# Pre-emptive nuclear strikes - WTF? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 13, 2005, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454 "2005-09-13T17:42:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/21 "2005-09-14T06:07:27Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > I still don’t think that Cold War policy would have been to nuke any stockpile we happened to see. I can imagine us having fired proactively if we thought things were going to escalate imminently–but such proactivism would be more an issue of the demands of the situation and not official SOP. Nuking the USSR’s stockpiles just doesn’t strike me as prudent. > > But that is entirely a, from the hip, guess. Is that a retraction of your earlier assertion: > [@](#): > > US policy has traditionally said that any use of nuclear weapons will be reactive, not proactive. That’s all I’m getting at. We’re trying to fight ignorance here, not spread it. The US has never, to my knowledge, said we wouldn’t use nukes as a first strike. If you want to discuss the prudence of such a policy that’s fine. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/22 "2005-09-14T07:41:20Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > Do the British take out the French? Well, OK then, as long as \*someone \* takes out the French. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/23 "2005-09-14T07:51:40Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > Do the British take out the French? By all means, but it’s best to let the French choose the restaurant. Anyway, yes, it’s a bit frightening on the face of it, but after all, wouldn’t this be better covered by a non-specific policy saying “We’ll do whatever we want”? (Or is that already the case?) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/24 "2005-09-14T08:09:24Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Is that a retraction of your earlier assertion: Captain Amazing said that. > [@](#): > > That’s all I’m getting at. We’re trying to fight ignorance here, not spread it. The US has never, to my knowledge, said we wouldn’t use nukes as a first strike. If you want to discuss the prudence of such a policy that’s fine. Hm, I think that I read you post to be more concerned with that it isn’t a major policy change than that the old version was vague. …Sorry about that. ---
**Author:** ![AFAIKnow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a6a055/32.png) [@AFAIKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AFAIKnow)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/25 "2005-09-14T15:20:38Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > So basically as long as our policies are no worse than those of Iran or North Korea, you’re okay with it? I never gave my opinion on it. But even if such a thought makes me giggle maniacally with a pinky to my lips, it does not in any way “permit” other nations to use or not use their nukes. That’s just silly. Each nation has sovereignty over its own nukes. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/26 "2005-09-14T15:45:04Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > Captain Amazing said that. You’re right. I flubbed that one-- sorry. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/27 "2005-09-14T15:57:01Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > That is why we have invested so much into submarines and the Russians (nee Soviet Union) put so much into mobile missiles and dense-pack fields. In other words, we don’t know what will happen and we have planned accordingly, thus maintaining the equilibrium of MAD. True about not knowing what will happen, but isn’t the point behind investing so much in ballistic missile submarines and mobile missiles that your missiles will be able to survive **the other guy’s** first strike? I was under the impression that until the late 1980s, submarine-launched missiles and mobile missiles were less accurate and therefore less suitable for a first strike. Your fixed ICBMs in silos (or bombers/cruise missiles) were first-strike weapons, not the SLBMs. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/28 "2005-09-14T16:51:57Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > The only thing they’ve done is state what they were always secretly willing to do anyways. > > This could act as a MAD deterrence. The doctrine of MAD (mutually assured destruction) only applies between two powers with functionally equivilent arsenals, the idea being that there is no advantage gained by either side in taking the initiative to launch an attack; thus, there will be no exchange. The strategy is highly suspect even to those parties to which it applies–we’ve been closer to the brink of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union on several occasions than permit restful sleep–but it does not apply to what proliferation theorists call asymmetric threats; that is, parties who do not have nuclear, political, or strategic parity with the United States, and whose decisions may not be based on a (supposed) rational assessment of the resulting effects. For instance, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Castro not only suggested but actually demanded that Krushchev launch a retaliatory strike against the US if American troops attempted to invade Cuba, even knowing that Cuba (and probably the US and USSR) would be annihilated. MAD nearly failed in that case–only levelheaded council from _minor_ advisors to both Kruschev and Kennedy brought both leaders back to a point of rationality, and the world from the edge of the abyss. Herman Kahn slightly amplified the strategy with his throught experiement of the “Doomsday Weapon” in [On Thermonuclear War](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0313200602/qid=1126715343/sr=8-5/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-0702375-3194432?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), which was later satirized (without much exaggeration) as the “Doomsday Device” in [Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb](http://imdb.com/title/tt0057012/) A terrorist group, should they obtain a functional nuclear device, would almost certainly use it as soon as possible, lest they be discovered with it, splinter into competing factions over it, or otherwise lose the opportunity to lose it, “assured destruction” notwithstanding. That said, a public statement of this policy will do nothing to discourage proliferation. Posturing with nuclear weapons removes any moral high ground from which we might appeal to other nations to limit proliferation, and serves to encourage others to follow by example. There’s no foreseeable strategy of eliminating the things entirely, but threatening to use them just because we _feel_ threatened is a destabilizing, perturbative game. As former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, in the excellent Errol Morris documentary [The Fog of War](http://imdb.com/title/tt0317910/) stated, “Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve…They’ll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. You make one mistake and you’re going to destroy nations.” There’s another initiative–called Prompt Global Strike (PGS), which is intended to use conventional weapons on top of highly accurate ICBMs to make tactical strikes any place in the world with just a few minutes notice from the continental US. This is similarly destabilizing; not only it is not apparent, until the action already occurs, that the weapon is not in fact nuclear, but it permits virtually instant action without debate, planning, or consideration of the political consequences. War is too easy to wage when you have to tool up factories, draft soldiers, and plan logistics; when you can just point and click (which was essentially Rumsfeld’s original argument with invading Iraq–that we’d just wipe them aside, roll into Bagdad, and take the Big H into custody), it becomes trivial to wage armed conflict; but it is no easier to clean up the mess afterward. There are real, valid threats, both from developing nations like North Korea and terrorist organizations, and we need to consider the means to deal with those threats, but making it too easy and cheap to strike out hasn’t made us any safer in the long run. It’s destabilizing, encourages subterfuge and proliferation, and prevents us from maintaining a principled stand on world affairs that might encourage our allies, if not our enemies, to behave in a way that is most condusive to reducing the threat of mass weapons and non-combatant casualties. We need a few leaders, or at least their advisors, who are better schooled in both history and game theory than ideology and anal/proboscal massage. As for bodily fluids, **Bryan Ekers** , I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. Fortunately, the international Communist conspiracy seemed to have climbed up its own arsehole and disappeared into the void, leaving only a few ostensiblly Marxist satellite states remaining, none of which are likely to outlast their current autocrats. But just to be safe, I only drink filtered water, or rainwater, and only genuine Kentucky bourbon made by toothless hillbillies that don’t have nothin’ to do with any of that floor-o-day-shun nonsense. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/29 "2005-09-14T17:04:22Z")
> [@wevets](#): > > I was under the impression that until the late 1980s, submarine-launched missiles and mobile missiles were less accurate and therefore less suitable for a first strike. Your fixed ICBMs in silos (or bombers/cruise missiles) were first-strike weapons, not the SLBMs. SLBMs are intended as a counterstrike measure, to prevent your opponent from disabling your ability to respond to a strike. Entertaining Tom Clancy novels aside, SLBMs did not, and do not have either the accuracy, operational capacity (in the case of the Soviet Navy, certainly), or abbreviated detection and flight time to effect a disarming first strike. With discrimination and launch times of modern hardened underground silo-based ICBMs measured in seconds, there just isn’t any reasonable expectation of a disarming first strike. Even a stealth bomber/cruise missile strike would almost certainly leave additional capacity to respond in parity. Our SLBMs were always directed at large population centers and industrial targets rather “strategic military” (ICBM and bomber base) targets. Today, our SLBM forces are sitting ducks if it came to an exchange with a comperable power, thanks to new detection (satellite magnetic anomoly) and interception (supercavitating torpedo) technologies. We are fortunate that we’ve befriended (for now) the Bear, and/or that they can’t afford to sail the bulk of their submarine force at any given time. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Avenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@Avenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avenger)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2005, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/30 "2005-09-14T20:43:08Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > What happens if the United States determines that Iran is planning on using WMD’s and decides to pre-empt the attack by a nuclear strike. Then minutes before the American missiles are launched, the Chinese invoke the Bush Doctrine and announce they are launching a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the United States because it was planning on using WMD’s. Do the Russians then get to launch a pre-emptive attack against the Chinese? Do the French get to pre-emptively strike Russia? Do the British take out the French? So, basically, we win? Cool! 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/31 "2005-09-15T00:05:54Z")
Sorry, but by the time it was all over, everybody had forgotten about the original WMD’s in Iran. The mullahs use them to destroy the United Kingdom. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/32 "2005-09-15T00:44:42Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > [Rumsfeld discusses Saddam’s WMD’s:](http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/t03302003_t0330sdabcsteph.html) Preemptive nuclear strikes would have provided a convenient cover story for the absence of the alleged weapons. Do we really want the government to have that option? I think not. The government has had that option since 1945. Gosh, I hate to be the one to point this out, but if you possess atomic weapons, you have the option to use them. The USA will always retain the option to use nuclear weapons preemptively as long as it possesses nuclear weapons; and the UK, France, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have the option, too. The U.S. government is just being honest about it. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/33 "2005-09-15T00:51:08Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > That’s like saying that a minor, local terrorist group whacking the prince of some minor country could start a global war. Pffff. That is just about how World War I started (Archduke Ferdinand got whacked by Serbs, and then everybody else got whacked). But we all know that (wink wink). ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/34 "2005-09-15T01:27:37Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Gosh, I hate to be the one to point this out, but if you possess atomic weapons, you have the option to use them. Osama got himself some airplanes. Does that require you to approve of his ‘option’ to use them? ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/35 "2005-09-15T01:37:34Z")
> [@wevets](#): > > True about not knowing what will happen, but isn’t the point behind investing so much in ballistic missile submarines and mobile missiles that your missiles will be able to survive **the other guy’s** first strike? Yeah, that’s what I said. The inability to hit a moving target accurately 100% of the time makes them exceptional weapons for forestalling a first strike. They negate the accuracy of the current generation of ICBMs. > [@](#): > > I was under the impression that until the late 1980s, submarine-launched missiles and mobile missiles were less accurate and therefore less suitable for a first strike. Your fixed ICBMs in silos (or bombers/cruise missiles) were first-strike weapons, not the SLBMs. That is no longer the case. Submarines are ideal for first strikes because they can’t be tracked, they can get in really close, and the missiles are hella accurate. It’s all GPS-controlled anymore, and GPS is absurdly accurate. And really, how close do you have to be with a megaton? ---
**Author:** ![Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/36 "2005-09-15T01:59:13Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > And really, how close do you have to be with a megaton? Do the current generation of SLBM’s have that large a throw weight? ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/37 "2005-09-15T02:10:08Z")
[Apparently not](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_missiles). In addition, they have inertial guidance, not GPS (I was thinking Tomahawks, oops) with a CEP of 300 feet. That’s close enough. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/38 "2005-09-15T17:25:35Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > Submarines are ideal for first strikes because they can’t be tracked, they can get in really close, and the missiles are hella accurate. It’s all GPS-controlled anymore, and GPS is absurdly accurate. And really, how close do you have to be with a megaton? First of all, the Tom Clancy-hyped notion that ballistic missile submarines are untrackable is nonsense. It probably wasn’t all that true even back in the 'Seventies and early 'Eighties, and with current maganon satellite detection, it’s pretty much a sure bet that the Russians know the exact position, down to the sub-arc minute, of every ballistic missile sub we sail, and vice versa. (That they are no longer capable of fielding a subkilling force capable of eliminating the threat is another story–the technology exists that they could do so.) Second, [Trident II D-5](http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slbm/d-5.htm) missiles are primarily guided by inertial navigation with celestial correction. This isn’t because it is this is any more (or less) accurate than GPS nav, but because they are a counterstrike weapon which may be used after the GPS satellites have been eliminated in a first engagement. This isn’t really a problem navigation-wise–after all, we sent capsules to the moon using inertial/celestial navigation, which is a heckofalot harder than putting something down on a point a few thousand miles away–but you have to remember that the actual RV (re-entry vehicles) aren’t guided; once they come away from the transstage/MIRV bus, they are purely ballistic objects that are dependant upon an precise model of their aerodynamic characteristics to achieve an accurate hit. Third, D-5’s don’t carry megaton-size warheads; the carry the variable-yield [W88 warhead](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W88.html) (actually, up to five of them) with a maximum yield of 475 kT. Except for the high-yield variant of the [B-61 Gravity Bomb](http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b61.htm), these are the largest standard nukes in the US arsenal. Large, multi-megaton weapons are inefficient and more risky as compared to smaller but more numerous medium yield weapons. Against hardened bunkers, large warheads don’t offer much of an advantage over smaller yields; the primary factor is accuracy. And yes, hardened silos are designed, at least in theory, to withstand near-miss strikes. Add to this that modern solid rocket systems can be launched literally within seconds, negating any attempt at a disarming strike, and that the Soviets had developed a couple of different highly mobile systems and could move and deploy launchers rapidly. (The US also tried–and failed–to develop mobile systems with the PK Rail Garrison and Small ICBM/Midgetman Over-Road TEL system.) Finally, it has, AFAIK, never been the policy of the United States to plan for a pre-emptive nuclear strike in the post-WWII era, the B2 Stealth strategic bomber notwithstanding. General Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay repeatedly argued and pressed for a disarming strike against the Soviets, as exemplified by Gen. Buck Turgidson’s statement, “But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless _distinguishable_, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed…Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t wouldn’t get our hair mussed! But I do say no more than 10-20 million tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.” But Truman, and later Eisenhower and Kennedy all discouraged and disapproved of this mentality. our posturing has always been in response to an attack, and planning has been one of survivability and retaliation, and for the most part, the same seems to be true of the Soviets, even in the darkest days of the “Evil Empire” when half-dead ideologues ran the country. The SLBM forces existed to bolster the threat of a response strike, not a first strike weapons. To that end, they’ve followed the American SIOP philosophy of attacking industrial centers and “labor assets”, i.e. civilian populations. As repugnant as that may be, it makes more sense from a deterrance standpoint than shooting at empty holes in the ground where the missiles used to be, half an hour ago. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/39 "2005-09-15T18:23:57Z")
What’s the point of having nukes if your enemy doesn’t think you are crazy enough to use them? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2005, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454/40 "2005-09-15T18:57:28Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > What’s the point of having nukes if your enemy doesn’t think you are crazy enough to use them? Indeed. But your enemy must believe that you are rational enough not to use them at the slightest provocation. A barely tenable strategy at best, methinks. As for enemies who are convinced that death in glorious battle that they’ll ascend to a lush paradise with perpetually-renewed virgins waiting upon them, it seems that the threat of an apocalyptic response has less than the intended duress. It’s a silly game, but it keeps the taxpayers in line. “…hope the President doesn’t deploy the B3 bomber before it is fully tested.” “There is no B3 bomber.” “Perfect! Deny it even exists!” Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pre-emptive-nuclear-strikes-wtf/321454.md?page=3)