Nuclear threshold is defined as a point where a nation feels that the use of nuclear weapons and its ineviatvle retaliation is more in its interests than restraint. What could be a concievable nuclear threashold for a nation? Being under nuclear attack could be one but are they situations where such a threshold might come absent an adversary strike or even military agression? In Pakistan it is often discussed (not official policy mind you, but in newspapers) that Indian damming of our rivers in Punjab, whose headwaters are in India or in Indian occupied territory and upon whom most of our agriculture and all our industry is dependant, would constitute a crossed red line after which even a nuclear war would be concievable.
What about other countries? The US or Russia or China for instance.
I think the biggest risk of a nuclear weapon use is in the battlefield. A nuclear attack on a city is pretty much a trigger for a full nuclear war. But I can see some general arguing that a nuclear attack against a military unit in the field is equivalent to a conventional attack.
Picture this scenario: Pakistan and India go to war. The Pakistani army crosses into the Indian portion of Kashmir. A couple of Pakistani armored divisons are moving through a mountain pass. India detonates a small nuclear bomb and wipes out those divisions and blunts the whole Pakistani offensive.
Now India’s going to claim that they acted with some restraint. The target site was in India not Pakistan after all. And the troops were a legitimate military target - nobody would have said anything if they had been killed by a conventional air strike.
Pakistan on the other hand is going to say India just crossed the nuclear line. If they launched a nuclear attack they can’t protest if Pakistan responds with a nuclear attack. And you want to pick military targets? Fine, we’ll blow up your airbase in Gujarat - shame about Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar being a few miles downwind.
Even setting aside moral and humanitarian issues, there is no conceivable scenario in which it is rational or advantageous to initiate an attack with nuclear weapons against an opponent which can respond in kind. The amount of resultant damage from even a relatively small scale strategic exchange would be horrific and long lasting, and there is no reason to believe that any exchange–whether nominally “tactical” or not–will not expand into a larger conflagration that could destroy entire nations. From a strictly rational standpoint, there is also really no reason to retaliate to an “all out” attack, except out of pure spite; the only result will be to double the number of overall casualties without affecting one iota of protection for either party. In short, nuclear weapons are only “useful” when you threaten, but do not intend, to use them; once you establish intent for use in any tactical application–for instance (to draw from an empirical example) to baldly threaten nuclear retaliation against the United States in response to invading Cuba–you accept annihilation as a de facto resolution, despite being advantageous to no one involved. The only way to retreat from such a situation is then to barter away intentionality and capability; say, by agreeing to remove (barely operational and inaccurate) missiles from Cuba in exchange for removing (obsolete) missiles from Turkey. And since, in the situation in question, neither side “intended” to use nuclear weapons–the US placed Jupiter missiles in Turkey to largely to pacify complaints in that country about not receiving adequate protection as a member of NATO, knowing that they would be obsolete before achieving operational status, and the USSR placed sites in Cuba in order to maintain status with the US and force the US to remove IRBMs from Southern Europe that threatened Moscow–backing away was plausible. As Premier Khrushchev said in a famous private note to Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis:If you have not lost your self-control and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied too tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose. Consequently, if there is no intention to tighten the knot, and thereby to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.
So there really is no minimum threshold for use. Any use, or even stated intention to unilaterally use nuclear weapons draws the rope of nuclear tension so tight that there is no opportunity for relaxation except by cutting the rope, i.e. responding in kind. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy; the enemy that you think will attack and threaten in kind will be forced to attack. This is exacerbated by the protocol of “launch on warning”, i.e. we will attack if we think that you will attack. Since you can’t control what your opponent may think, you don’t really control the situation. In the 1983 Able Archer NATO exercise (which simulated a combined NATO force response to Soviet aggression in Europe up to a tactical release of nuclear weapons) the Soviets appeared to be sincerely of the belief that it was a cover for the preparation for an actual exchange, and correspondingly raised their nuclear forces to a high alert level (essentially the equivalent of DEFCON 2) in preparation of attack, despite prewarning and assurances from the West of the benevolence of the exercise. Soviet intelligence found no evidence of NATO preparation of nuclear attack, which was actually interpreted, in some quarters, as evidence that they were preparing to attack; why else, said some, make such a show of passivity.
This is the kind of paradoxical, paranoiac, and utterly preposterous thinking that nuclear strategy doesn’t just engender but require. When a single mistake or slip up can result in not just military defeat of an objective but complete destruction of a nation or the deaths of tens of millions of people, you can’t afford not to second guess the most remote possibility; and from thence you start to interpret every datum as evidence of imminent threat. This is exaggerated by control systems which must be primed for almost instant response to an attack, real or imagined, and this has resulted in false positive indications of attack on numerous occasions for both the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Somebody is going to come along and tout [Mutually] Assured Destruction and how the balance of power prevented the US and the USSR from turning much of the Northern Hemisphere into a radioactive wasteland; in truth, Assured Destruction is an unstable strategy, as any realistically complex application of game theory will demonstrate. It would be like trying to take the Queen by attacking with the King in chess; it simply isn’t feasible within the rules to even attempt that type of maneuver. A proper game balance would increase risk in proportion increasing threat; but in fact, the risk from an exchange is so far off the board that there is no proportionality; at some entirely arbitrary point the risk of using them is less than the risk of not using them in time, and the only thing that prevents their use is fear, not rationality. And Assured Destruction with more than two parties is a manifestly unstable scenario. A world in which regional powers have proliferated nuclear weapons virtually assures their use at some point, either by the parties that developed them, the usurpers who have acquired them, or outside parties that have obtained them via payment or theft.
Weapons are built with the intention to be used in a time of war, against military or industrial targets, with the ostensible purpose of undermining the opposition’s capability to make war and logistically support a battle force. Nuclear “weapons”, while nominally fulfilling this function, are so much larger in their implications–specifically, in their ability to, at the exercise of a single command, destroy cities, kill whole peoples, and drastically alter the industrial landscape beyond any reasonable point of recovery–that it is essentially impossible for any individual in command to comprehend the kind of destruction they do and the ramifications therefrom. As former Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara says:The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to destruction of nations. I see that many of you have held senior military commands. Any of you holding senior military commands know that you’ve made mistakes. War is so complex. It’s beyond the human mind’s ability to obtain all the relative information and ensure that all decisions are correct. And, therefore, any of us who’ve had any senior command authority know we make mistakes. With conventional weapons we kill hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of human beings. We haven’t yet destroyed nations with conventional weapons. There will be no learning curve with nuclear weapons. You make one mistake and nations will be destroyed.
As for nuclear exchanges in the 21st Century, aside from bizarrely inappropriate public discussions about the use of nuclear weapons as “bunker busters”, the US has no stated intention (and currently, no immediate target) for nuclear attack…which begs the question of why we continue to maintain a much larger nuclear arsenal would be necessary to retaliate against any conceivable opponent. Similar statements can be made about the Soviet Union’s spiritual successor, the Russian Federation. Britain and France have never had a special need for the possession of weapons other than to justify (questionably) remaining in the club of global superpowers in the post-colonial period. The People’s Republic of China, while having more substantial and independent security concerns, also developed its limited nuclear and ICBM force largely to establish itself as a significant player, prompting India, and thus Pakistan to also build and demonstrate regional nuclear capability. The one state that arguably “needs” nuclear weapons as an assurance of security against neighbors who have publicly stated an intention to utterly destroy it, Israel, would nonetheless probably not survive such an exchange (and have adopted the very sensible policy of developing weapons and “leaking” intelligence about their capabilities without advertising them, allowing everyone involved to understand the threat but politically deny the existence and what that means), and has itself incited attempts at nuclear proliferation in response. Even nations who have no conceivable need for nuclear response–South Africa, Argentina, North Korea–have or have attempted to develop nuclear weapons, and even Japan, the one nation that has endured the horror that even a very modest attack presents, has built for itself the capability and materials needed to produce nuclear weapons in a short time frame.
In summary, there is no plausible threshold for the rational use of nuclear weapons, and indeed, no real advantage in deploying them in contest to a comparably-armed opponent. (Whether it is moral and proportional to threaten their use against an unarmed opponent is an exercise I’ll leave to theologians and experts in international ethics.) The perceived advantages–the deterrence capability against conventional or nuclear attack–assumes no sincere intentionality on the part of the opponent to challenge this. And yet, people have and will continue to engage in “brinkmanship”; pushing the envelope to see just how close the other guy is willing to get to the edge of the cliff. If this seems as stupid as the “Tractor Chicken” scene in Footloose then you begin to get some idea of the military utility of nuclear weapons; that is to say, absolutely none.
Stranger
I think the more interesting question is how easily the threshold can be moved by a third party. Suppose in your scenario the puppetmasters were actually a third party Western nation who feels for the good of the planet, we need to reduce population (and fast!) before environmental consequences of overpopulation cross a point of no return. Such a party would be motivated to incite a limited nuclear exchange to cull 20% of Earth’s burden from humans.
I disagree.
Two scenarios come immediately to mind: firstly if you can take out the other side’s nukes, and secondly if you don’t care about the losses a nuclear retaliation will inflict. China, for instance, wouldn’t feel the loss of a hundred million citizens.
By that same idea, the USA wouldn’t feel the loss of 30 million citizens.
Do you actually believe that?
-Joe
The question is will a nation feel that unless it uses its weapons and is in situation that if they accept the new deal, life will be more intolerable then after even an exchange. In the OP, Pakistan will die as a nation if it loses the waters of its rivers in Punjab, it is very possible that it would accept the huge risk of nuclear destruction, then the certainty of a slow drought destroying it.
In the same vein, say China will probably accept a nuclear war against it if the US bloackades its ports cutting it off from oil and grain on which it is so dependant.
The problem with a disarming first strike is that is has never been a reasonable possibility between well-armed powers (i.e. post-1955), and certainly not in the second generation ICBM era and beyond. By the time MIRVs and and sea-based ballistic missiles were deployed the possibility of missing even a single launcher or boomer still guarantees such heavy devastation from retaliation that there is no plausible scenario in which a rational person would even call it a good risk. Active methods of defense–bomber interception, missile interception, et cetera–have always trailed offensive capability such that it requires only a modest advantage to assure sufficient penetration and resultant destruction. Similar arguments apply to regional powers; unless you have such overwhelming superiority in both numbers and capability that you can be virtually assured that none of the opposition force can be activated, it just isn’t worth the risk on a cost benefit basis.
The leadership of the PRC government might not care about the loss of 100 million subjects (and indeed, history has shown this to be likely), but they are going to care about having their industrial capability and major cities turned into radioactive ash. A nation of 900 million remaining Chinese living–or more likely, dying–in a preindustrial, agrarian level of technology isn’t going to help China become a superpower.
Pakistan and India may very well go to war over water availablility, and this is in fact one of the most likely scenarios for a regional nuclear exchange, but neither country will come off better for it. (And water depletion will continue regardless without implementing very strong water conservation methods.) There is no rational reason for either India and Pakistan to initiate a nuclear exchange…which doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, only that historians will look back and wonder how it got to the point of two nations engaging in mutual suicide.
I sincerely doubt that China would initiate a nuclear launch against the United States even in the scenario posited. First of all, China has nothing like parity with the US Active Nuclear Stockpile (not to mention what is inactive but available in the Reserve Stockpile); there would be no hope of not escalating to the point of virtual destruction of mainland China, nor any effective means of active defense. Second, the Chinese would be fully prepared to wait it out against the United States, and such an act by the US would only engender support from allies and fencesitters. Third, a significant part of the PRCs global security strategy is become integrated into the world economy such that it cannot be ostracized; such an act would hurt the US economically worse than it would China. The same people who would, as described above, be willing to dispense with 10% of their burgeoning population would also be willing to starve the same.
“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks.”
Stranger
They had such a need. For instance, let’s assume that during the cold war, the USA would switch towards an isolationist stance. Or, instead, that a conventionnal would have erupted in Europe and the Nato forces in Europe would have been wipped out by the Warsaw Pact. At this point, the USA, unwilling to make the next step and risk total anihilation in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union says “Ok. We lost. We quit”. In both cases, at this point, what, apart from nuclear threat from european nations, could conceivably stop the Warsaw Pact?
A nation can’t gamble its very existance on the faith that another nation will keep a consitent political stance on the long run. And it especially can’t assume that the other nation, otherwise relatively safe, will accept the risk of being herself destroyed in a nuclear holocaust in order to protect her. It’s very conceivable that the USA could have accepted a Soviet domination in Western Europe rather than a global nuclear exchange (and actually, it would have been the only sensible course of action had the Soviet Union called bluff on the USA nuclear detterence and actually invaded western Europe **.
The UK, and even moreso France given its geographical situation on the continent had the same need for nukes the USA had. Actually, they had a greater need for nukes because 1) Europe was on the frontline in case of war 2)European countries by themselves wouldn’t have had any hope to win a conventionnal war against the Soviet Union.
Even though I’ve already read similar statements, I’m not sure why you’re assuming that once the USA had nukes, other western countries had no use for them anymore. With this reasonning, you could as well say that once the UK and France had nukes, the USA could have safely discarded its own and so doing spared a bunch of money.
(**) And in case you’d be wondering why a french nuclear threat would have made any difference in a situation where the SU would have already been willing to call bluff on the (assumedly non-isolationist) USA : that would be mostly because in this situation the very existence of the USA would not have been at stakes, while France’s would have been. France, as a result, would have been more likely to launch nukes than the USA. Secondarily, militarily invading France or nuking it wouldn’t have been worth the potential cost of the destruction of the main Russian cities, especially since in this scenario, the USA (and possibly the UK) is left untouched. To sum up, with nukes, France had a bargaining chip left in case of an ungoing defeat of NATO in Europe, regardless of the USA political and/or military choices.
Earlier on the Bush administration was contemplating “low yield” nuclear weapons as bunker busting devices to take out Iran’s nuclear program …
I would argue that Iran equally needs them in the current geopolitical situation. That’s, by the way, the reason why I’m convinced they have every intent to actually build them.
But this deterrence is the only guarantee of safety for a weaker nation against a stronger threat. Stronger threat that comes from a potential ennemy with either a significantly more powerful military or its own nuclear capacity. Otherwise the weak country is putting herself at the mercy of the strong one. IOW, the weaker you are, the more you need a nuclear deterrence (so I would argue that actually, the nation that needs nuclear wapons the least currently is the USA). Indeed with nukes, you’re playing the mad game you’re mentionning, but without them, your only shield becomes the goodwill of the potential ennemy or its aversion to military loses. The more likely outcome in the first case is that nobody will attack you, the more likely outcome in the second case is that you’ll be wipped out overnight, as Irak has recently been.
Indeed, nuclear proliferation is almost guaranteed to eventually result in nukes being used somewhere by someone. Nevertheless, it still makes sense to have them if you want to preserve your independance and/or way of life (be it a western way of life or a theocratic way of life). You’re betting a small risk of grevious destructions (or even essentially total destruction in the USA vs USSR case) against a high risk of losing your independance.
(I would add also that the military utility of nukes isn’t nil, either, from an operationnal point of view. You mentionned bunker busting and someone mentionned attacks against large armored forces. There might be a lot of reasons not to use nukes in these situations, but “nukes are militarily useless” isn’t one of them.)
The Chinese don’t think the same way the Americans do. Allegedly, the Americans did threaten China with a nuke and Chairman Mao replied that it was 3 million less mouths to feed.
Allegedly, Mao is long dead.
You can hardly blame the UK and (particularly) France for wanting to have a deterrent, given who they share a continent with. Forgive them for not always trusting to the goodwill of Uncle Sam.
But in fact they are useless as a tactical weapon in these applications; not that they won’t work from a technical standpoint (although I have significant doubts about a ground penetrating “bunker buster”) but because their use carries ramifications far beyond the battlefield. Once you have fielded a weapon which can not only defeat any infantry or mechanized force, but will in fact utterly and completely annhiliate it in a single flash, there is really no recourse but to respond in kind. The use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield–even in a small scale–would serve to make conventional warfare utterly pointless, ultimately and quickly ratcheting up the urgency to make use off what nuclear stockpile you have while you still have it.
The problem is that a stockpile off nuclear weapons is not, by itself, a deterrence. That is to say, the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is no longer a strictly military matter, but becomes instead a political game. You can’t actually use nuclear weapons against an opponent with anything like a comperable stockpile (or at least large enough to respond in devastating measure); all you can do is threaten to use them if the other guy moves first. This isn’t about trusting the good will of your nominal allies; it’s about whether such an arsenal of weapons serves any practical purpose.
To understand better you need to review the history of nuclear weapon development. Britain started their independent nuclear weapon program because, after providing the basis of the American Manhattan Project (material, personnel, research) from their earlier Tube Alloys program, they were snubbed, told that vital nuclear secrets were privy to American eyes only. This wasn’t a matter of need–in fact, the US first established IRBMs on British soil–but rather of pride, demonstrating that the post-colonial British Empire, while reduced in its domains, still had the wherewithall to produce first class warmaking ability. (The inability to produce an effective delivery vehicle and ultimate adoption of the American Polaris missile system–albeit with British build submarines and warheads–was a shame and an ongoing problem for the British.) The French, who came into the nuclear club even long after the more organic buildup of East-West brinkmanship, built their independent deterrent force in the primary interest of tellilng NATO to get stuffed, and ended up coming off like Tuco in the graveyard, not really certain who to point this shiny new toy at. Neither power “needed” a deterrent system at that point, but it was sine qua non of a serious, world-crafting nation to possess a deterrent force. China’s development was at least partially strategic, demonstrating independence from the USSR after the Sino-Soviet split, but also an effort to be part of that exclusive club.
From a practical perspective, there is just no way to use nuclear weapons against a nuclear-capable opponent in a way that is profitable or beneficial. Look at it from a Milo Minderbinder perspective; instead of allowing an opponent to bomb one of your cities with even a single device, instead accept a contract to bomb your own city, with the understanding that if you open the books and show a profit all will be forgiven. How much would you accept to destroy New York, or Chicago, or even Cincinnati or St. Louis? How much is a single nuclear exchange–even a small one–going to cost you? There is no conceivable benefit that would justfiy such an exchange on a rational level; and yet, ostensibly rational men have followed and advocated the policies of nuclear deterrence for more than two generations, despite the fact that it is a negative sum game.
Stranger
Little Nemo Actually the Neutron Bomb was invented because Armored Divisions could conceivably survive a nuclear blast. So using a nuke against tanks is not the best option.
Impressively idiotic. Thanks.
-Joe
Remind me, how many died because of Mao’s reforms? He was certainly not averse to killing his own.
Just for the record, assuming your silly story is actually TRUE, “the americans threatened china with a nuke”.
Let me say that again. America threatened someone with a nuke.
So who’s the badguy again?
Who the bad guy might be is irrelevant: true or not the story simply demonstrates the point I was making.