There are a number of fundamental misunderstandings in the o.p. and many of the follow-on responses. First of all, second strike capability isn’t the same as retaliatory counterattack launch-on-warning; second strike capability is the capacity to protect and maintain a force in reserve following receipt of an attack. Hardened silos, mobile launchers, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) are considered to provide second strike capability because they can be held in reserve to confirm both the source and extent of an attack, and provide a measure of time in which to collect information and make a rational judgement regarding a response. Second, while Assured Destruction (the “Mutual” was tacked on later as an attempt by critics at the Hudson Institute to ridicule the doctrine) formed the basis for certain decisions about development and deployment of the nuclear triad, including not constructing greater numbers of launchers and weapons based upon effective parity (i.e. at a given threshold you have enough overkill capability to assure destruction of your enemy, regardless of how many weapons he throws at you), AD was never official doctrine with regard to the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), no called Contingency Plans (CONPLAN), and the essential tenets (perfect detection without false positives, perfect knowledge of opponent intent, rational actors, et cetera) of AD were never met by the United States and the Soviet Union at any time during the Cold War and arguably exist only in a utopian context, so the doctrine can hardly be credited with having “saved” humanity during that conflict, and indeed many of the systems set up to assure positive response in support of a Launch-On-Warning order had demonstrated flaws. (See the 1983 Petrov Incident for an unassailable demonstration of this.)
Nuclear strategist Herman Kahn poked fun at many of the essential implausibilities in deterrence theory in his lectures, which were largely the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s retooling of the serious Peter George novel Red Alert into the satirical Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The most vocal public proponent of systems deterrence theory and former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara (who served under both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, including through the Cuban Missile Crisis) later admitted that deterrence theory didn’t work, nearly resulted in a number of close calls that could have led to extensive or complete nuclear exchange over miscommunications and misunderstandings, and that “The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations.” The question of the o.p. serves to highlight the fragile reasoning of deterrence; that is, that threatening to use nuclear weapons is a bluff game that only works as long as no one is actually willing to throw down. It is a game where any call has every player holding the Dead Man’s Hand. Kubrick’s “Doomsday Device” (directly borrowed from Kahn) is both the logical extension of Assured Destruction–a “perfect” computer that can’t make a mistake and won’t hesitate to respond–and a demonstration of why the application is badly flawed. When General Turgidson complains, “Gee, I wish we had one of them Doomsday machines,” it underlies the absurdity, to wit that if anyone has such a device, regardless of who they are or what their intent may be, the entire world, including the holder, is held hostage to any whim of a despot with nothing to lose or undetected error in software or hardware of the system that may cause it to initiate attack automatically.
Some observation is due regarding nuclear winter claims as well. Understand that the basis for these claims is the assumption of uniform distribution across a dry surface covered with flammable material. (It is the combustion caused by fires resulting from the thermal pulse, not the heavier ejecta from the blasts themselves, that creates suspended material in the atmosphere.) The model used in supporting the TTAPS conclusions was a very primitive climate model that made a number of other simplifying assumptions including assuming purely dry deposition. The reality is that while a widespread nuclear exchange will no doubt result in regional and perhaps even global climate effects from suspended soot and particulates, this will be limited to at most a few years, not the decades of “winter”, and that the effect of released aerosol compounds on the upper atmosphere where effects will be more persistent are not well understood. It is likely that the Southern Hemisphere will only be lightly affected due to equatorial division of the atmospheric flows and the lack of significant targets.
Nonetheless, the o.p. presents an interesting question of ethics, to wit, even if an attack is certain and intended, is it appropriate to respond in such a manner as to kill millions of people who had no control over the attack? (Grumman’s argument to limit attacks only to the chain of command must be assumed to be not feasible; we can assume that the leaders will secure themselves in protected bunkers or mobile command posts to wait out the response, and then will use all remaining industry and war materiel to further whatever goals had them begin this attack.) Setting aside cultural and ideological specifics–for the purposes of this exercise, we’ll call ourselves the Orange Team, and our Opponents that Purple Team–it may seem that the ethical response is to accept martyrdom versus slaughtering millions of innocents, but if this is a truly unprovoked attack we have to assume either malfeasance or terminal incompetence on the part of the Purple Team, and that they may proceed to attack other nations or cultures as well as mop up any Orange Team protectorates and close allies. In this case we are ethically bound to respond in kind and destroy both their offensive capability and the infrastructure to support it (transportation, communication, production) as a necessary exercise in total war doctrine (i.e. that the populace is culpable in the effort if not the decision by supporting the production of weapons and all of the ancillary effort to maintain that capability). This is the “right” thing to do, although I have to agree with Czarcasm that this falls best in the description of “dead right”, and is of little solace to any survivors on either side.
All of this goes to point out that strategic weapons–nuclear, biological, chemical, and even conventional explosives and incendiaries used in a strategic bombing campaign–make a fiction out of any ethical “rules of war”. The capabilities of these weapons encourages their use by the Orange Team (before the Purple Team uses them on us) and yet the scale of damage that these weapons can do is beyond a single person’s comprehension. War becomes not the skillful exercise of discipline and tactical superiority that is portrayed heroically in film, but statistics and logistics in which both combatants and bystanders are just tick marks in a ledger, losses to be calculated against theoretical gains in strategic and political position.
In the situation posited by the o.p., there is no way for the respondent to realistically make an ethical decision given the time and knowledge constraints and conditionality of the scenario. He or she must simply respond as doctrine requires, and per the CONPLAN provisions that have been previously thought out and vetted by teams of experts. As a leader, to believe that one is more righteous in a off-the-cuff decision than a large team of professional planners who have spent a collective thousands of man-years pondering the threats and responses is the pinnacle of supreme arrogance, regardless of motives.
Stranger
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