The Nuclear Deterrent and its usefulness (or lack thereof)

In this video, from acclaimed eighties political satire Yes Minister, Jim Hacker, who has only just begun being a Prime Minister, is confronted with the very difficult position of being the one who has to "press the button" (actually he'd have to dictate a code to a secretary that would send it to a... anyway, it's not just a button). There, the head of the scientific division, who is a political outsider and thus, apparently, not bound by political tangles, explains to him very bluntly how the nukes are useless because the Russians would never leave him in a position where his only choice is to push the button.

India and Pakistan have had the nuke for decades, and have been in wars against each other despite that, without resorting to them.

The USA have more warheads than are needed to destroy the world several times over. So does Russia. Isn't it time for those bombs to be eliminated? What use are such weapons anyway?

edited 27th Apr '12 3:02:51 AM by TheHandle

This is almost a "link-discuss" thread, which we usually wouldn't open. I'm giving this one a shot because for some reason I feel that we can open this up easily.

Before we start, we need a summary of the video in the OP and a definition of "nuclear deterrent" in case there are folks who don't know what it is.

Please add those to the OP.

Also: I know Iran and Israel are relevant to this, but both those topics already have a thread, so we should be more interested in talking in the abstract in this thread or perhaps discussing the main players of the Cold War. That way, we're not as prone to derails as we would be if we included the Middle East and Persia.

Can I keep the Indian subcontinent?

EDIT: How bout now?

edited 27th Apr '12 3:07:36 AM by TheHandle

Yeah, I don't wanna take that away. There's a topic for that, too, but since they have a history of having the deterrent and still fighting, I can't block them out. With Israel and Iran, at least I can justify avoiding those derails and flames with the fact that Iran has never had nukes and Israel is such an open question anyway that it would be hard to really discuss it in terms of nuclear policy alone, but India and Pakistan... Yeah. You can have them, but it's still limited to this topic.

Of course I could allow discussion about Iran and Israel and then limit it totally to the topic, but I know I'd have to give something like three dozen off-topic thumps in the first 40 pages of this thread (if this thread grows that large, which I think it might.) That's from experience. India and Pakistan are not such heated topics that they could not be contained, so go ahead.

Well, about the reasoning in the video, I quite disagree, because the councillor restricts uncertainty to one side while it remains on both: as long as the "last resort", "supreme interests" and so on remain deliberately vague, even a "conventional" strike would appear dangerous for the agressor. War between nuclear countries seems to be a game where noone wants uncertainties when they start playing, because any single mistake lead to annihilation.

So, with the Cold War case, NATO didn't keep enough forces in Europe to pull a large-scale invasion, thus leading the initiative to the Soviets, but on the other hand, they had three independant nuclear powers, each one with different interests. The U.S. had overwhelming power, but could be convinced to throw Europe to the wolves if a conventional counterattack was deemed impossible and CONUS wasn't striked itself. U.K. could be seen as aligned with the U.S. and maybe convinced too to not fire if not fired upon directly, keeping the whole thing conventional in Western Europe. But on the other hand, maybe they would fire. If so, when? Would the P.M. ultimately be a buffoon unable to show enough strength in face of full attack or would he/she would burn Moscow to cinders when the first divisions are halfway to the Rhine? And then you've got the Frenchies, directly on the line of fire (no sea or ocean to protect them), but with political disparities, strong communists (at the time) allied to a gaullist policy of strategic independance relying on those nukes. Would the President flush his SSBN on USSR after a warning strike or could a coup be staged? Or maybe a separate peace allowing France to remain nominally independant in a Soviet-occupied Europe?

Hypotheses, possibilities, uncertainties. As long as no plan is fool-proof, noone will be crazy enough to try tickling those nuclear powers. Honestly, I think one of the main reasons the Cold War remained cold was those two Euro arsenals which complicated the whole game to the point noone would try starting it in the hopes it would remain a "gentlemen's game" where only the European battlefield would be nuked.

edited 27th Apr '12 3:35:24 AM by RufusShinra

And what a Gentleman's Game that would've been, killing an entire continent...

(Or sub-continent if you want to be dismissive.)

In the edition of Dr Strangelove that I have, the extras are very nice. They include an interview of Robert MacNamara where he recalls a meeting he had with JFK where he was asked to discuss the doctrine of Mutual Assuder Destruction and the Nuclear Deterrent and give the President his advice.

I'm gonna paraphrase what he said: "If the Soviets launch a conventional invasion of West Europe, we will retaliate with nuclear weapons. That's the official policy. But if that really happens, mr President, don't really launch nuclear weapons. Whatever happens, don't ever launch nuclear weapons."

If he really said that to Kennedy, I can't imagine that other Secretaries of Defence would not have said the same thing to their Presidents. And I can't really imagine a Soviet equivalent actually advising the head of the Communist party that nukes should ever be used. There is no scenario in which that would be cost-effective. Having the threat would be cost-effective, maybe, but launching nukes would never be worth it if there's any chance that you, too, would become a target.

edited 27th Apr '12 3:58:24 AM by BestOf

The most important thing, IMHO, would be to keep really, really good and durable communication if something like that happened, because the only way to prove to the other guy you're mad enough to do it is... to do it. So, maybe something in the line of "Calling the other guy on the Red Phone (well, writing to him, to be more precise) to tell him 'We are launching a tactical nuclear weapon at this position in half an hour. If you have something really, really important there you want to save (member of family, something or someone that the loss of could push the guy to a large mistake out of grief), get it out NOW because we are going to do it whatever you answer. You can nuke a position of ours in retaliation if you want, but this is the first and last warning: the war will end this week. Either in negociation or in fire.' Then, you fire the tacnuke to the target at the announced time (maybe in two salvos to make sure air defences cannot shoot all of the missiles down). Then start negociating and be ready to drop some of your demands."

If you can make sure the other guy knows EXACTLY what's going on and just had the proof you have the balls to start it, negociations could work. It's not fool-proof, of course, but such a scenario, IMHO, would allow everyone to take a look at the situation and realize what everyone is ready to do if cooler heads can't prevail right here, right now. One of the reasons that I don't believe in the tactical use of nuclear weapons. They are political messages, every single one of them, saying "I can break the taboo, and the next thing I'm going to break is your nation".

By the time you have to use nukes in the battlefield, nothing does matter anymore. The war those guys are fighting for is lost and the only thing worth defending are the survivors of the whole nightmare.

This segment opens the series, and it's really really worrying, in a flippant way. What, indeed, if the Head of Government of the relevant countries were to go off their rocker? Also, when do you get to test the weapons?

They'd be removed from Command Responsibility, I guess. Either way, if they gave the Order, it won't be listened to.

By the way, French Nuclear Weapons during The Cold War weren't co-ordinated with NATO. See this from The Last Flight of XM594, a spin-off from Protect And Survive A Timeline:

edited 27th Apr '12 4:44:05 AM by Greenmantle

That presumes that we know they are bonkers.

You know, I'm not sure "uncoordinated" is the same as "charging in blindly".

At least for the US nuclear forces, "leader has flipped his lid" (or just operating from an incorrect assumption) is addressed by the requirement for a confirmation of a launch order by someone on a relatively small list of people in senior positions, all of which have to be confirmed for their position by the Senate IIRC. See Jack Ryan's reaction in the novel The Sum of All Fears.

TLDR

edited 27th Apr '12 5:03:36 AM by Nohbody

I think we're long past needing nuclear weapons. The USA and Russia really need to decommission their stockpiles. Honestly, waving their nukes in the collective faces of countries they don't get on well with isn't helping anyone.

If their governments are truly concerned about nuclear threats, they should work on countering them, not revenge-driven wars.

I find our age to be a baffling one. The age of nuclear politics I mean. How much do nukes really worth when they are being made and after they're launched? We all know what happens after they go off, so I doubt our faint strands of democracy can even withstand the priority of their existence. All for the sake of political advantages perhaps?

I'm having trouble parsing that post. Can you please rephrase that?

Pretty Much. A Nuclear Deterrent is just that; it's not designed to be used. If it is used, then something has gone very, very wrong. In theory, the Nuclear Deterrent stops other more agressive Nations attacking the country, in fear that they might use it. Or, in Britain's case, it stops them being treated like dishwater by the Americans — but generally, having a Nuclear Deterrent means a country needs to be listened to Internationally, because they have Nukes.

I don't know much about the rest of my fellow soldiers during the Cold War, but at the time I was pretty much set in mind that if the political wankers were mad enough to start lobbing nukes at each other, all bets were off.

My loyalty would have died with them.

Yeah, I mean it's like more than one side will lose credibility when nukes are fired. But my point was : why making them at the first place? What's the worth of being a nuclear power at all when nukes can't be fired without massive backlash from the public?

To quote Dr Strangelove, a deterrent is only useful if the other side knows you have it and believes you will use it.

If either of conditions aren't met, then Nukes are useless.

However, India have publicly said that they won't use Nukes as a first strike option.

Well, there are a few reasons for Nuclear Weapons; it means that a country has to be listened to in the International Arena, both by Allies and Foes, because it puts them on the "Top Table" — a small set of countries that have Nuclear Weapons — it's a matter of International Prestige, as it were, and helpful for Diplomacy (Find out why Britain developed Nuclear Weapons).

And what about Nuclear Latency, the so-called "Japan Option"?

Hence Israel's Policy.

edited 27th Apr '12 5:39:35 AM by Greenmantle

I thought we agreed not to talk about the Zionist state?

Canada has nuke-building ability too...

But, then again, are they going to build those weapons for the very first time, without having ever tested them, in case of war?

In the case of Britain, which had a 72-hour margin in case of Soviet invasion, that's out of the question... isn't it?

edited 27th Apr '12 5:43:27 AM by TheHandle

I wasn't going to say any more on that country*

As for why Britain Developed Nuclear Weapons post-war, to quote Wikipedia:

edited 27th Apr '12 5:48:46 AM by Greenmantle

The US have silos in Saudi Arabia?!

No*

edited 27th Apr '12 5:51:09 AM by Greenmantle

The problem with dismantling nuclear arsenals is that you'd have to get all the nuclear powers to do so simultaneously. If one country holds onto their nukes while everyone else gets rid of theirs, then that country pretty much has the rest of the world over a barrel.

edited 27th Apr '12 6:25:27 AM by RavenWilder

Do, they, actually? What would their electorates think of it?

Nevermind.