Today Russia seems to have regained its Nuclear Strike ability.
How many years did the USA have where it had the ability to nuke Moscow and not risk retaliation?
What happened? Did Russia nuke someone?
I am 100% certain that Russia has had the ability to nuke us consistently ever since they first gained that ability. At no point has their nuclear arsenal not been a real threat to us.
It is fortunate that the cold war did not end with a hot one.
Has something happened recently?
I don’t think that we ever had the ability to nuke Moscow and not risk retaliation. The Russian nuclear ability was knocked down a couple of notches after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 80s, but the Russians retained nuclear launch submarines, missiles, and other weapon systems that could deliver a nuke to the U.S. if needed.
From roughly 1945 to 1949. Of course, we would have had to have flown a bomber over Moscow and dropped it; no fancy delivery methods like shooting intercontinental-range rockets from submerged submarines existed yet.
During the 1950s the U.S. convinced itself that the USSR had somehow amassed an enormous number of long-range bomber aircraft, when in fact, the “bomber gap” was totally in favor of the United States. A few years later, we did it again, this time with intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Certainly by the late 1960s or early 70s, though, both sides really did have enough nuclear warheads and the means to reliably deliver them that no conceivable first strike could realistically take out the other side’s capability to inflict catastrophic damage on the aggressor in retaliation.
While the post-Soviet Russian Federation’s armed forces suffered some serious (and at times embarassingly visible) decay in their abilities, they inherited enough nuclear weapons from the USSR that even at their lowest point there was never any real doubt that some of their weapons would function, and even for a pretty low value of “some”, they had enough nuclear weapons to truly fuck up anyone’s day. (And I think they have since definitely bounced back from that lowest point.)
The point of the “lone superpower” was that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the resulting problems - Russia may have had the ability to launch a nuclear strike and possibly destroy the USA and the world. However, it did not necessarily have the financial or military resources to come close to matching the USA to influence other countries.
The USA alone could send a military task force anywhere in the world with enough firepower to enfoce its dictates… plus the financial power to enforce its will. The USA hands out billions to “suggest” courses of action to other countries. Russia was broke, and it was debatable whether half their military equipment worked at times.
Since then, Russia has gotten fairly rich on oil and gas revenue, and has fixed a lot of its economic and military problems. It is still nowhere near the equal of the USA, but it is busy trying to get there.
But… it has never lost its nuclear capability. The treaties in the last 20 years have significantly reduced the number of warheads on both sides, thus making it cheaper and easier to stay in the same nuclear league as the USA.
The bioggest advantage is that the level of paranoia on both sides has gone down considerably now that Russia is so open.
Besides which, there are other nuclear powers, anyway. If the ability to deliver nuclear weapons is what makes a superpower, then China is also a superpower, and arguably the UK, France, and several other nations (the UN security council was, at the time of its founding, the set of nuclear powers, and others have joined the club since).
It’s true that for many years, membership in the Security Council was congruent with the circle of nuclear powers, and they are the only ones legally possessing nuclear arms under the non-proliferation treaty, but it appears to me that this link is more coincidental than intended. It surely wasn’t intended in 1945, when the Security Council was set up - at that time, the U.S. was the only nuclear power. The USSR followed in 1949, the UK in 1952, France in 1960, and the People’s Republic of China in 1964. What is more, at the time the PRC tested its first nuclear bomb, it was not a member of the Security Council - the UN Charter lists China as a permanent member of the Council, but until 1971 this word “China” was interpreted as meaning the Republic of China, the Kuomintang-led regime that is now in control of the island of Taiwan. In 1971, the UN changed its policy and recognised the PRC rather than the RoC as the regime of “China” for UN purposes. In practice, therefore, Taiwan held a permanent seat in the Security Council until 1971, but it has never possessed nuclear weapons.
By lone super power I think it means that Russia and China don’t go around invading other countries like we tend to have done. Russia (under the former Soviet Union) last invaded Afghanistan seriously. While they still may get involved in others dealings they mostly play from the sideline now. Not like the United States that has no qualms sending an aircraft carrier off of your coast and launching air strikes and launching missiles at you to protect their interest.
Not saying that the United States may not be justified in some of their actions, but they are much more likely to do so and thus “act” like a lone super power. There really isn’t much stopping Russia or China from doing the same; they just choose not to use overt military actions as a first choice. They would rather show or bluff force than actually use it.
Well, China doesn’t do it because they are restricted to land-connected countries. No blue-water Navy and not much in the amphibious arena. Note that they didn’t have too much trouble moving into Tibet.
Russia has a similar issue with a lack of effective blue-water strength. They do a lot of the same thing economically as the US, just with oil, gas, and arms not cash. See Syria for a recent example.
“Today”?
I’d love to see the Press Release on that one!
Chechnya? South Ossetia/Abkhazia? Tibet? China’s constant quarrels with its neighbours to the southeast about islands in the South China Sea?
(I do realise that in each of these cases, it’s debatable whether the areas invaded by the respective countries qualify as “other countries”, but the military actions there certainly did not take place in territory that was unquestionably Chinese or Russian, respectively.)
Being a “Super Power” generally implies global military actions; these are neighborhood beefs. Actions of an economic nature are different too.
Last time I looked China had a huge coastline and could have a monster of a blue water navy if they so desired. Generally they don’t mess with anyone but their neighbors, but that is their choice.
Russia isn’t a naval power? While they may not be as powerful numerical wise as they were under the Soviet Union they are still quite the threat and could expand greatly if they had the will to do so.
Your own link states that they have 1 aircraft carrier (and that’s relatively small compared to ours) and a TOTAL of 25 other surface combat vessels (many of which are destroyers). The rest are subs of varying types. No, I would not characterize that as a particularly strong blue-water navy capable of force projection in the face of resistance.
It’s also fairly rare for the Russian Fleets to get more than about 1000-1500 miles away from Russia. The primary exception being some exercises with Venezuela a few years back.
Don’t be so ready to brush aside those subs, they were the backbone of Soviet Naval power and scare the crap out of most people who care about this stuff. Granted the Russian navy is a mere shell of the Soviet fleet in it’s hey day, but there is more to naval power than shear numbers. They choose to keep the sub technology up to date because that is where they literally get more bang for their buck.
But anyway, back to the OP. We haven’t had superiority to nuke Russia out of the game since the early 50’s.
That’s just because China and Russia have much larger neighborhoods than we do. The US borders only two countries, and we fortunately happen to get along pretty well with both of them (fabulously well with one of them, in fact). When we talk about intervening “globally”, though, most of that “globe” is China’s and Russia’s “neighborhood”.
Certainly subs are great for (in order of effectiveness):
- Launching missiles (assuming boomer).
- Fighting other subs.
- Fighting surface ships (particularly merchant marine).
Subs are really bad at projecting force.
Or at least, for projecting non-nuclear force.