The Nuclear Deterrent and its usefulness (or lack thereof)

Well... no. I mean that's the definition of the third world; countries that aren't allied with any of the super powers in any meaningful way. So there's a lot of countries that don't have nuclear weapons.

It's always been the case that we've believed that if both sides had weapons that were "too" powerful, then you would have MAD and therefore war is averted. But that's not really true. I mean, what were the real reasons the cold war never went hot? I would suggest geography. What exactly is the point of randomly launching nukes at one another? There isn't one.

War revolves around many things but the key point is that there usually is never a time when "irrational crazy dictators" have ever actually mounted any offensive that didn't have a real economic or political goal, both of which are shaped by geography. The USSR could only truthfully take over neighbours, they already had their buffer states after the fallout from WW 2, and then they could potentially take western Europe or China/East Asia. Either one was an expense that would require the use of nuclear weapons, not to mention tens of millions of foot soldiers to march their way (at least for Europe and China would be even more); that is, an expense that the USSR could never afford.

My point being that it really has nothing to do with nuclear weapons per se, but nuclear weapons represent military power. If the country doesn't think it capable of winning a war they don't launch. And if they think they are capable of winning, they would launch an offensive nukes or not.

Even if you're not close allies with a nuclear power, launching a nuclear strike on another nation is considered such a Moral Event Horizon moment that, so long as another nuclear power is at least vaguely sympathetic towards you, you should be able to expect them to retaliate on your behalf.

And what makes nuclear missiles different from other forms of military power is just how much is at stake. It's possible to lose a conventional war but still keep your government and major cities standing; losing a nuclear war makes that sort of acceptable loss much harder to achieve.

edited 29th Apr '12 12:42:44 AM by RavenWilder

The last major conventional war didn't really leave much standing in a lot of countries, except we don't care about them because they were communist. For a non-communist country, nuclear bombs did less damage to Japan than firebombing (as in, a per city basis).

It's all about perception. Once someone starts firing nukes, the bar is lowered on expectations. If say, Saudi Arabia launched nukes at Iran, who is going to step in there? Nobody. At best, we'd deal with the aftermath with some NG Os, some whining on the media or whatever, but I seriously doubt any of the veto-powers in the UN would lift a finger.

The "deterrent" is about as useful as any previous superweapon. People thought the machinegun, being able to mow down tens of thousands of soldiers in a day, would be terrible enough to end all wars. Surprise, we were willing to accept millions dying. The instant we have a major power with nuclear weapons thinking it can win a war, they're going to launch an offensive.

EDIT: To clarify my point/reasoning, I believe that the cold war stayed cold because USA and USSR never felt they had enough of a reason/advantage to go to war. Even without the spectre of nuclear weapons, I think that the USSR simply felt it didn't have the resources to actually take over Europe. Similarly, the USA didn't think it could actually take on USSR, so it was mostly a "we'll pre-emptively fire on you if you invade". Of course, with neither side willing to actually launch an invasion (as from what I can see in history, USSR was far less willing to invade and not because of nukes), nobody had a reason to launch nukes.

edited 29th Apr '12 11:51:46 AM by breadloaf

Fun fact! Since the invention of nuclear weapons, war has gotten significantly less bad. As in, the total number of global war deaths was increasing geometrically up until 1945 (where it peaked), then nosedived and has since been steady at roughly 1 million per year. This is total deaths in war for the whole planet, so 1 million may sound like a lot, but it's not as big a number as you would think. There's evidence that this is due to influence of nuclear deterrence — the consequences of starting a war big enough to justify the use of nukes are so bad that no one was willing to risk starting a war that big. Unfortunately, it's been years since I ran across this info, and I can't remember the scholarly name for the phenomenon, so my Google-fu has failed me in rediscovering it. I couldn't even find data on global war deaths. I realize that citing statistics from memory without having an actual source to back them up is lame as hell, but I simply cannot find them again — if anyone else could find those statistics (or something that contradicts them!), I'd appreciate it.

In any case, nuclear weapons are one of those things that you can't just pretend don't exist. You can't disinvent them, so instead you just have to deal with them. The system that we have now seems to be the best way that anyone's come up with for doing that — it's worth noting that, despite a few close calls during the Cold War, nuclear weapons have never been used in anger after the two initial bombings of Japan. Considering that was nearly 70 years ago, and there have been several armed conflicts between nuclear-capable states since then, that's a pretty good track record. The biggest danger that nukes pose now isn't nuclear states suddenly starting WWIII, it's crazy people like North Korea or terrorists using nukes on someone without regard for the consequences (because they're crazy). Which is why it makes sense to try to avoid the spread of nuclear weapons (eg, keep Iran from getting them), but why decommissioning the ones we already have doesn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense.

edited 29th Apr '12 6:47:20 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

breadloaf, the machine gun isn't quite comparable to nuclear weapons. Mainly due to the fact that machine guns are focused and the nuke is a massive hammer, you can't point it at the soldiers, it's cities or nothing.

Fight smart, not fair.

Depends on size and yield of weapons used, and no, they are not the same thing. The only tactic our collective General Staffs had to stop the Russkies on the North German Plain was to hit them with tactical nuclear weapons and chemical warheads.

I doubt very much if those plans ever got completely binned when the Wall came tumbling down.

We were willing to accept tens of millions of deaths back then only to do it again a few decades later. What is the difference between this and that? Scale. The question asked is "Will society be willing to accept that many casualties?"

Most of USSR and China was levelled back in WW 2 with every city affected burned to the ground, and especially in China/Korea, the farmlands were salted, the people were doused with biological weapons and the battlefields were soaked in toxic chemical weapons. Do I think that given how many tens of millions of "collateral" civilians that were butchered in that war gives any credence to nuclear deterrence? I don't think so.

The Japanese were willing to level every city and kill everybody in it back then, they'd be willing to do it today. Additionally, by the time the Americans were doing the island hopping, the Japanese already suffered over a million military casualties in East Asia. Who in their right mind would possibly think that taking over China/Korea/Phillipines/Vietnam and so on would cost few lives? That's the only thing that nukes offer, that you'd inflict heavy losses on any invader. But I mean, Japan was willing to think that it'd win with no losses. I mean if we disregard everyone but China, that is still an idiotic prospect. Human stupidity can go pretty damn far.

Whether nukes get used or not is about whether there is a flashpoint hot enough to turn into a real armed conflict of a scale in which nuclear weapons are required. That'd be those world war scenarios, or regional war scenarios. So really of all the problems in the world, only India/Pakistan present a possible nuclear war. Even before they had nuclear weapons, they only had light border skirmishes. Neither side has ever been willing to go into full scale conflict.

edited 1st May '12 8:03:12 PM by breadloaf

The theory between machine guns and nukes is the same, but the difference is in the outcome. People thought that using automatic weapons would make war so horrible that people would never fight them again, which is why World War I was called "the war to end all wars". The fact that WWII happened showed that they were wrong, obviously.

Nukes is the same thing writ large. Nuclear devastation is so terrible that no one will be willing to risk it by starting a nuclear war. The difference is that, so far, that is actually what's happened. Maybe people said the same thing about machine guns in 1930, but if anyone ever actually starts a nuclear war, I'll concede the point.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

But... that doesn't prove anything. If we successfully manage to avoid nuclear war, which I hope we do, it doesn't prove nuclear deterrence. As I'm attempting to argue that other factors are so much more important, and that all previous attempts at developing a weapon "so terrible it would end all wars" have ultimately failed, we should do well to heed this and play up those other factors instead of developing massive nuclear arsenals.

The problem with believing in nuclear deterrence is that we will develop such large nuclear stockpiles that if we were wrong, it's very game-ending.

You're like twenty years behind the times, dude. Both the United States and Russia (the nations with the two biggest nuclear arsenals) are letting their stockpiles shrink. How many nukes you have is less important than whether you have any or not in terms of MAD. It doesn't matter if you can blow up an enemy nation once or twelve times over; if you can blow them up, it behooves them not to fuck with you.

This is why complete nuclear disarmament is unlikely. MAD hinges on both sides having the ability to destroy each other. If one side gives up that ability, then they have nothing to keep the other side from blackmailing them with the threat of nuclear annihilation — or actually nuking them and then conquering the rubble. Unlike virtually every other type of military force, nuclear weapons have no counter other than MAD. That's the key qualitative difference between nukes and machine guns.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Not really.

There's a reason why we banned ABM technology, because it removes the concept of MAD. And we embarked much further under that with Bush Jr, though there were previous attempts at nuclear shields.

One-way disarmament has already happened, and I already indicted there was a country that did so, but I won't name it so as not to cloud the discussion with political slants. And no, they didn't face political blackmail. The reason is because that matters close to nothing today. You really think that if Russia dropped it's nuclear arsenal down to say 10 nukes (barely enough to blow up a major city in USA), that the next day we could be "AHA, ME GOT NUCLEAR WEAPONS, SIGN THESE REALLY BAD TRADE TERMS AND GIVE US YOUR OIL!". It won't fly. What, we'd really launch nukes at them over that?

The fact is, the nuclear arsenal of the USA has not decreased in actual power over the years. Yes there are less nukes, but they're also much more accurate and much more powerful. Originally we had a lot more high powered nukes because we expected to use heavy bombers to just f-ing carpet bomb a country. Then we switched to missiles and but still had accuracy problems, so we strapped 10 MT warheads on those suckers. Nowadays we have single missiles that can carry 5 warheads (it's limited by nuclear arms treaties) with a MT warhead each.

Additionally, I think we're ignoring the new slew of nuclear hypersonic cruise missiles that travel at Mach 5+ with 100 kT warheads. Those are meant to get past any ABM of today and ruin your day.

So in the end, most of the nuclear powers have either more or the same nuclear power since their height and never let it go. Only one country maintains a "minimum" amount, and the rest just don't have money to expand it any further but they would like to do so.

edited 1st May '12 8:55:41 PM by breadloaf

My point is more that machine gun deaths would primarily be soldiers and far away, nukes involve my home being destroyed with nothing I can do. Even normal bombs are only likely to hit my house by chance. People are scared shitless of nukes thanks to disinformation, so they don't treat it realistically as survivable. With the reduction in collateral radiation from the smaller foot print bombs, it would primarily affect economy rather than extinction.

Also, the ABM is no longer banned by treaty in any meaningful way.

Fight smart, not fair.

You realize that that supports my point, not yours — that nuclear deterrence works because the best defense against nuclear weapon is MAD? If we developed anti-missile defenses, then we might decide that we had a chance of surviving a nuclear attack relatively intact, which would make us more likely to fight a nuclear war. That's a Bad Thing, so we signed treaties against it.

South Africa did not have MAD capability. It had all of half a dozen nuclear weapons and no effective delivery system — that made it more likely to be attacked, not less. They dismantled their own nuclear program largely because of their own internal politics — the looming end of apartheid made the South African government at least afraid of their own nukes in the hands of a likely majority-black government as it was of nuclear war (which, given that this was the late 80s, wasn't exactly as looming a threat as it was in the height of the cold war).

tl;dr, South Africa's self-disarmament was the product of a unique situation that isn't really applicable to other nuclear powers.

Sure, because we no longer have any real beef with Russia. Better examples would be North Korea and Iran. North Korea would not be nearly as powerful on the international stage if it didn't have nukes — any sort of intervention by an outside power in North Korea is a non-starter, due to the possibility that North Korea would nuke them. That's why Iran is seeking nuclear weapons as well — to give itself virtual immunity from any possible Gulf War style intervention, much less an Iraq War style invasion.

Having nuclear weapons gives you more power in international politics.

In other words, our nuclear arsenal has decreased in terms of raw destruction that we can cause (as in, number of square miles obliterated) but not in strategic value. That's sort of the entire point.

edited 2nd May '12 2:59:57 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

A country that gave up its nuclear arsenal wouldn't automatically be attacked, no. But most countries will eventually have very hostile relations with another country, and whether those hostile relations lead to violence often depends on what the consequences of initiating violence will be.

Just as an example, if, under Saddam Hussein, Iraq had possessed enough long range nuclear missiles to destroy several American cities, do you really think the U.S. would still have attacked Iraq with the goal of overthrowing Saddam in 2003?

edited 2nd May '12 3:09:14 AM by RavenWilder

@ Native Jovian

The country that did one-way disarmament I mentioned was not South Africa, as I had said it reduced nukes to a minimal but not non-existent level. The hint is that it invented "No First Use".

Actually I didn't really mean much by the ABM treaty, it was more of an observation. I'm trying to say that we're basing our policies on MAD but it doesn't actually mean MAD works.

For instance, I said would we launch against Russia, and then you said "We have no beef with them". Bwah? But they would have no nukes, why not stomp all over them instantly? Because geopolitics or socioeconomics and all sorts of other factors are more important.

So then Iran and North Korea would be better examples. They don't have nukes right now and we aren't invading them. Nor are we invading them because they may gain nuclear capability in the future. Iran is probably a better example of that than North Korea. So why don't we invade them? Well, there's no real way we could do anything of the sort, because even if the Iranian military were defeated the American military couldn't possibly afford to actually stay in Iran. Then there'd be all sorts of anti-American terrorists springing up all over the place afterward to make the world, and American citizens unsafe.

If you really want me to prove my point, go start a thread that asks "China vs USA, who would win?" and see how many Americans talk about how we'd kick China's ass in a nuclear war. Or USA vs Russia. That one is a good one too.

As another way, let me remove nuclear weapons from the equation from the 1950s. Would Russia and USA have gone to blows then? What is the likelihood of this situation? We have to remember that a lot of false alarms on both sides nearly led to nuclear war, so to say that MAD prevented us from launching ignores how we decided to launch on half a dozen occasions only to find out that we didn't need to launch.

—Not Really An Argument Just a funny story—

This discussion does remind me of a Civ 4 game I played a while back. I had a low-power country (located on the southern tip of western half of the continent), trying to get by on culture and technology, my friend was largely militaristic (at the eastern coast of the continent) and regularly engaged in wars with his western neighbour, the Japanese.

So there I was, suffering constant border wars to my south against the Vikings, the north where the Japanese would attack and finally, the Aztecs who owned basically most of the eastern continent. The Aztecs started getting on my case, so I made an alliance with another of their border disputes, India. But World war eventually broke out when the Aztecs invaded India. At the same time the Japanese decided it was a ripe time to invade me. The Japanese also engaged in yet another conflict with my friend at the same time. There was basically just one northern middle-power that stayed out of the conflict, everyone else was either invading Me-India alliance or invading my friend with the Japanese-Aztec.

Through a lot of conscription, and genius strategic moves, I survived to the point of developing nuclear weapons. In an effort to turn around the war, I started nuking the Aztecs and wiping out their offensive armies and then finally laying waste to their cities with my troops. But what I did not realise was that by allowing nuclear weapons into the game, the norther middle power, the Greeks, had developed a massive nuclear arsenal in secret.

At about the same time I took back my cities and started pushing into Aztec and Japanese territory, and the stalemate between the Japanese and my Friend had ended (in my friend's favour), all of a sudden the atomic hammer was dropped. The Greeks committed to some kind of atomic blitzkreig philosophy. Each turn at least 2-3 cities were hit by nuclear weapons before an army would roll in and seize the radioactive ruins. By fifteen turns in, half the world had become Greek territory. None of us really had the military power to stand against them, nukes or not though, so it was pretty much game over then.

edited 2nd May '12 10:11:24 PM by breadloaf

Well, in most cases people assume themselves to be morally good people who wouldn't abuse power given the chance and project that onto their society. I personally don't hold to that and believe that it wouldn't take long for one side to seek dominance in one form or another. Not because it's effective, but I believe that people in power like to wave their dicks around.

Fight smart, not fair.

Certainly, and what I want to say is that nuclear weapons are powerful military weapons but not any sort of psychological game changer. It's the same if you had 10x the tanks and guns as someone else, having a bunch of nukes is the same as simply having more military power. It's a deterrent to war in the sense that if someone can't steamroll you, they might wait to build up arms until they can. There's no real guarantee when both sides are armed to the teeth that they might just "bite the bullet" and invade anyway because they really really want to do so.

I think it is a psychological game changer to a degree, mostly due to the disinformation spread by media about how dangerous they are. Tanks are still machines like other weapons, they have reasonable levels of effect. Nukes are portrayed in many ways as an object the size of a suit case goes off and the city is turned into ash. That's not true, but I think it has a sufficient effect on people to make them think about it a bit more the same way people react to low chance high risk things.

Fight smart, not fair.

Not really, because they allow one to cause massive destruction without the required logistics. To destroy that enemy tank division, you'd need at least another one, so this requires thousands, tens of thousands people, a large industry working day and night to supply it, and you'll have a lot of losses, human and material. To raze that city to the ground, you'd need thousands of bombers if you do it WW 2-style, and once again, with a lot of logistical constraints.

For example, a country like U.K. or France wouldn't be able to raze Moscow with conventional forces: it would require hundreds of modern jets for each raid, plus tankers, other modern jets for air superiority, etc. With their nuclear weaponry, they can nuke Moscow, a few divisions, bases, etc. while retaining enough conventional power to say hello to Kadhaffi.

Nukes allow a lot of countries to do what required the whole might of the British Empire, the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. in World War II. That's for the military part.

And now, for the political part: the other country can destroy you, and you cannot stop it. No strategy, no cunning plan, no new interceptor or tank will stop them from destroying your cities, denying you any kind of strategic military victory. You destroy their silos? Their bombers will avenge them. You shoot down the bombers? The subs will introduce you to the nice concept of five-minute warning hypersonic missiles. You get their subs on time or shoot down the missiles with a high-tech hyperspace laser grid/ZPM-powered shield? Nice, hope that there won't be special forces survivors with suitcase nukes or simply ICBM warheads stuffed into an anonymous container carrier from a neutral country. Or maybe that soda machine you saw in the street... You know, the one large enough to house a 5 megaton device.

Once they have nuclear warheads and means of delivery (and even without those), you'll never be safe again if they decide to burn your country to the ground. So you don't give them any reason to want that.

So, really, nuclear devices are NOT overpowered conventional ordinance. Not by a long-shot.

edited 3rd May '12 2:56:43 AM by RufusShinra

As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero.

China invented no first use and they still have nukes, so I officially have no idea what you're talking about.

Historical evidence suggests that MAD works. Ie, we've been basing our policies on it for 70 years, and it's worked so far. If you want to assert that MAD doesn't work, you're going to need to provide some pretty convincing arguments for that belief.

Sure, if Russia had no nukes, we could nuke them into oblivion and they couldn't stop us. But just because you can do something doesn't mean it's a good idea.

North Korea does have nukes. It's performed several nuclear tests. Iran doesn't, but you seem to be confusing the concept of "having nukes yourself is the only real defense against getting nuked" with "countries with nukes will automatically invade every other country without nukes for no reason!!" somehow. I have no idea where you got that from.

It's impossible to know with any certainty, but it's entirely possible that we would have. Certainly there are more reasons to avoid a nuclear war than their are to avoid a conventional war. Whether that would have made enough of a difference to make the cold war hot, though... Who can say?

No, it's not. Tanks and guns you can fight against. If there's a huge imbalance of power you'll probably still lose, but you can at least fight hard enough to make it not worth the effort of invading you in the first place. But the only way to stop someone from nuking you is MAD — there is literally no other defense.

edited 3rd May '12 6:06:25 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Using the example of UK and France not being able to burn Moscow goes something like this:

• Since they have nukes, they are presumed to be able to nuke some portion of Russia in a war. In return their whole country is levelled.
• If they did not use nukes and instead used tanks/fighters, they would presumably destroy some part of Russia. In return their whole country is levelled.

Well, if the example of China unclear then I'll explain it. You are doing two things:

• Making an analysis with woefully insufficient data
• Stating that no one would reduce their nuclear armament in a one-way fashion except China did so.

That there has been no major war between the super powers described as there being evidence toward MAD. How about I extend out the analysis to 200 years. Wow wee, USA and Russia didn't really come to any significant blows in the entire time period! Or how about I put the analysis between France and Germany. Huh they're allies now? Essentially, you are claiming that MAD was the reason there was no war between two belligerent powers when any two-state analysis in the past 70 years are going to yield completely wild results.

China's reduction of nuclear weapons and their stated highly minimalist stance, to the point where a lot of Americans wonder whether they can even perform MAD, has not damaged their political stance. When you say "there's a lot of reasons other than MAD", that's my entire point. MAD is such an insignificant factor in determining whether there will be war, you might as well ignore it in favour of everything else because MAD isn't going to stop any global conflict from going hot if one side wants it to happen. To strengthen this point, I direct your attention to the times when USA and Russia were fully willing to launch nuclear weapons based on faulty data until realising that the data was faulty.

For an example of no freezing effect on war:

India/Pakistan haven't stopped fighting one another despite the development of nuclear weapons and are as close to fighting a war as they always are. And who knows, as India's lead on Pakistan grows due to the Taliban insurrection in Pakistan, India might try again in yet another border skirmish.

edited 3rd May '12 9:17:01 PM by breadloaf

@breadloaf: I don't know if you're arguing in favor or not of nukes owned by those countries. Anyway, at least, with them they can make sure the destruction of their own country comes at a much higher price than with conventional forces only.

Nukes owned by the two sides will make everyone think a lot before taking rash actions. In the case of India/Pakistan, their arsenals will ensure that skirmishes will remain that: skirmishes. If one side didn't have those weapons, then the other could be tempted to use its momentum in case of local, conventional victory to invade a good chunk ot the other. With those, there will be limitations to the conflict, because if one goes too far, takes too much compared to what the other may politically accept to lose, then the key might be turned. Even without any direct threat, the mere hypothesis the opposing leaders may choose this option is enough to deter bold moves.

As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero.

Yes, but what about cautious moves? Salami tactics, remember?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Salami tactics are well and good until you remember that you don't know how much slices you'll be able to take before the whole sausage is turned to ashes. Especially when there's more than one crazy cook in the neighbourhood with a flamethrower do deal with...

edited 4th May '12 8:07:21 AM by RufusShinra

As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero.

My house lies in the bulls-eye of the strategic target in western Scotland. I am close enough to the best deep water ports, airstrips, naval depots, submarine base, armed forces headquarters, major road routes, river crossings and all sorts of good stuff like that, that any attack on those with nuclear devices during the Cold War would have given me an extremely bad day.

I doubt very much that things have changed much in terms of target priorities now.