that both the size and response capability of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was severely deficient at that point, largely because industrial capacity was still geared toward recovery from the devastation of WWII. However, in the early to mid 'Seventies the Soviet Union embarked on a series of development programs for larger and more accurate ICBMs and SLBMs with quicker response time and greater survivability. On the land-based deterrent side, the Soviets developed and deployed the road-mobile single RV RT-21 Temp 2S (SS-16 ‘Sinner’), the rail-mobile MIRV (10 RVs) RT-23 Molodets (SS-24 ‘Scalpel’), and various versions of the silo cold-launched MIRV R-36M (NATO SS-18 ‘Satan’) which could carry up to 14 RVs, a maneuvering Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS), and a variety of countermeasures and penetration aids.
By comparison, the US had been slowly upgrading the Minuteman ICBM arsenal to the LGM-30G ‘Minuteman III’ system with a 3 RV MIRV capability and was in development with a greater precision guidance system, was haltingly working on a higher capacity MIRV missile (the Missile experimental or MX which later became the 10 RV LGM-118A ‘Peacekeeper’), and a readable single RV system (which turned into the LGM-134A ‘Midgetman’ that was cancelled prior to complete development and production). By 1983 the United States was seriously deficient in terms of overall numbers of launchers, and the Soviet systems had overall higher throw weight capability, though the accuracy as measured in Circular Error Probable (CEP) was estimated to be somewhat lower than the Minuteman and certainly less than what Peacekeeper would eventually deliver. Survivability of the Minuteman and Titan II complexes against an effective disarming first strike was questionable, and to address that various deployment modes for the Peacekeeper system were proposed and examined including the “Shell Game” (thousands of above ground hardened shelters covering about a quarter of Utah that real and dummy missiles would be shuffled around), the Underground Racetrack (a “subway” system for rail transporters), and Rail Garrison (above ground deployment of railcars containing Peacekeeper motors on commercial rail networks), as well as a bunch of really flaketastic ideas such as neutrally buoyant silos floating in Lake Michigan, expendable submarines floating off of the Pacific Northwest, and drilling silos several thousand meters straight down into the Rocky Mountains. None of these scenarios were ready for deployment and the only one that even saw serious development effort was PK Rail Garrison, which was eventually cancelled for a variety of reasons, and only one wing of 50 PKs were deployed via cold gas ejection from retrofitted Minuteman silos at F.E. Warren AFB in starting in 1986. And not to get into the even more convoluted history of the Fleet Ballistic Missile program, at 1983 the D5 ‘Trident II’ program was still in the early stages of development and the less capable and less accurate C4 ‘Trident I’ was the only SLBM system in operation in the US fleet, while the Soviets had multiple systems deployed (albeit for shorter patrol intervals).
It is also worth noting that we had an extremely poor understanding of the leadership, both military and government, of the Soviet Union circa 1983. We’d recently seen a succession of progressively more terminally ill leaders (Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko) who were often bedridden and not even available to make decisions. The real power in the Soviet Union had, since the removal of Nikita Khrushchev, resided in the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union rather than the nominal civil government with no transparency and often widely varying responses as various factions waged with one another. 1983 in particular had seen a dramatic rise in tensions with the shootdown of the KAL007 airliner, Operation RYAN (in which KGB case officers and agents were directed to look for signs of an impending NATO attack upon the Warsaw Pact), and the Able Archer 83 NATO exercise that the Soviets took to be a transparent ruse as a precursor to attack. 1983 is widely seen as being the point at which political tensions and concern about an unprovoked nuclear attack were the highest since October 1962, with the Soviet Union being far more capable at an effective strike.
So from any strategic standpoint, allowing an attack which disables even a significant part of the Minuteman and Titan II fleet would be unacceptable in terms of relative parity and what that could do to response. There would also be the concern that the strike might take out some or all of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) or PAVE Phased Array Warning System (PAWS) that make up the Space Surveillance System or “Space Fence” that detects incoming threats, or launch an attack using FOBS or other methods that would give little response time to launch the remaining ballistic missile fleet. Unless you can trust that you have accurate and complete knowledge of your opponent’s actions and intentions, you cannot accept a loss of parity, even in the case of the supposed “massive overkill” in terms of absolute destructive capability. The only logical response is to counterstrike at strategic systems and infrastructure in order to limit the degree of future advantage.
And this is the problem with nuclear deterrence in general and reliance upon the threat of retaliation to assure restraint; there is no proportionality in nuclear war. In conventional war, it takes a massive and costly effort in order to launch an attack, and even the most destructive conventional attacks such as carpet bombing of cities requires the delivery of thousands of bombs by hundreds of aircraft, and because the aircraft are intended to be reused the attacker will operate in such a way to try to minimize losses rather than achieve maximum destruction. With nuclear weapons, there is also great cost but it is already invested in the system, and to fail to use it at peril of having it destroyed is too great of a loss, so the default answer to attack is to respond in the maximum extent necessary to eliminate any residual threat. This isn’t, as suggested above, a “Prisoners’ Dilemma” problem (since the opposing side has already engaged in an attack) but rather more akin to the “Diners’ Dilemma” where the question is the scale of response, but with the consequence that moderation doesn’t just result in paying more than the fair share of the tab but having your wallet and indeed your entire bank account cleared out by the dining companion who chooses to order the entire menu. Even a trivial game theory analysis shows that there is no stable maximum limit to the scope of the attack; as long as there is a reasonable expectation that the opposing side may retain some degree of counterattack capability, you may as well continue attacking less you achieve some greater loss.
The only reasonable answer–as unreasonable and utterly inhumane as it is to the tens or hundreds of millions of people who will die as a proximate result of the attack, plus billions more which will be ultimately be impacted by the destruction of industrial and agricultural capability from an attack–is to respond in such a way as to eliminate the threat and assures a loss of parity. That this comes out to no ones advantage is not the point; the focus is assuring that the US (and from the opposing standpoint, the USSR) is not at a significant disadvantage in any future conflict.
Stranger
Sure thing General Turgidson 
My reply has been kind of superseded by Stranger On A Train, looks like he knows more about this stuff than the rest of us.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply, one question though, what was the point of instituting the concept of ‘flexible response’ if it was only ever going to be massive retaliation, an all or nothing response? Is there a scenario where a limited exchange would be feasible?
Here is an excellent discussion of the history and development of the “flexible response” concept. Although flexible response had, and to this day still has its advocates (especially in the post-Cold War considerations), the application of a flexible or limited response in answer to a country with relatively comparable nuclear forces–which is still just Russia–is highly questionable in practice. On the other hand, having a flexible response to other less capable nations such as China or India does bear consideration since it would be possible to launch a limited strike with good assurance of removing retaliatory capability without completely destroying the nation or the concern that the remaining US forces would be under threat.
Stranger
Excellent, thanks
Stranger. thanks for the excellent response. Not being familiar with the scenario, would your response still cover nuclear missiles in the submarine fleets?
A fact that those countries are presumably aware about and would therefore invest time and effort to obtain capabilities to remove said “good assurance”?
A fact that those countries are presumably aware about and would therefore invest time and effort to obtain capabilities to remove said “good assurance”?
Since frankly in even the most “life saving nuclear strike” ( a uniquely American idea BTW) the targeted nation is going to face the prospect of many tens of millions of direct casualties and many more indirect effectees due to the destruction of transportation, agricultural and industrial infrastructure.
With the retirement of the more robust and capable Peacekeeper system and reduction of the Minuteman III fleet (which now only carries one RV in the “Safety Enhanced Reentry Vehicle” configuration using the Mk 21 RV), the mainstay of counterstrike capability now lies in the USN Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) program, i.e the D-5 ‘Trident II’ and the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (‘boomers’) that carry them. Because of navigation and accuracy enhancements, the D-5 is comparable to land-based ICBMs in terms of accuracy and of course can be located in patrol areas which are somewhat nearer (and therefore have a somewhat shorter flight time) to target zones, and can loiter in deep ocean indefinitely with only a small risk of being intercepted. However, without going into details (which you can find elsewhere with a little research) there are certain vulnerabilities and issues with a submarine platform from a security, C3I, and maintenance standpoint, and the FBM program is a very expensive program compared to land-based ICBMs. So, in answer to your query, yes, SLBMs are useful and intended to be used for reserve strike (counterstrike, or in the case of a limited attack, counterforce) capability, but it doesn’t mitigate the concern of potentially losing a significant portion of the land-based forces or early warning and communications capability to the supposedly ‘rogue’ attack. The reality of a ballistic missile strike is that there just isn’t time to sit and think about the options and measure a response; by the time the executive authority has verified the attack there are spare minutes to send out orders before there may be no means to communicate an attack order or forces to send orders to. The wide use of nuclear weapons is really the one scenario in which Western civilization could be reduced back to medieval level in the span of hours.
I don’t understand the question. Are you asking if nations will seek to protect their second strike capability? Sure; China, for instance, as missiles stored in hardened silos in mountains which would make a conventional purely ballistic attack almost impossible. But let us posit that some small band of dissident military leaders grabs control of a single wing of Dongfeng-5s at Taiwan, Okinawa, or Guam. (This is just hypothetical; there is no practical reason to do this.) The conventional response is to destroy China in response, but if we are confident that this really is a limited strike, we could pull some W-80s out of the Reserve Stockpile, install them on Tomahawk cruise missiles, and strike at that facility instead of killing upwards of a billion people in blind retaliation with confidence that even if we miss and are directly attacked we’d still retain superior capability. So in that sense a measured (flexible) response is valuable. But against a nation with effective nuclear parity the notion of a limited exchange is unlikely at best.
Stranger
I voted for option 1. I just don’t have it in me to condemn millions of people to death over a game theoretic strategy, which is one of the many reasons I’d be a spectacularly bad president.
That’s Madame President, thank you very much. 
Anyway, I’d probably try for a covert revolution. Direct fighting would result in WAY too much loss of life.
Stranger, I don’t really understand your reasoning.
There’s an incoming attack that will kill ~10 million people. You’re saying the optimal move is to launch a counterattack that will kill on the order of hundreds of millions of people.
You know that if you do so, the Soviets will fire all of their remaining weapons as well - they have no reason to hold back.
I don’t see how maintaining a theoretical capability to nuke someone means anything if it requires you to cause the actual death of hundreds of millions of people.
How have you “won” anything by using this unstable game theory solution? Theories have to pay rent, or you would be irrational in using them.
What makes this the diner’s dilemna? For one thing, this is multi-round, not one round. Your response to the incoming Soviet attack does factor in to the likelihood of a subsequent soviet attack firing everything they have left.
I’d pick number 1 and accept that my political career was over once it came out that I wasn’t willing to nuke those dirty bastards who nuked us first. A very small price to pay for the lives of millions of people I think.
I’d expect the Soviets to supply some major aid after this incident though.
Stranger, your solution doesn’t pass the napkin test :
Let’s suppose that the Soviets have an unknown probability, P_D, that they plan to degrade your nuclear arsenal with this attack and the followup volley is planned to kill everyone.
P_D is less than 1. Yet if you order an all-out counterattack, P_D is defined as one - the chance that the Soviets use everything they have left is assured.
If you hold back, your chance of national survival is 1-P_D, which is better than zero. Also, as a side note, some of the outcomes to this at least preserve some Soviet Civilization if not your own. This is probably not a bad thing - the Soviets were an advanced civilization, albeit inferior to the West in many areas…
-duplicated post-