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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia
 
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LolitaSama
Dec 27, 2011

Fojar38 posted:

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"

This is fascinating, where does the consensus come from that America would only be superficially damaged in a nuke strike against china and that MAD principle of China being also able to hit back equally as hard not being a thing? Because they have less nukes?

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LolitaSama
Dec 27, 2011

axeil posted:

China currently has around 260 nuclear warheads. The US has around 4,670 currently. In the event of a nuclear exchange, the US would be able to deploy enough warheads to possibly knock out China's ability to retaliate while China would have no ability to do so. This causes an imbalance in the MAD equilibrium and would allow the US to "win" a nuclear exchange, thus making one much more likely.

You can also do the same exercise with the US and any other state but Russia and Russia with any other state but the US. If you can prevent second strike, you can win a nuclear war, which is a very bad thing for global peace and stability.

sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

But how do you knock out Nuclear Subs? Wouldn't the presense of those always ensure America couldn't knock out China's strike back potential? So is it because they simply have less that MAD isn't enforce or because they couldn't launch the little that they even had? If you could take nuclear subs out of the equation, and if this was the case, Israel would be in huge poo poo too. Not hard to knock out the Nuclear capabilities of a country the size of new jersey.

* # ¿ Jan 20, 2017 19:16
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia