If the probability of the intel being correct was 100%, yes.
If it was 99%, almost.
If it was 95%, slightly less so.
If it was 90%, slightly less so again.
If it was 80%, even less so.
If it was 50%, less so again.
If it was less than 50%, no by definition.
Pick one.
No, you’d call China. China is the only country that has any significant influence over North Korea. China doesn’t want a nuclear war occurring and they also don’t want to see the United States overrun North Korea. The Chinese government will call up Pyongyang and tell them to knock that shit off.
And if Kim III has gone totally off his rocker and won’t listen, then China will say the word. And a few hours later, it’ll be announced that the Supreme Leader has tragically died and General Pak is the new provisional head of state.
Only if they actually launched missiles headed for North America and our interceptors were not able to take them out.
They land and kill Americans, NK is glass. All of it. No threats from China or Russia would stop me.
Tough problem. In the real world there is no such thing as 100% reliable intel. Intel is always flaky. Hindsight will validate or invalidate it. But in foresight all you have is “maybe” with various unknowable degrees of confidence. Even a formal confidence assessment has error bars on the confidence estimate about the confidence.
The OP confused matters by proposing a scenario when what he wanted was answers to a question of principle.
As I interpret it, the question of principle is simply “Is it ever appropriate for the US to strike first against a major population center using nukes?”
To which I would say “Are we more concerned with military relations in the moment, or how posterity will think of the righteousness of our cause and our actions in 100 years?” Which are we as a society and which ought we as a society be more concerned about?
In hindsight interning Japanse-Americans during WWII was a pretty grave blot on all we stand for as a nation. I think in hindsight the PATRIOT Act (an especially Orwerllian title) will be seen as another colossal betrayal of all the Founding Fathers and generations of Americans thereafter stood (and still stand) for.
The MAD doctrine was arrived at by both powers during the Cold War precisely because the alternative, launch on warning/intel, was statistically guaranteed to destroy much of the planet within just a few years. Choosing to absorb the enemy’s first volley was the price of avoiding starting a nation-ending war willy-nilly. Both teams accepted that logic, albeit via different paths.
In the hypothetical NK doesn’t have the wherewithal to do truly nation-ending damage to the US. Whereas the converse is clearly true, albeit with some collateral damage to our allies (“I’m not saying our allies wouldn’t get their hair mussed, Mr. President.”)
The President’s job isn’t to ensure zero Americans get harmed on his watch. His job is to keep the country in good shape to hand off to the next guy. That includes avoiding things like dumb foreign wars, causing economic melt-downs, triggering internal race- or class warfare, etc.
Incinerating Pyongyang based solely on intel, with all the real world consequences appurtenant thereunto falls, in my book, under reckless endangerment to the planet as a whole and to the US’s interests broadly and intelligently defined.
It’d sure play well to the “Amerca! Fuck Yeah!!” crowd. Which almost for certain marks it out as a bad idea.
You left out a couple of other possibilities.
“I would use nukes, but only after they had already nuked South Korea.”
“I would use nukes, but only after they had already nuked Japan.”
Yeah, I know; that was meant as my response to the other thread, the closed thread, which accidentally postulated that Moscow was going to launch nukes.
What can I say? Sometimes a guy like the OP posts something about an impending nuclear launch, but gets major details wrong, and realizes too late that he’s made a mistake, and so sends a belay my last message, except a guy like me has already reacted, because, well, hey, you know how it is: we all live in an imperfect world where getting stuff 100% right the first time is, uh, really hard, or something.
If a rabid dog tries and fails to bite you, you still put it down. I would inform China and Russia of what I was doing, and I would be launching the strike with the intention of destroying the people responsible rather than the entire population, but if they try to nuke the US, they don’t live to try a second time.
Pretty much this. I wouldn’t glass the country on intel, but if they launched, all bets are off.
It is the avowed policy of our country never to strike first with nuclear weapons.
Well, not really, but I’d nevertheless wait for the launch. It’s not that I have no confidence in the intel. It’s that I have no confidence in my confidence in the intel. 95% would be good enough for a first strike, if I were 100% certain in that 95%, but I don’t think that’s possible.
Even if the intel is 100% accurate, all it is saying is that the NK government is planning on launching their missile in six hours. Getting them to change their mind and not launch is a better strategy than launching our own pre-emptive strike. Zero nuclear attacks is better than one nuclear attack, ours or theirs.
I hate to say it, but I decided I’d only fire after they had launched an attack. I may be borrowing from FDR here. Sometimes you have to let the enemy bomb your territory so it’s clear they’re the aggressor. I seriously considered bombing at 80% likelihood of an accurate report.
I feel more strongly about this given that the USA is thus far the only state to “nuke” cities in war, and if by a preëmptive attack we maintain that distinction, we might be seen as a sort of arrogant nuclear aggressor.
Nukes are not to be detonated lightly nor preëmptively. They are a deterrent, and Assured Destruction doctrine indicates that they are to be used in retaliation, not as a first strike.
Part of this depends on what “very reliable spy” means—like, a NK dissident (even a high-placed one who so far has been completely forthcoming, or was this 007/Derek Flint/Napoleon Solo reporting that they’ve personally watched the ICBMs being fueled up with S-Stoff/Schwein-Stoff while Kim Jong-Un cackles evilly?
Also…is it an election year? That’s not an entirely glib question, mind—I also have to consider, if I don’t launch, if I, my party, and my political ideology are going to get pilloried and driven out of power for letting six US cities and their inhabitants be incinerated for the sake of my own conscience, or for not looking like a big-ol’-meanie to the rest of the world. Man…you think the Reichstag Fire had a really bad effect on a political stage?
Hell, maybe the best thing to do would be to launch, and then immediately resign—and possibly submit myself to the Hague, to take responsibility for, or make a case for justifying my actions in court—or just commit suicide.
…or maybe the North Koreans launched first, possibly by mistake, hitting a couple of the sparser portions of the DMZ, apparently to open up corridors for invasion, an action which, combined with the OP’s intel, left me little choice but to immediately launch a massive retaliatory attack on North Korea, obliterating Pyongyang and most of their military command structure. Along with any inconvenient evidence that they hadn’t attacked first—or possibly weren’t even going to.
I have been to Pyongyang and find that once I have been somewhere, I develop a connection to that place. This is as true of Pyongyang as it is of Dongola, Sudan or Port Louis, Mauritius.
Once I have direct contact with the sights, sounds, smells etc, and know some people there, it would be very hard for me to attack the place.
WWDMcAD?
Based on your scenario, it is going to be less than 50%. So I wouldn’t nuke anyone.
Suppose it’s 50/50. I’ve got six hours, so I get Red China on the phone, and have them put me in contact with the leadership. If Kim (or the leader of Hypotheticandia) won’t talk, I ask them to pass along a message that, the instant we see a launch, Pyongyang/the launch site will cease to exist. I allocate 20-30% of available resources for the mission of making Pyongyang into radioactive glass. The rest I allocate to try to shoot down whatever missiles get launched.
That might even be successful -
Regards,
Shodan
Killing 2 million innocent people is not an option I would ever chose for the sake of “retaliation.”
My scenario gives seven separate levels of probability. The point of the hypothetical isn’t to pick the one which you believe best reflects the world we actually live in, or the limits of our intelligence gathering capabilities. The point is to pick the level of probability at which you would refrain from making a first strike. I don’t care if you think the higher levels of certainty are unrealistic. I know they’re unrealistic. What I’m trying to find out is how threatened you would need to feel in order to take pre-emptive action to protect your citizens.
That’s why I didn’t put an option for ‘Other’ in the poll. You can’t phone China, because I say so. You can’t shoot down the missiles, because I say so. You can’t do anything which isn’t covered in the hypothetical, because I say so. That’s just all there is to it. I quote myself from the OP:
“At this point, I want to remind anyone that this is a thought experiment designed to test one’s commitment to a principle. The question is really “How threatened would you, as POTUS, need to feel before deciding a nuclear first strike on Pyongyang was justified?” If you have an objection along the lines of “Well, geopolitically speaking, options XYZ wouldn’t be valid because if I did that then the Chinese would blahblahblah,” or “Destroying the missiles wouldn’t work because militarizzzzzzzzzzzz,” or “I could never be 100% certain of anything.”, then you’re not really getting into the spirit of it. Assume whatever you need to assume in order to address the central question.”
For example, I chose 90% certainty. I know that, if I’m wrong, I would be guilty of a terrible crime. However, I also know that my first duty as POTUS is to protect my citizens. 90% certainty is my personal threshold, given the stakes.
I think the only choice is to wait until the launch is confirmed. A nuclear first strike on a populated city would result in international pariah-hood for the launcher, no matter the circumstances, for a generation or more. A retaliatory strike would not. I think a generation of international pariah-hood would be more damaging (and possibly far more damaging) to America’s national security and national interests than a (possible dud/possible shot-down) nuclear strike on a major city.
So use diplomacy up until the very last minute, including threats of overwhelming nuclear retaliation, and then launch a retaliatory strike only if a launch against the US is confirmed.
EDIT: Consider using the six hours to evacuate every major city in America. This would be an epic clusterfuck, but it might mitigate the potential loss of life as much as possible.
Nobody wants to kill two million people. But sometimes the threat of killing two million of their people is what keeps them from killing two million of our people.
Sorry, but it’s a hard premise to accept as viable. It’s like asking “Somebody is planning on murdering you. Your only two choices are to do nothing and let yourself be murdered or kill the murderer and his entire family. Which do you choose?” Why wouldn’t I seek an option where nobody gets murdered?
Your scenario creates a similar false dichotomy. The only options you’re offering is to let North Korea launch a nuclear attack against us or to launch a nuclear attack against North Korea. Why wouldn’t I seek an option that prevents both nuclear attacks?