Is there a reason nuclear weapons would be aimed at military targets, rather than political targets? I always assumed a nuclear war would just be a bunch of decapitation strikes where suddenly nobody has capitol cities.
If you have the choice between targeting an ICBM silo, a ballistic missile submarine, or a large number of civilians, which do you think is going to maximize what you have left after a nuclear exchange?
(keep in mind that the statement "enough to destroy 1/3rd of USSR's military under ideal circumstances" is total nonsense)
Yep, it's just an another examples where the definition of a military and political objective in war differs dramatically.
In case you fight a purely "political war," that might've worked, but imagine in a scenario a gigantic indoctrinated military "with mind of its own." You can kill a higher animal by decapitation, but not a hydra that does not need a head to function to begin with, or will possibly even get more aggressive and stronger without it.
Edit:
@justin66: Right, there is a difference between what a few ethicists determine and what policy is actually enacted. America was actually postured for a first strike, with Russian airfields,etc being the highest priority targets, urban-industrial targets being lower down the list. After that, population centers were considered targets. This was based on the supposition at that time that a Russian attack could be anticipated and preempted.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb538-Cold-War-Nuclear...
This was never US policy and not how our weapons were targeted.
Once the cold war was in earnest, both sides were capable of a first strike, and were also capable of successfully launching a crippling retaliatory strike. Hence the phrase "mutually assured destruction" describing the tension used to prevent either side from attacking.
> Russian airfields,etc being the highest priority targets,
To put the ancient information you're linking to in perspective, it's apparently 63 years old, prior to when the United States successfully tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile.
Later, the highest priority targets for nuclear weapons were... other nuclear weapons. Specifically, things like hardened missile silos were targeted once we had ICBMs capable of targeting them accurately enough to destroy them.
> urban-industrial targets being lower down the list. After that, population centers were considered targets.
No. I don't have time to pick through the fifties-era document you linked to, but cities were never really a target. It's easy enough to understand why.
The serious damage done to population centers in a nuclear war would have been largely incidental. That would have been terrible enough. You don't have to target population centers per se when you launch enough thermonuclear weapons to cause a nuclear winter, and when a lot of population centers happen to be located adjacent to (or simply downwind from) your military targets. Those people are fucked anyway
If you have a really good anti-ballistic missile defense system, the game changes and you can target whatever you want. We haven't seen what that is like yet.
Kavka, G. S. (1978). Some Paradoxes of Deterrence. The Journal of Philosophy, 75(6), 285. doi:10.2307/2025707