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Chomskyan posted:China has the capability to destroy the US west coast, more than enough to achieve the deterrent effect. Obviously both sides maintain systems that will actually launch nukes in retaliation to a first strike, otherwise the deterrent would be useless, so you're wrong to assume the Chinese wouldn't launch. Also it's not just China, the US could also make the first launch in response to a false alarm. This isn't how nuclear strategy works. MAD is an equilibrium that can easily be disrupted if there is ever a circumstance where one side thinks that they can win a nuclear war with a first strike that disables the enemy's ability to retaliate. You're only thinking about China's capabilities in the context of a Chinese first strike when China's second strike capability is virtually nonexistent. This is why arms treaties in the Cold War focused very heavily on limiting defenses rather than the total number of nuclear warheads. It was to ensure that neither side could "win" a nuclear exchange with a knockout first strike on their adversaries missile sites. Right now, in the context of nuclear war strategy, the US could absolutely defeat China with minimal to non-existant damage to itself with a well executed first strike. And no, me explaining this doesn't mean I want a nuclear war. But nuclear war strategy is in fact a thing that is more complex than "fire ze missiles"
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Jan 20, 2017 01:00
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:Nuclear war was a serious threat during the cold war. There were two large hostile armies stationed in Europe and a lot of conflict zones around the world where both sides fought each other by proxy. In case of open war, there was also a clear chain of escalation that would have led to a guaranteed nuclear exchange between both sides. That's why that time was so terrifying, nuclear war was a real possibility on everyone's mind. Ditto with China. Someone describe the obvious chain of escalation that would lead to a Sino-American nuclear exchange that doesn't hinge on someone involved being The Joker IRL
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Jan 20, 2017 01:06
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quote:That’s because there simply are no checks and balances on his authority, which is derived from the Constitution. There is no congressional or Supreme Court veto. And there would be no veto by anyone in the president’s circle of advisers or the military. Secretary of Defence needs to confirm the order and the cabinet can invoke the 25th amendment if Trump is clearly off his rocker. There may not be a specific nuclear weapons clause in the constitution but there are numerous mechanisms by which the President can be controlled that would also be applicable.
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Jan 20, 2017 01:35
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I too take the state propaganda apparatus of an authoritarian regime at face value.
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Jan 20, 2017 01:37
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Chomskyan posted:Yes, I suppose the cabinet could literally carry out a coup. Very insightful as always. Yeah that's a much crazier scenario than Trump ordering a nuclear strike for no good reason against the wishes of literally everyone including his secretary of defense and everyone just shrugging and going "What're ya gonna do? He's President."
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Jan 20, 2017 01:40
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Like there is a 100% chance that the news of Trump wanting to use nukes would reach Congress in that scenario.
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Jan 20, 2017 01:44
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Chinese nuclear submarines are also bad and in a state of heightened tensions wouldn't help China's second strike capacity all that much. They're really noisy and easy to track. Hell, the US Navy is probably tracking them a whole lot already, how else would they know that they probably aren't carrying any nukes?
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Jan 21, 2017 03:49
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China is facing some problems in that regard, however. They are still struggling to develop submarines that are even close to the US in terms of quietness and longevity, combined with the fact that the US and Japan have the entire coast of China from Korea to India wired to detect Chinese submarines. This severely limits the ability for China to operate submarines without being detected even in their coastal waters, to say nothing of submarine-detecting aircraft located in US bases spanning the East and South China Seas. These waters are also really shallow and consequently it's easier to find submarines in them. A submarine isn't truly safe until it's on the high seas and this was a problem for the Soviets constantly, who faced similar geographical constraints and consequently by the end of the Cold War virtually every Soviet sub was being shadowed by the US Navy as soon as they left port. China is geographically boxed in, a fact that regularly vexes Chinese strategists. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Jan 21, 2017 |
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Jan 21, 2017 08:56
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Dante80 posted:This is true, and one of the main reasons for China spending some big bucks on developing a true blue water navy cap in the future (they do have some way to go still). Also, the choke-hold of the South/East China Sea theaters is one of the reasons for China bringing the ASuW IRBMs to the table in their first place, as well as developing bases on the SCS. My point is mostly that SLBM's are only useful insofar as they are mobile and invisible. China's submarines are neither and won't be anytime soon barring a massive leap in technology that we don't see any signs of occurring. While this means that they could theoretically launch from submarines near the Chinese coast, at that point you may as well just be using land-based systems. To be totally honest if I were in charge of formulating China's nuclear war strategy I wouldn't be wasting my limited nukes on strikes on the continental US; I'd be focusing them on US and Japanese bases in the Western Pacific in order to try and knock out the first island chain defense line. Of course, if someone asked me to formulate a winning nuclear strategy for China I would have to say that I couldn't without far, far more tools to work with, either more warheads or better boomers/bombers, and with China as weak as it is now even knocking out the first island chain would just be delaying the inevitable, which would just leave "try and reach the west coast as a final gently caress you" Which brings us back to the ultimate question of "what tensions exist between the US and China that either side would be willing to use nukes over." As much as the CCP huffs and puffs about Taiwan if it was so important to them that they would wage a nuclear war over it they would have invaded by now. As has been pointed out there isn't any coherent chain of escalation that could result in a nuclear exchange between China and the US. There is no theoretical Berlin or Cuba crisis that could be thought of because the fact of the matter is that great power tensions really aren't any more significant right now than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Trump is probably going to seek de-escalation and alliance with Russia, China is in decline and has to worry more about domestic problems at the moment and don't even really have the capacity to wage a distraction war, and all the other nuclear powers are US allies/have no ICBM capacity. The greatest nuclear risks remain a nuclear arms race in the middle east, proliferation in general, terrorism, and north korea, things that existed long before Trump. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Jan 21, 2017 |
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Jan 21, 2017 12:16
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Willie Tomg posted:Using nukes on metropolitan areas as a component in a strategic exchange is one thing, but in the case of China in particular and also Russia I find the most primarily concerning use in a defensive posture as part of say, intervention in the South China Sea or Crimea. There is functionally no difference between this scenario and nuking LA. Both would provoke a full nuclear response from the USA.
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Jan 21, 2017 22:32
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The real reason that the US would have an "advantage" in recovering after a nuclear holocaust is because civil society is already pretty decentralized in the US compared to any potential adversaries and also because the US has plans that are almost a century in the making for continuity of government in the event of a catastrophic attack on North America Everything is coming up Idaho Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Jan 21, 2017 |
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Jan 21, 2017 23:45
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Chomskyan posted:Actually nuclear weapons are safe and everything is under control because *furious hand waving* As we all know, if they announce it's at midnight then the world ends immediately
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Jan 26, 2017 23:15
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