Almost everything in Dr. Strangelove was true (2014)
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
"The president can select nuclear strike packages against three categories — military targets, war-supporting or economic targets and leadership targets. There are sub-options, and the menu allows a president to withhold attacks on specific targets.
Two officials said that the “Black Book” also includes estimates on the number of casualties for each of the main options that run into the millions, and in some cases over 100 million. Officials who have dealt with nuclear-war options said that learning the details can be horrifying and that there is a “Dr. Strangelove” feel to the whole enterprise."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/...
I can see the next president tweeting at 3.30 am: "Should I launch Black Book option 17C? I'll keep you in suspense..."
It's strange how distant the idea of nuclear war seems to my mind when I try to imagine the perspective of someone who lived through the Cold War.
It's even more strange to imagine my own country as being a nuclear instigator. Metal Gear Solid is the closest I've come to nuclear doctrine, and in that game the US is there to stop a terrorist nuclear threat and protect deterrence, not keep the nuclear option on the table and potentially flush deterrence down the toilet. It causes some dissonance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
'The Guardian reported in 2016 that the options are said to include: "Put yourself under the command of the US, if it is still there", "Go to Australia", "Retaliate", or "Use your own judgement".'
Personally, I vote for the 'Go to Australia' thing :)
[0] http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2016/11/18/the-president-and-...
What if they _become_ insane during the term, join the secret Korean cult, mindwashed by Russians, or just generally lose their bearings in completely unpredictable way? I only can hope that there is some classified procedure designed to deal with this situation, otherwise, human civilization is doomed, sooner or later.
Ultimate in the sense of last, not best.
Let's say you want to threaten your enemy with nuclear war so they'll do what you want. Maybe you want them to withdraw their missiles from Cuba. The threat you make actually has two components - the claim you'll launch, and the credibility of that claim. The enemy is only scared of the /product/ of threat and credibility, so if either is zero your enemy has nothing to fear.
If you say "we'll certainly launch" you have no credibility (you'd have launched already, and everyone can see you haven't) and if you say "we certainly won't launch" you have no threat.
In fact, Schelling points out, the only credible threats are /randomized/ threats, that fall somewhere between 100% and 0% chance of launching. You threaten your enemy by showing him you have a system that has a 0.1% chance of launching per day, and you'll roll the dice every day until they withdraw their missiles from cuba (or whatever you want them to do).
Except rather than rolling dice, the random threat is from systems failures and mad generals.
This is what the DEFCON level is really about - increasing the 'readiness level' amounts to reducing the controls that prevent accidental launches, increasing the threat of a random launch.
'Doomsday machines' can be explained by a similar calculation: Nobody will believe you if you claim you'll trigger nuclear war if a single soldier took a single step over a border. So why would you for two soldiers or two steps - or indeed the capture of some trifling town near one of your allies' borders? It's not like mutually assured destruction will become a more palatable concept when the enemy tanks are ten miles over the border instead of one.
However, if you build a doomsday machine with tank detectors ten miles past the border, then you give enemy diplomats and spies a tour and show them that it works, the claim that you'll launch has credibility /despite/ the fact the ten mile line is arbitrary. The invader's calculation is no longer "If our conventional forces do X, will /they/ trigger a launch?" but instead "Do /we/ want to trigger a launch?" and the answer to that is always 'no'.
So Dr Strangelove is actually a pretty well informed film :)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling#The_Strategy_...
Also, I've always been fascinated by the Doomsday machine/credible second-strike capability doctrine, and what their ultimate consequences might be. One I find particularly interesting is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_peace
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb517-Nixon-Kissinger-an...
Essentially, the Brits have nuclear subs positioned around the world ready to launch. If, for some reason, the UK gets wiped out and one of these subs becomes disconnected from the chain of command, then a letter locked in the Captain's safe contains instructions on what to do: launch, or don't launch. One would think the very existence of these letters, and the non-zero probability that they would say "don't launch", reduces the effectiveness of the UK's nuclear deterrent under a MAD strategy, but as you point out it is actually the non-zero probability that one of these subs becomes accidentally disconnected and the letter in their safe says "launch" that makes their deterrent work in the first place.
Essentially, in game theory terms you're turning a prisoner's dilemma into a Nash equilibrium, which while it sounds straight-forward enough in theory is not always so simple to achieve in practice.
If Britain claims they'll launch if London is attacked, that's pretty believable on its own. If Britain (say) claims they'll launch if Russia invades the Crimean Peninsula, that's kind of hard to believe.
As Britain's cold war allies were also America's cold war allies, Britain didn't really /need/ to scare the soviets with the chance of a random launch as America pretty much had that taken care of. And as Britain is an island, they didn't have the 'soldiers crossed the border by accident' problem either.
The more feasible way is arms limitation. Let's say you go from having enough nukes to destroy the entire planet to merely having enough to end your opponent's civilization as we know it. But the more alliances means the more enemies or even targets on your own side.
10,000 to 1,000 is relatively easy. 1,000 to 100 is very very hard. <100 will probably never happen :(
It would take more time than a nuclear exchange but it is possible to inflict comparable levels of destruction through conventional warfare if you have multiple nations sending millions of humans into battle as part of a war that drags on.
Of course, things start to get a bit dicey when you add not so rational nuclear powers in to the mix (e.g. North Korea), or diversion of nuclear bombs to not so rational 'non-state actors'.
I feel you, but that assumption is where this argument diverges from reality.
[0]. https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace-after-1945/ [1]. http://www.fallen.io/ww2/
Also, advances in medicine have significantly reduced the number of deaths in war. It's worth noting that in the American civil war, the vast majority of deaths on both sides were attributed to non-combat disease.
So maybe you have a point, but I doubt that it's as simple as more nukes = less deaths.
This, of course, is not what happened. The Damascus Titan accident did not involve a nuclear weapon being mistakenly, but intentionally, armed. The very real fear was, instead, that the explosion of a damaged missile could accidentally detonate the warhead as well -- or, in a case only slightly better, blast it into radioactive dust.
I'd never considered the risk entailed by the simple existence -- intentional use entirely aside -- of nuclear weapons. Reading the list of (public!) broken arrow incidents is harrowing.
Nuclear weapons present a very weird trade-off. On the positive side, I'd argue they greatly reduce the chance of total war between nuclear powers, almost to the point of it being unthinkable. Of course it sucks for whichever country they're fighting a proxy-war in, but better than the whole world I guess. On the other hand, there's a slim chance at any given moment someone will do something crazy or some system will malfunction and every living thing on the planet gets vaporised.
The thing that scares me is the possibility of tactical nukes. As the old saying goes: "one man's big tactical nuke is another man's little strategic nuke". Or something like that...
Our human civilization is very young. Our governments sometimes resort to the level of discourse more appropriate for 5 year old boys fighting in a sandbox. But apparently some toys look dangerous enough to be put on the shelf and never touched without adult supervision.
But lately I began wondering how much of it is survivor bias and thinking that we cannot extrapolate this into the future.
There are a bunch of hypotheses about why we have yet to encounter or discover other intelligent life in our galaxy/universe (or, more specifically, the Fermi Paradox). Two seem particularly relevant here:
(a) 'It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself': There is some period of technological development where the odds of self-extinction become extremely high (e.g. the relatively recent development of nuclear weapons... for example...).
(b) 'It is the nature of super intelligent life to destroy others': Intelligent species past a certain point of technological capability will destroy other intelligent species as they emerge. A species might undertake such extermination out of expansionist motives or even just rational and prudent self-interest: an intelligent species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might view other advanced species as a potential threat. A highly advanced alien species would also likely be a super-predator (as are humans).
The huge problem with the Dr. Strangelove situation is that it broke that first condition there.
[1] http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2016-11-09