The Nuclear Age Version 2.5
Paul Bracken in his book, The Second Nuclear Age, argues that rather than tending to a Nuclear Zero, the world has in fact already gone straight from the First to the Second Nuclear Age in the years since the Fall of the Wall. Bracken, a professor at Yale School of Management who spent years in the classic think Cold War think tank notes that not only have the original nuclear powers (the US, Russia and the UK) kept their weapons, but so have the subsequent entrants (France, China and Israel). Now with with India, Pakistan and North Korea new entrants and Iran and Saudi Arabia probably in the pipe the Second Nuclear age is fairly and truly begun.
One may not like it, but there it is.
But as when the bipolar nuclear world was still new in the 1940s, there are as yet no established maps for navigating the new one. And as the Cold War’s first years were so dangerous because policymakers had yet to figure out how to operate within a nuclearized context, so too are the coming decades likely to be fraught with peril. We don’t know how the new nuclear world works yet. The international system took 50 years to learn the rules of the old one the hard way — via the Berlin Crisis, Korea, Cuba and Vietnam — it will likely require the same type of hard knocks to figure out the new.
The strategic problems of the First Age were only addressed when the debate widened to include the public, where it drew the attention of the best minds of the day (Kissinger, Kahn, Schelling). During the 1948 Berlin crisis the only strategies available were the ones left over from World War 2. Then, just as now, nuclear weapons were attractive to policymakers because they were cheap. Truman wanted to cash in on the Peace Dividend after VJ day and the only alternative to keeping 165 conventional divisions in Europe to hold back the Red Army was the Bomb. The problem was he had no guidelines on how to use it. Still he may be better off than we are now, when many think we don’t need to think about those issues.
The recommended military response to Stalin’s blockade of Berlin was actually for Truman to send an armored column — one that would probably have been outnumbered 50 to 1 — racing towards the former German capital. Nobody believed it would work, but it was the only response in the pre-nuclear playbook.
Truman had to improvise a strategy by announcing the famous Airlift, complemented by “routine deployments” of Silverplate B-29s to bases all around the USSR and staging joint reviews of mock bombing raids with his Republican presidential opponent Dewey to let Uncle Joe know the policy was bipartisan.
No one knows what would have happened if Stalin had ordered the Berlin aerial resupply interdicted. But the alternative history is unimportant. It is sufficient to note that by trial and error Truman began to figure out how the game between the superpowers could be played without blowing up the world. It was crises of these types that pushed the problem of strategy out into the open. An analogous process has still not happened in the post Cold War period. We still sail on under colors of confident ignorance, untested by crises.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall seemingly banished such problems forever. But they did not. The accession of new nuclear powers has created an unacknowledged new nuclear age with distinctive features. For one, it is driven by regional dynamics. The “circuit breakers” no longer run through Washington and Moscow. Instead, they pass through the Middle East (Israel vs Iran vs Saudi Arabia), South Asia (India vs Pakistan) and East Asia (China vs Japan vs North Korea). These new detonation circuits have been overlayed onto a world where the US, Russia, France and the UK still play a part. The remnants of the First Age are now written over by the structures of the Second.
And the linkages are connected in ways that create emergent and unexpected phenomena. Bracken spends many paragraphs citing actual war game results where decision makers (but not the top ones) are suddenly shocked to learn for themselves that the regional conflicts can escalate and spill over. Lesson number one: the Second Nuclear Age is more unpredictable than the First.
Equally shocking, many are determined to ignore their own unpreparedness through a process of invincible denial. “No, nonproliferation is not dead. It’s no use talking about strategy, there is no strategy possible for thinking about nuclear weapons. We must get to Global Zero and all these problems will go away. How dare you think the unthinkable … ” etc etc etc. The official line triumphs over common sense.
It is as if we were transported back in time to 1948 again, re-learning the ropes but with Barack Obama instead of Harry Truman at the helm. “Have we forgotten too much?” Bracken asks of our strategy. His answer is ‘yes we have’. And what is more we don’t even know that it’s important to remember.
One of his best chapters, that on South Asia, illustrates the depth of Bracken’s thinking but at the same time points to what I think is the book’s major weakness. In describing Pakistan’s strategic dilemma, Bracken notes that it was India’s progress that destabilized the regional situation. When India got rich, Pakistan could only equalize with more Bombs.
India has an economy so much larger than Pakistan’s that it is winning this (the conventional arms) race easily… Pakistan lags in almost all areas of modern conflict except one: nuclear weapons. And that is the problem. Pakistan may be forced to use nuclear weapons to try and restore a balance with India.
Now India has satellites, an advanced IT industry, manufacturing, money and lots else while Pakistan lives on handouts. It’s a deadbeat with no prospect of employment beyond the shakedown. The land of Islamic purity has nothing but nukes to boast of. And therefore it is turning them out like mad to stay in the game. Like North Korea, cheap nukes are the only way Pakistan can remain relevant, in Bracken’s words like “a starved rat with a nuclear bite”. This has created an instability which Washington doesn’t know how to deal with.
Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have gone out of their way to say that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are safe, that they’re “under control.” Why have two presidents issued reassuring statements? There are no comparable announcements about Israel’s weapons, or China’s. no cold war president said that Soviet nuclear weapons were under control either. …
Imagine if a president had said the opposite … “We think Pakistan might lose control of the bombs to terrorists or groups like Laskhar-e-Toiba; or that someone might sell the weapons the way A.Q. Khan did; or that a ‘mad major’ in the Pakistani army could start World War III.” Saying such things wouldn’t be politic … it would inflame fears all over … Congress would call hearings. The Pentagon would have to come up with some sort of plan in response.
And India would get very nervous … so the president says, “Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are secure.”
Washington says the Pakistani nukes are secure not because they are really secure; just that the Beltway has no strategy for thinking about what to do if they are not. There is no real Plan B if Global Zero turns out to be a pipe-dream and the nuclear genie is out of the bottle. There is no alternative to the unpleasant possibility that the entire assumption of 20 years of post-Cold War politics turns out to be a fantasy. There’s a real chance that Barack Obama will have to think like Harry Truman and just maybe he can’t or doesn’t want to.
The major weakness of Bracken’s book is that he overlooks the possibility that we’re no longer in the Second Nuclear Age but already in Version 2.5. His Second Nuclear Age looks too much like the first in that it assumes that the actors are somehow as permanent as the first set of players. But Pakistan is representative, rather than atypical of the kind of new entrants to the nuclear club. And while Bracken correctly points out that countries like Pakistan, North Korea and Iran want nuclear weapons because it gives them international power he neglects to reckon that nukes also destabilize these countries internally.
It is only since the Arab Spring that we can clearly see how fragile these authoritarian regimes are. Underneath the facade they are rotten to the core. The WMDs and big armies gave their strongmen a false sense of security which obviated the incentive for internal reform. Khadaffy and now Assad are learning that while such weapons may protect you against foreign enemies they are useless against internal rebellion. In fact they may act something like the eggs laid by an ichneumon wasp in a host. When they hatch, they kill you. WMDs can eat out a rotten regime from within. They incubate power centers, ambitious ‘mad majors’ or invite an invasion of jihadis (as is the case with Syria) who desire to possess them.
This results in a vicious circle. The poorer Pakistan gets, the more nukes it builds. The more nukes it builds the poorer it gets; the greater the incentive to sell them or shake down its neighbors; the more fragile the hold of the corrupt state upon their internal security. The distinguishing feature of the Nuclear Age Version 2.5 is that the bomb spreads to countries which will be doomed by possessing it.
An Iran with nukes is dangerous for precisely the reason Israel’s nukes or China’s are not dangerous. The Iranian regime is unstable — like Pakistan and North Korea — and using nukes to give it an artificial solidity only means loose marbles will have to be collected when it inevitably falls over. The same scenario applies to Saudi Arabia. If Iran’s bomb brings on the Kingdom’s — supplied presumably from Pakistan — and the other Gulf States follow in their nuclear path the danger is what happens afterward.
Those perils will be exacerbated in any likely regional crisis. A limited nuclear exchange in South Asia, the Middle East or with North Korea will shakes loose their arsenals. In the resulting chaos all kinds of goodies will be up for grabs. If securing Assad’s nerve gas stockpiles are a nightmare now then what will a collapse of nuclear armed KSA be like? It will be a mess. In his last chapter, Bracken gives us a preview of what challenges may have to be faced once things get out of hand.
An intense crisis or a nuclear war may prove to be so horrendous that the major powers will overcome their differences to punish the perpetrator, to make sure it never happens again. The shock of losing a country to nuclear attack, or of repeated nuclear crises that upset the international order, may spark the major powers into collective action. One question, then is: How far will the major powers go? The retribution may focus on the offender, the country that broke the nuclear order, but it’s also possible that the major powers may issue ultimatums to other secondary nuclear powers to hand over their arsenals in a forced disarmament. Disarming all countries with nuclear weapons who are judged to be irresponsible will look much more realistic following a nuclear disaster. That the major nuclear powers will possess the means to back up such an ultimatum is beyond question.
This sounds horribly like the nightmare described in the Three Conjectures, which seemed far-fetched when I wrote it half a decade ago. As I noted in that essay, the question is how far the major powers will go if things get out of hand. Like all nightmare scenarios, a nuclear disaster in the Age 2.5 is imagined not in the hope of fulfillment but in the belief that it can be averted. Bracken hopes so too. He ends by saying:
Through a combination of prudence, and luck, the world made it through the first nuclear age without a nuclear disaster. Unless we prepare for the second nuclear age with a far more sober attitude, we may not be so lucky this time.
That’s what we should do to make it through Nuclear Age 2.0 or 2.5 — but whether we will is another matter.
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
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India needs to start seriously planning for a first strike option in case of any future conflict. If they can set up a mutual defense agreement with China, they can probably swing it without too much retaliation.
After all, Pakistan’s ability to cause harm to anyone can be eliminated completely in about 60 minutes.
“Through a combination of prudence, and luck, the world made it through the first nuclear age without a nuclear disaster”
The situation now is so much worse on all sides of the equation.
Truman loved America; Obama wants to take America down.
…and Stalin did not pray for Armageddon in order to bring on the Mahdi.
Can’t count on prudence, may need more luck than can be found.
Are we looking at the answer to the Fermi Paradox? It is possible that a sapient species never, or at least very rarely, rises into a technological era with good control of the possibly lethal technologies all at once; that the rise is just about all patchwork. The only piece of evidence available, us, points that way.
For nuclear weapons aren’t the only route to Armageddon; they aren’t even the worst. Some worse examples are gene-tailored plagues (which will before long – in historical terms – become so easy to create that some irresponsible teenager could brew them in his garage) and the good old “grey goo” uncontrolled nanotech scenario.
Humanity would probably survive global thermonuclear war, just about. It might not survive (to take a semi-random example) a version of Ebola with less mutability and spreading by aerosol. It almost certainly wouldn’t survive being eaten by nanites. In the last case, neither would anything else.
It’s either the end times or the beginning of ascent to godhood. Which? That’s up to us.
I’ve been saying for the last ten years or so that we are living in the post NPT world. North Korea and Iran merely illustrate the point.
While we may attempt to stop a nation from developing nukes ultimately it’s a fools errand. We may stop Iran but he next one will sneak through. A Pope once tried to ban the crossbow, at least for use against Christian armies. We can’t stuff the genie back in the bottle.
Now before anyone things I’m for a free-for-all, I’m not. Iran with nukes is not a prospect I enjoy thinking about. A doomsday leadership looking for the coming of whatever number Imam it is downright scary.
What I want to see is a rational discussion of how to deal with Iran if we fail to stop them, or how to deal with the next contry on the list when they succeed.
Sadly we won’t get such honest and frank discussion from the current mess of idiots in DC.
Harry Truman understood the reality of life and death. He knew that consequences of choices were not avoided by wishful thinking. He had seen real war.
I will agree with 440 above that Truman loved America and Obama wishes its destruction. The situation is aggravated by the fact that, like the wargamers Bracken described; reality is deliberately rejected by Obama and his ilk. They actually believe that somehow they will survive any nuclear “mistakes” and their power will be intact. The serfs and Kulaks in flyover country may be wiped out, but to Obama they are expendable and their loss is to the good.
That makes their reactions to the crises’ to come even more sure to be disasterous. For the last few days we have been concentrating on the ongoing economic and political suicide of our country [the Left being sure enough of their victory to be blatant enough and honest enough to call for the abandonment of the Constitution in an editorial in the New York Times]. What we are doing to ourselves is certain and cannot be avoided; particularly by the actions of the incompetent lop-earred duds of the Institutional Republicans. However, what others do to us, aggravated by the incompetence of Obama and his fellow Leftists, is going to make it so much worse.
Subotai Bahadur
ABC.es quotes sources which say Chavez is dying. The following says he is on life support, with weak vital signs and the possibility they’ll pull the plug on him, leading to his immediate demise.
Whether this is true or not it underscores the fact that countries who are dependent on a strongman, personality figure or small clique of people are always vulnerable to destabilization if only via the effect of nature.
Luck!?! You make your own luck. Our noble masters have their heads buried so deeply in a dark, malodorous place that even the light of a nuclear detonation won’t penetrate. Invincible ignorance is, well, invincible. Nothing creates that kind of gnostic invulnerability like absolute faith in a utopian ideology.
One can reasonably assume that once Dubai or Qatar acquire nuclear weapons, al-Qaeda will have them too.
About the same analyse from a german thinktank
https://ip-journal.dgap.org/en/ip-journal/topics/primacy-economic-interests
In that list of nuclear powers, old, and new, only one nation is *not* modernizing its stockpile: the US. The PC Left has a choke-hold on upgrading.
“Disarming all countries with nuclear weapons who are judged to be irresponsible will look much more realistic following a nuclear disaster.” Gee, kinda like the emotion generated by the Sandy Hook massacre to overturn the Second Amendment? Good luck with that.
The one line of thought to keep in “Nuclear World 2.5″ is that adult toys demand adult responsibilities*. If you want to eat at the adults’ table, you need to exhibit good tables manners, or it’s back to the kiddies’ table. If you’re a third-tier nation and you toss around a nuke without your national survival at stake, you cease to exist. Simple way to clarify those adult responsibilities.
(* = That’s the problem with Iran. They want adult toys, but I’m not hearing adult language coming out of Teheran.)
Yes, Bracken points out that the US, alone of the nuclear powers, is not modernizing. But it is why it abstains that is interesting. The thinking is that if the US modernizes it undermines the moral authority to speak out against proliferation. Modernizing works against arms limitations and any possibility of global zero. Hence, even though tinpot countries are buying shootin’ irons like they were going out of style Washington believes that following suit would be to give a bad example.
I actually don’t think you can win a debate with the ideologies that be in DC. No matter how logical the argument, how clearly their fallacies are pointed out the facts on paper don’t matter. They are wedded to disarmament and Global Zero and will be up until the moment something literally blows up in their face. I think that what is likely to happen is that everyone will continue in denial until an actual Second Age nuclear crisis shocks everyone out of their shoes.
And then the Beltway (assuming it wasn’t the target of the first incident of the nuclear crisis) will authorize billions for restudying nuclear strategy, most of which will go to hucksters, and in the resulting panic things will crucially depend on which party holds the White House then.
If the Republicans are in office government will expand greatly and infringe on liberties in a major way to contain the threat. It will make the response to 9/11 like a Boy Scout picnic. But if the Democrats are in power there will be no limit to how far they will go to quell the resulting fear. They will think in ways that nobody has thought of since World War 2. In either case we’ll probably witness a policy flip that would make a circus contortionist look like a patient with lumbago.
The “Arab Spring” was supposed to be Democracy sweeping across the Middle East, the result of US invasion of Iraq…how is that working out?
Did PNAC war bunnies not calculate the House of Saudi Arabia would be funding terrorism in Syria and Egypt, or fund terror attack in Mumbai, or increase funding the spread of Sharia Law as they have for the last several hundred years?
Saudi Arabia is dedicated to the eradication of Democracy, achieved by the funding of Hamas, Muslim brotherhood, terrorist training cells in Pakistan and Syria, and have been doing this with US government knowledge and tactic support.
Until we acknowledge and demand a stop to Saudi Arabia’s agenda, we are only dancing around the edges and will never solve actual cause for Global terrorism.
As the leftist executive branch fumbles its way into both foreign and domestic Armageddon, I think a point will be reached where there are car crashes, strange illnesses, and suicides that will change the direction of the executive branch. A bloodier scenario is that no action is taken until the executive branch tries something like a national gun confiscation.
http://www.bob-owens.com/2012/12/what-youll-see-in-the-rebellion/
http://madogre.com/?p=3974
“I’ve had quiet discussions with NCO’s and Officers at all levels in every branch. What has been said can not be shared, but what I can say is that Bob’s vision of what could be is chillingly accurate. Because these men swore an Oath. To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies. Foreign and Domestic.”
Bombs should have brand names on them like GE, Boeing, and Twitter. One of the good things about communist bombs is they probably don’t work. This shows humanity triumphing over the West’s corporate philosophy.
It also drew the attention of people with common minds. They said enough of you thinkers playing games with our world. A good place for intellectuals (you probably meant Hahn) is deep in a salt mine twelve hours a day, where they can think all they want about nuclear theory and the world will be safe with plenty of ice-melt.
Three and a half years ago, in May 2009, I posted the following on Belmont Club. It is as relevant today as it was then, and since the readership of this blog has turned over in the meantime, I am, with your kind indulgence, re-posting it.
MR. TALLYMAN
Pakistan is building two large plutonium reactors, thus dramatically enlarging their nuclear warhead production capacity. To what end? A nuke super-store? Who would they sell the bombs to? Saudi Arabia? The Taliban? I suspect we know the answer.
Come Mr. Tallyman, tally me banana
Is now Come Mr. Taliban let me show you this
Nice little thing we’ve got here’n Pashtunanana
For the right price we are sure you cannot miss
Think of the joy you can bring to Muslim masses
Think of the laughter the Arab street will find
Think of the tears as you kick those Yankee asses
Think of the fears you will raise in Kaffir’s mind
Don’t think of price for we know you can afford it
We know you’ve got resources out the old kazoo
Just sign your name here and then we can record it
Then after that you’ll just have to holler boo
Everyone knows that you never show no mercy
Everyone knows that you mean just what you say
One little bomb could take out all of New Jercy
Two little bombs and you own the USA
Come Mr. Taliban to Pashtunanana
Come Mr. Taliban cross my palm with gold
Come Mr. Taliban tally me banana
Soon everyone will be doing as he’s told
Impressive analysis, by both Bracken and Wretchard.
Some time back I asked if Herman Kahn’s concepts were still applicable. Specifically, are we in a counter-value or counter-force conflict with the Islamofascists? And which approach should we be using and how to undertake it?
I have since decided that the Bush invasion of Afghanistan was a counter-force effort while the invasion of Iraq was counter-value in nature. The one who attacked us were hiding in Afghanistan, with the cooperation of the government there, and thus had to be taken out. But Iraq was about denying a valuable country to the Islamofascists – one far more valuable than Afghanistan, which was of value to our enemies mainly because it was not of value to anyone – nobody outside of the immediate area gave a rat’s rump about it.
But now – Obama has tried to make Afghanistan a counter-value effort as well. In Herman Kahn’s terms he is trying to capture an enemy missile base and turn it into ours, when all we needed to do was blow it sky high. And meanwhile he has abandoned the counter-value effort in Iraq.
We are not just talking about doing stuff wrong, folks. We are talking about people who are doing it exactly backwards.
To suggest the “Grown Up” countries would make the immature countries give up their toys is a Big, Big Joke! Same type of delusional thinking that runs rampant in our Elitist right now. Considering Russia and China provide help on all their toys (Deniable of course) Just as America gave help to Israel, albeit far less. Subotai Bahadur (#5) said “The serfs and Kulaks in flyover country may be wiped out, but to Obama they are expendable and their loss is to the good.” I agree, this is the “Progressive plan” from the beginning (to many little people for the worlds recourses now the herd needs a major thinning) Their actions speak the truth not their words.
That comment above about nanobots eating us up is scary. And you follow it up in the wake of Newton that an annoyed teenager might have the power to wipe out humanity. The issue really is then that way too many people have access to dangerous technologies. And dangerous ideas. The novel atomized was so great because it pointed out the idiocy of fools promoting culturally destructive or worthless issues such as those based on apparent tolerance while ignoring facts such as that. We will soon have the ability to control evolution and yes, the ability to destroy ourselves. The future of humanity foes not hinge on coc”@&$king. A side point. What has 70 years of bridge building and peacemaking done for Japan. Led them to the point where they must acquire nukes. Why? Because they eat whales and work hard within the capitalist framework and as such deserve no support from our ideological masters. U.S foreign policy has essentially abandoned them at present. Cause American foreign policy has caused all the works evils. Not bad for a country 200 years old. Quite exceptional in fact.
Well, Stanford won the Rose Bowl, a good workmanlike game.
…
I’m sorry, what was the question?
Oh, nukes. Yeah, um, righto. Well look, if Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi built our bombs, with quality control by Mitch McConnell, then they’ll probably implode and suck the whole Earth into a black hole, so you might as well drink and be merry until that day. Isn’t that what we saw on TV last night, a million happy, screaming New Yawka’s in Times Square?
@ 19: No Josh, those million minions saw more:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/01/01/kathy-griffin-kisses-anderson-coopers-crotch-national-television#ixzz2GjV80us0
(per Drudge)
Happy New Year of the Same (Shame)
SF
Oh. Kahn should have been chain-ganged too.
Good movie called ‘Roaring Across the Horizon’. Not every scientist enjoyed working on atomic research. If they didn’t like it, though, then they should have studied other things. What can you do.
Let’s be frank here. If NYC, Washington DC, and Chicago are nuked, they won’t be missed. Meanwhile, the events described by #13 Toadold will proceed as described. I figured this out on my own a few days before I read Bob Owen’s excellent essay on the individual fates of the gun-grabbers.
It doesn’t matter that 50% or more of all American voters are as dumb as rocks. We have uncounted millions of resourceful and talented Americans who will NOT be destroyed by the naive incompetents and the marxist tools now dominating our political system.
If every country had nuclear weapons then every country would be immune from invasion. There would be no need for a large standing army – not for defense and not for offense because invasion would be met by nuclear weapons.
So every dictator can thumb his nose at the world and live like Caligula and make himself a God.
Nuclear weapons would be a problem if they fell into the hands of the Global Warming believers because they will use nukes to destroy any opposition to their plans to save the world. Nukes would be dangerous in the hands of Progressives because they will uae nukes to save the world.
@ Promethea #22
“Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.”
Even though “The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.”
First of all, Happy New Year, all.
Now, as to the topic at hand: Much depends, Wretchard, on the circumstances under which a nuke is used. Since it has not (yet) happened since 1945, we have very little historical concrete evidence to work with, but let us look at the use of other weapons of mass destruction in the post 1945 age. So far, there have been several instances of the use of chemical weapons, none of biological (as far as I know). So, taking the cases available, it seems chemical weapons are used in three circumstances:
1. International war of one state versus another: Iran-Iraq war; Soviet Union – Afghanistan; Egypt vs. Yemen in the early 60′s. In each case, damage and loss of life was considerable, but limited to the countries involved and treated pretty much as routine events by the international community as a whole.
2. Domestic war or suppression of ethnic group by government use: Iraq vs. the Kurds; Syria vs. the Muslum Brotherhood in the early 80′s according to some reports. Again, treated as routine by the international community. In fact, as far as I know, no one in the west objected to either use of poison gas.
3. As an act of terrorism by a non state actor: That cult in Japan tried to use nerve gas, not too long ago. Treated as a police matter.
Now, nuclear weapons, depending on size, power, etc; can be a lot more destructive. However, based on what history we have, I would say the we have the following possibilities:
1. Use of a nuclear weapons by a state in an inter-state conflict. Most likely example would be Israel-Iran or India-Pakistan. International concern would be limited to how this would affect the price of oil and other resources. (Europe and the USA have made it plain they care little for Iran, and anti-semitism is as old as history itself).
2. Use of a nuclear weapon in a civil war. No one outside of the country affected would care.
3. Nuclear terrorism. This is the big item, and one that would cause the most panic if directed at the elite. The elite of whoever the victim country was would take whatever action they feel necessary to protect themselves, physically and politically.
This thread, the short course:
Since the world survived a serious but conceptually simple threat through luck and maturity, what would you bet given the increased level of complexity and who is now in charge?
One nation that was a partner to the nuclear secrets of The Manhattan Project/Tube Alloys renounced that knowledge. Canada stands out as the singular example in history of virginity restored. Since then South Africa and the major non-Russian spin offs of the FSU (Ukraine Belarus and Kazakhstan) have publicly denuclearized more or less convincingly, following regime or at least system change.
Josh 19,
Real New Yorkers spend New Year Eve at home or with loved ones. Times Square is strictly for the Bridge and Tunnel crowd and tourists.
bftp @ 26: Real New Yorkers spend New Year Eve at home or with loved ones. Times Square is strictly for the Bridge and Tunnel crowd and tourists.
Is that like a “real Scotsman” argument?
I’d only go to something like that if I could walk, or maybe take a short cab ride or subway hop but hey that was a big crowd so yeah I’m sure some came in from other boroughs, upstate, Lawn Guyland, or even Joisy.
The short short course:
We’re dooooomed.
I also can’t help but compare DC’s views on modernizing its nukes to its views on the 2nd Amendment after Sandy Hook. In both cases, the truth is it’s “good people” armed who are able to keep peace, and prevent “bad people” from using *their* arms. And in both cases, the detached, sheltered rulers in the safe-bubble environment of the Beltway feel that having weapons makes you icky, and just having really noble, shiny, polished ideals is all that matters.
As though a terrorist with a nuke, or Arafat, Castro or Chavez, would simply give it back voluntarily after hearing these rulers make a really nice speech. Ditto an armed lunatic in a gun-free zone.
The parallels between stable powers with nukes and law-abiding armed citizens are eerie, as though the powers that be (the ones who are far above any human’s pay grade) are trying desperately to tell us something.
========================================
I don’t remember if Wretchard pointed out this story originally, but it’s a great one I read a few years back: Der Spiegel discusses how to get your own nukes if you’re an ambitious country.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-bomb-for-beginners-a-diy-guide-to-going-nuclear-a-681525.html
We need to project possible responses if the United States gets nuked.
First of all, the United States would need to exit from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and start testing nuclear weapons to (1) ensure that our nukes would actually work and (2) signal our intentions.
Secondly, the United States need to watch for those who celebrate nuclear attacks on the United States. Those people are our enemies. They, in fact, constitute the principal audience for the death theater that al-Qaeda and its allies practice. Remember Aesop’s fable of the captured trumpeter.
Thirdly, our enemies will be crowing like roosters and thoroughly drunk with an illusion of their own omnipotence. Let them celebrate. Their exultation marks them for death. We could tell them our entire strategy, and they would never believe it because they think the United States would never seriously fight against them after we get nuked.
Fourthly, the United States would face a choice between internment of unassimilated Muslims in the United States for their own protection or anti-Muslim riots. All of a sudden, the option of internment may become the humane choice.
Fourthly, any legitimate response to a nuclear attack on the United States would necessarily involve the use of American nuclear weapons on enemies. The question is whether one’s response should be massive or methodical. A methodical approach that allows a pause of two days between nuking one city and the next may allow a sense of dread to sink into the hearts of our enemies. In contrast, killing tens of millions of people all at once would be unlikely to let that sense of dread sink in.
Fifthly, any nuclear attack upon the United States would necessarily constitute a state of emergency. This would require a de facto back-to-back coalition of those who seek to defeat our enemies. This would also mean draconian controls over demonstrations. Anti-war demonstrations in such a circumstance must not be tolerated.
Sixthly, America’s response to a nuclear attack must mean a willingness to destroy the present basis of the world economy. Blowing up the Gulf oil fields and oil terminals would be massively destructive – and that is precisely the point. We must be willing to act in a manner that would normally be regarded as crazy and economically self-defeating in order to show that we are willing to hurt ourselves to ensure that our enemies get hurt even more.
Seventhly, the Moon. We must go back to the Moon precisely because it is so central to Islam.
Then, there is Mecca. If the Organization of the Islamic Conference declares war upon the United States of America after a nuclear attack by its proxies upon the United States, Mecca becomes a legitimate target for nuclear retaliation.
Until we acknowledge and demand a stop to Saudi Arabia’s agenda, we are only dancing around the edges and will never solve actual cause for Global terrorism.
I entirely agree. In that context, bowing down the the King of Saudi Arabia could be regarded as an act of treason.
“ABC.es quotes sources which say Chavez is dying.”
I’m so worn out from people getting my hopes up like this.
30. Alexis
Seventhly, the Moon. We must go back to the Moon precisely because it is so central to Islam.
Alternatively, Nuke the Moon
http://www.imao.us/docs/NukeTheMoon.htm
The power of a WMD is not in using it, but possessing it. And actually using one effectively is very difficult. Why have chemical weapons not been used in combat since WWI? Not because of any moral qualms, and not even that much because of fear of retaliation, but I think because using them effectively is more trouble than they are worth. Building an atomic bomb isn’t that hard. Building a missile isn’t that hard, these are technologies of the mid-20th century. Having the logistics and command and control to put it where you want is actually a lot more difficult. Even a crazy person understands terrorism is a much more effective offensive weapon. Nuclear weapons are deterrents only, and if you actually use it you have really screwed up. Pakistan only wants to prevent an invasion, and whoever has the nukes will prevent it.
Good comments, but there is more to a nuc than just heat, blast and radiation. During the Rep primary, Newt claimed that EMP was the principal threat to America. Consider that a high altitude burst, in international waters, off any of our coast lines, would have far-reaching, long-enduring effects. In August/September1958, the US conducted early EMP experiments using rocket launch of nuclear warheads from the Cruiser Norton Sound. Those tests took place off the SouthWest Coast of South Africa – in international waters.
If the bad guys want to really impact the US, they’ll do a similar test 200 miles or so off our East Coast. Launch from an ocean-going barge to 200 km altitude is no big deal. The weapon need not be anything special — 200 kt will do the job. The results would be devastating to all things digital – within about a 750 km radius from the blast. That could take in cities from Boston down to Charleston. All things digital would include flight control systems for a large number of the aircraft in the region, automotive controllers for trucks and cars, transformers for the national power grid, cell phones, land lines, and most other modern conveniences. Recovery would be measured in years, not months. Flyover land would survive — the coasts would not. Modern society is fragile: Fox news has addressed the hazard of coronal mass ejections, whose effects are similar to EMP, with impact on the power grid.
Alexis wrote: “Fourthly, the United States would face a choice between internment of unassimilated Muslims in the United States for their own protection or anti-Muslim riots. All of a sudden, the option of internment may become the humane choice.”
You make a mistake in your assumption as to how this will play out. This administration will appoint Chuck Hagel as special investigator and Cynthia McKinney as his assistant, and they will announce that it is all the fault of THE JOOOOSSSS!!! (Remember the process; Sentence first, verdict second, investigation last, if ever)
And that’s who they’ll propose to round up, for their own safety of course. The jooooossss and anyone who believes that the 2nd amendment shouldn’t be suspended by the new Emperor’s emergency decreee. Those are the real dangerous subversives, after all. Valerie Jarrett says so.
upon consideration, since it will take a while to set up the camps, they will probably settle for forcing the joooos to wear a yellow armband in public as long as they agree to keep supporting their political overlords. But gun owners they can just shoot on sight – at least until the insurrection gets started in a serious way.
Ho-hum. Nuclear weapons are simply a bigger bang. Now tell me — if someone nuked Pakistan, would the locals be growing watermelons on Ground Zero a few months later, and cranking out world-beating automobiles there within a couple of decades? One of the facts which don’t fit (the media template) is that every city which has been nuked has then grown dramatically and prospered beyond imagination while providing a very healthy environment for its people. No exceptions!
The Beautiful People worry about nuclear weapons because they are on top of the pile, which could be blown away with some well-aimed nukes. Common people like me worry about what the Beautiful People do in the normal course of their lives, idly destroying jobs & families & hope, all “for the children” or Gaia or some such.
As Promethea noted above at 22, the likely sites of nuclear attacks in the US would not be seen as a loss by the rest of us. The Brits probably wouldn’t care if Londonistan got nuked — hardly any English people can afford to live there anyway. The big threat real people face is from Business As Usual by the Political Class (including their Institutional Republican running dogs).
re 1. wws
“India needs to start seriously planning for a first strike option in case of any future conflict. If they can set up a mutual defense agreement with China, they can probably swing it without too much retaliation.
After all, Pakistan’s ability to cause harm to anyone can be eliminated completely in about 60 minutes”
I’m writing a short novel that involves something between India and Pak and have done some research. Suffice it to say, your scenario wont happen.
China has increased her capabilities in the west (ie against India) and can not be counted on to stand idly by while their client state is annhilated. A “mutual defense” pact btwn them is laughable, though everyone was surprised at Molotov-Ribbentrop too.
The other problem is Pakistan has made some of her devices road mobile and is building newer, smaller, and more advanced weapons (and using more advanced Chinese missiles). The new stuff is easier to hide and distribute.
Also, due to the internal politics over there, it’s not clear what would happen in the event of war. We may see a ‘mad major’ deploy without orders, or a situation in which it appears to outside observers that rogue or terrorist elements deployed on their own accord.
Not quite as simple as a ‘clean’ first counter force strike.
Re #30 and #33 – Really freak out the Muzzies by carving out a cross symbol on the Moon.
Wretchard:
“This sounds horribly like the nightmare described in the Three Conjectures, which seemed far-fetched when I wrote it half a decade ago. As I noted in that essay, the question is how far the major powers will go if things get out of hand. Like all nightmare scenarios, a nuclear disaster in the Age 2.5 is imagined not in the hope of fulfillment but in the belief that it can be averted. Bracken hopes so too. ”
The only major power that has the strength to prevent things from getting out of hand is America, but America is in a political crisis. Our Constitution, the wellspring of our strength and greatness, has effectively been tossed to the curb, allowing a Ruling Aristocracy to gain control and to thwart those rights that kept us free.
This American Ruling Aristocracy and it’s Clerisy, throughly indoctrinated in Alinskyite thinking, only knows how to destroy and only thinks in fantasy. There is no meaningful opposition now to the takeover by this Aristocracy, as yesterday’s vote clearly shows. The Republicans are a cowardly shell of an opposition who only feign opposition before capitulating .
Our Aristocracy cares little of the destruction of most of America, and even less for the free peoples around the world. To stop this nuclear madness would require thinking and effort far too noble for this Aristocracy to comprehend. Ain’t gonna happen.
So Washington believes the Pakistani nukes are secure because we have assurances from the Pakistanis? The same Pakistanis that had no idea where Bin Laden was before he was discovered down the road from their war college? Oh, okay, well I can sleep better now.
I have little doubt the first nuclear weapon detonated against the US will be a surprise package left in a major US city. Most of the heavily populated cities in the US are leftist enclaves so it is fitting that those who enable our enemies will bear the brunt of the result.
We have been extremely successful in the US in large part because we are extremely effective warriors. Human nature is human nature. A brief review of history tells you that civilizations are destoyed, they don’t simply fade away like Miranda from the movie Serenity. And you can’t reason with Reivers, you have to wipe them out, period. Will the US be a brief footnote in history? Sean Connery said it best, “What are you prepared to do?”
In terms of nukes, we need to see Obama’s next move. Just what did he wink-wink at the Russians about? We know he wants to disarm America as much as possible. Now that the formalities of an election are over, will he try to disarm us at the level of nukes as well as guns?
What if he just orders them all to be dismantled, in the name of “peace”? This would be like deliberately sacrificing your Queen in a chess match, only it wouldn’t be part of some grand, Bobby Fischer style strategy where the sacrifice lets you position for victory. It would be more like just tossing your Queen off the board with no gain whatsoever, opening you up for attack.
So far we’ve been lucky. Barry has been too busy vacationing to get up to much mischief (other than rolling Republicans, but he can do that in his sleep). What’s the next chess move in this game?
I really appreciate RWE’s analysis of the Iraq and Afghanstan – very clarifying!
If the American/Russian bipolar world got through their antagonisms without bombing each other, one can’t expect an N+1 world to do the same. Just the bell curve of competence amongst regimes will increase the risk of a big one going off.
Local news here in the SF Bay Area has Lawrence Livermore National Labs cutting weapon-related staff.
nuclear proliferation, like the fiscal cliff ans the yellow peril, is an imaginery peril. They are crises used to persuade free people support tyrants.
Peterike: the only consolation to be found here is that, despite the Administration’s worst efforts to speed our nuclear disarmament, the pace of actual dismantlement is very slow. We are far behind the commitments made by G.W. Bush, and that much farther behind Obama’s vision. Inventories shrink very slowly. There is time to turn this around, if we find the political will.
Weapons may remain as “inventory” but that doesn’t mean that they are effective – the total number of effective weapons should remain a secret.
Each nuclear weapon deteriorates with time and radioactive decay of certain components, especially tritium with a 12 year half life.
That’s why the LLNL personnel cuts are significant. Obama can reduce our active nuclear weapon inventory by doing NOTHING.
It seems to me that selling of nukes to other non-nuclear nations, and probably not even to sub-national terrorist groups, isn’t a true threat. The USA, the USSR, and even China can easily afford to out-bid any other potential buyer. And it’s clearly in their best interests to be sure one of them is the winner of any auction.
The only true danger here is that of theft or a “power-grab” during some military coup, and even there, the latter is most likely to result in an internal, not external use.
That’s not an absolute determination, but those seem much more likely than purely rogue usage of nukes. I would fear more the arrogance of one of the leaders of the current nuke and near-nuke states resulting in saber-rattling that starts a war by going too far.
“There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin. The law cannot be a tool of vengeance, never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has created. You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences.”
– ‘Dune Messiah’ -
“Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”
- Ronald Reagan -
“You people speak so lightly of war. You don’t know what you are talking about. War is a terrible thing… you mistake, too, the people of the North. they are a peaceable people but an earnest people and will fight too… The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive, or railway car; Hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail.”
– W. T. Sherman, then superintendent of the La. Military Academy,
to a colleague, December, 1860 -