The Nuclear Deterrent and its usefulness (or lack thereof)

I'd like to remind you that both the UK and Canada were major contributors to the Manhattan project and were heavily involved from the start through the testing all the way to functional weapons and the end of WWII. The UK had a program before the US, and there were Canadians in the British program, too, (IIRC,) and the British program was merged with Manhattan.

Then why are Americans getting all the credit?

Because Publicity,

in the same way it was the Poles that cracked Enigma but we get the credit

Most people who are into politics or history don't tend to give the US the full credit for it, and I haven't seen any documentary or book that would portray Manhattan as an American solo project. But popular culture does tend to portray it as an all-American effort, and the grain of truth in it is actually pretty substantial in the sense that most of the work was done in the US and paid for by the US, and I don't know if a majority of the scientists were American, but very many of them were.

It's kind of how Americans were only about half the landing force of Normandy and Canadians were more successful in their sector than American or British soldiers were in theirs.

Also, Enigma was captured by a British submarine and the code cracked by Polish decryption experts.

During the Cold War, it was very common for American media to overplay the importance of American forces in the European theatre of WWII, which is why Americans sometimes make the mistake of claiming that WWII started in 1941, when it had already been going for 2 years. Of course, '41 is when the largest and most decisive front opened - the German Eastern front against the USSR, where over 80% of all German casualties took place. This, too, is more or less ignored by American films most of the time.

1941 is also when the battle of El Amudien or whatever happened in North Africa

El Alamein, probably. A lot of shit happened in 1941. EDIT: Both of the battles of El Alamein were in 1942, though.

Another EDIT: This is off-topic, so let's stop reminiscing about our lost youth in WWII. (Oh, weren't you talking from personal experience and memory?)

edited 27th Apr '12 9:02:02 AM by BestOf

Let's not forget: someday we may need those nuclear bombs to redirect a killer asteroid. So, yeah, there's that.

I made a Face Fault at that.

Can missiles be reprogrammed to blow up the bloody things IN SPACE!?

I believe so. I think we even already have plans to do basically just that.

The problem is if an asteroid is a big enough threat where we'd WANT to launch all of our nukes at it, it would be large enough to just smile and keep on coming even after we hit it with our whole stockpile. You'd turn a major disaster into a major radioactive disaster.

edited 27th Apr '12 10:19:10 AM by Vehudur

This should close the derail.

During the Cold War, when the Soviets achieved nuclear parity at the least, the concept of "Massive Retaliation" (invade Europe and we drop the bomb) lost its deterrent credibility and was replaced by "Flexible Response" (conventional defense, backed up by tactical nukes, followed by strategic nukes if the first two failed). IMO the nuclear parity that existed between the U.S. and USSR from the late 1960s to the end of the 1980s created a mutual deterrence to bind both superpowers (and their allies) from exercising any nuclear option in the event of a war in Europe.

edited 27th Apr '12 1:18:22 PM by Breakerchase

So, in the ends, Nukes weren't actually a North-North game, but a North-South game, except that the North-North interaction got much more attention because the North-South thing was, well, a sure thing.

Depends. That much force could knock it off course.

we couldn't destroy it but maybe knock it towards the sun or at least away from us. even if it just got broken into pieces that would be better.

Let's not continue the derail about asteroids, please.

Are there any Russian or French tropers here?

I wanted to chime in since Canada's nuclear "arsenal" was mentioned. First off, the Canadian nuclear arsenal, when it existed, was rolled into our conventional armed forces. We had nuclear missile armed fighterjets (Yes, that's right, Canada made nuclear sidewinder missiles) and also area-of-denial nuclear missiles. None of our nuclear weapons were first-strike capable or even second-strike capable. At best, we could blast a nuke in the air in an attempt to knock out enemy ICB Ms, however most engineers/scientists have agreed in postmortem analysis that the technology would have likely failed 99% of the time in trying to do that (not the least of which was because our missiles were too damn slow to do it).

That was not and never was a nuclear deterrent. It was just nuclear weapons for our military.

Unfortunately, because of the perception that any nuclear weapon was one and the same, we were targetted by the Soviets across the board by their ICB Ms. Our decision was that if we dismantled our nukes and threw away our nuclear program we would no longer be a target. That is, we decided that nuclear deterrent made as much sense as pointing guns in each other's faces, rather than just... not point guns at each other as a better deterrent to total annihilation. In essence, this is a case of a middle power deciding to do one-way arms reduction.

edited 28th Apr '12 10:55:22 AM by breadloaf

As a side note, South Africa also gave up its entire nuclear arsenal.

We needed a deterrent to stop Uncle Joe from doing anything except send the odd bomber to probe our AA defensive shield.

As a Nuclear Detterent I would call that the literal Sword of Damocles. There were several close call events between U.S. and Russia that could have possibly resulted in all out nuclear war. One such event had a bomber base at Defcon 2 with planes heading down the strip before they were called off.

Unfortuneatly nuclear weapons are out there we can't do anything to change that now. They been used as both military and political leverage in the past and any nation who has done so is not likely to give them up readily.

Voter pressure? Do we, the voters, actually want to stop being able to wave nukes at our neighbors' facesHAVE nukes?

Until every nuclear country has unbreakable laws preventing their government from starting a war against my country, I want the US to keep the nuclear option.

How about unbreakable laws against using nukes against your country?

Well here's food for thought.

One of the nuclear armed countries of today invented the concept of "No First Use" and is the ONLY country to have zero fine print on that. They have no caveats to it and when asked by the media repeatedly over the years have maintained that stance. Although, it's probably likely that if you pushed them far enough they might do a first strike, for all practical purposes that would probably mostly be viewed a retaliatory strike anyway.

In any case, this country also maintains a nuclear arsenal that is strictly based upon the minimum necessary number of missiles in order to level any single enemy super power. No more and no less. Increasing levels of anti-ballistic systems have necessarily forced this number to increase, or otherwise have missile improvements. That is, this is a one-way reduction of arms to the minimal level necessary for nuclear deterrence.

In addition to that minimal nuclear arsenal, this country further stated that they would instantly give up their nuclear weapons so long as the other super powers agreed to do so at the same time. As an effort to show their sincerity in this, they have signed agreements to ban nuclear weapons in space, agreed to not develop anti-ballistic systems and additionally has yet to increase their nuclear arsenal in recent times despite the technological advances in anti-ballistic missile systems.

I'll give people three guesses which country that is.

My point is, if there's a country that can do one-way arms reduction, then most certainly the rest of us can do so as well.

edited 28th Apr '12 9:15:46 PM by breadloaf

But a country doesn't really need to have its own nuclear missiles in order to have a nuclear deterrant going; it just needs to be allied with a nation that has nuclear missiles. And in the modern world, every country is allies with at least one nuclear power.