In light of the one that failed in November 2023, I'm glad this one worked.
That's concerning. If we rely on MAD for survival, we shouldn't signal weakness or unpreparedness with our nuclear arsenal.
Nukes are such a double-edged sword. If nuclear proliferation continues, I wonder if the MAD doctrine will even work. All it would take is one suicidal despot or slip up to destroy the world.
The fragile world hypothesis as an answer to the Fermi Paradox seems uncomfortably likely to me. (A "fragile universe" where the first aliens to initiate vacuum collapse to restart the universe also seems plausible.)
Not as much as you would think. Ballistic missiles are not the most reliable things in the world, you expect some degree of failures, especially at longer ranges. When Iran launched its massive ballistic missile barrage at Israel last year, I saw estimates that as many as half failed, either during boost phase or during the midcourse phase. And while that isn't great, it's not entirely unexpected. American ICBMs are expected to be more reliable than that, but we're probably talking about 70-80% in realistic conditions (My source is the "Iran and Israel's Missile War" episode of the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, where Dr. Lewis makes those statements. A quick google didn't give a written source). The reason this doesn't matter overly much is because the US (and other nuclear powers) have a lot of missiles. Even if your missiles have 50% reliability, if you just make twice as many missiles as you need there isn't really an issue. You still want your missiles as reliable as possible, of course, and you want your tests to be especially reliable for signaling purposes. But a failed test every now and then is not going to fundamentally alter the risk calculus.
NATO has an offensive one.
After reading the official statements of nuclear use, with the US having "sink an airship carrier and find out", I thought: Are we the baddies? Rules as written, NATO is not interested in the survival of the human race, but in winning every war.
Even if every known nuclear weapon in the world was decommissioned it'd likely still be needed, in today's dollars the Manhattan project was $30 billion. And you gotta assume modern technology and knowledge would make it quite a bit cheaper.
After reading the official statements of nuclear use,
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-12/news/russia-revises-...
It says that Russia may use nuclear weapons in the event
of “aggression against the Russian Federation and/or the
Republic of Belarus…with the use of conventional weapons,
creating a critical threat to their sovereignty and/or
territorial integrity.”
Russia seems to have an unclear one as well. They've certainly implied the use of tactical warheads as an option with the Russo-Ukraine war should it reach a certain point.
As for if we're the baddies... don't touch the boats. shrugs
If you where a nato country you had the problem that by the time reinforcment from the usa could arrive, the udssr could potentially be in control of most if not all of europe.
While the udssr didn't really had that concern, as they had more than enough room to retreat, reform and defend.
In such a scenario it's very easy for the udssr to have a no first strike policy when there was simply no way for any european country to invade them, while smaller countries would have had a real concern that they either use their weapons to the full effect or have no chance to do so.
IMHO there is also the substantial benefit that the udssr now knew that any attack meant that they would trigger a war without winners, e.g. they couldn't fight and then retreat to safe bases deep in their territory
Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, Europe is too divided and too civilised to make that threat and probably at this point not strong enough from a military perspective to execute on it.
You left out one option in the the US's decision space: a surprise attack against Europe. I don't think the UK & France combined have enough nuclear warheads to cause an Extinction Level Event without US assistance. But still, if they think the destruction of human civilization is the correct position to take, might be best if we help extirpate them while they aren't sufficiently armed.
In a nuclear world you need to believe this (and your rivals need to know you 100% believe) or you won't survive to the next round of the game.
Israel, also.
Now that the USA has thrown up a giant middle finger to Europe & NATO, it sure seems like more countries are going to have to make their own nuclear weapons. No one is coming to help you Poland; that's the new American stance. So everyone start proliferating!
It absolutely makes the situation much much much harder to manage. Now, and in a longer term as nations go through their own fits & tantrums over time. As, we see, happens.
Even today, the vast majority of your military spending should be in something else. Precision targeted small explosives generally get the job you need done much better that destroy the whole earth.
Precision targeted small explosives generally get the
job you need done much better that destroy the whole earth.
I think you got it backwards - the warheads are still British-made, they're stuck on top of US missiles.
I agree with your gist that this ain't a massive economic burden (although my gods, trying to get from ancient Minuteman to Sentinel in the US has been a far-harder-than-it-should-be travail). But that's not the point.
The point is proliferation. For not-that-much-less-than a century, the world has agreed that these horrific terrible incredible weapons are too dangerous, are something we should encourage nations to not build, to not need. Because there have been perceived responsible respectable decent powers of the world who have pledged to defend the free world against enemies and incursions. Who are vested in world stability, who see that afraid nations building the bomb for themselves creates a risk that some day those bombs aren't under control, are used by bad players. Conservatism towards the bomb has been an agreed praxis everywhere.
And the DJT America has just slid up behind anti&proliferation and slit it's throat and left the bleeding out body of an incredibly sane-making de-risking world-stabilizing force. By being an absolute grade-A weak skinned petty douche.
That's how the rest of the world lives praying that the US doesn't bomb them because they are not "democratic" enough.
I find it gross as hell, but the "switchblade" drones we have favored have basically no collateral damage. And Biden stopped the drone warfare almost entirely.
It's unclear to me what the complaint really is. I don't see it.
There's an entire laundry list of legit complaints about post WWII US actions.
Made up weapons of mass destruction, ... it keeps on going.
You can shrug all that off, sure, but there's certainly justification for others to see the US as a source of terror.
Wait, are you asking to appreciate that the US stopped nuking cities?
Ukraine's Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances doesn't seem to have gotten them much in the way of territorial integrity either.
If I were bordering Russia or any other state that seems interested in expanding its borders, I'd be concerned that international agreements might not deter such expansion and wonder what could be done. Obtaining the means for MAD seems reasonable, although the costs are high and perhaps unjustifiable.
1) When there are lots of actors. As the number of potential threats go up, the probability that someone will act "irrationally" goes up combinatorially. This is why monopolies always act to benefit themselves, oligopolies usually act in their own interest, but competitive markets always have some defector that triggers a price war.
2) When one of the actors is dead anyway. MAD relies on total annihilation being a negative consequence. If total annihilation is what's going to happen to you anyway, you have no incentive not to launch the missiles.
3) When the responsible party for a launch can't be identified. If you launch but your other enemy gets blamed for it, you've killed two birds with one stone.
Note that the U.S. government has very strong doctrines in place to avert each of these conditions. Nuclear non-proliferation, strong sanctions or military action on countries that are developing nuclear weapons, and nuclear secrecy are all to avert #1. American reliance on soft-power and us keeping dictators in power even when we don't like them are to avert #2. U.S. intelligence agencies are to avert #3.
Despite all this, all three of these conditions are fraying. I'm not all that optimistic that we'll avert nuclear armageddon. The game theorists at RAND corporation knew what they were doing, though.
Live public demos are a signal of strength, not of weakness. The only way you can know the demo is real is if it fails at least occasionally.
I expect to start seeing a lot more articles giving "signals of strength" to try and offset the many signs of weakness and failure which have been painting a target on us.
It scared the shit out of me.
The entire thing hedges on
1. US launching only a handful of mid course interceptors and they all fail, Aegis/SM-3, the most mature ABM system is not even mentioned. If I were the US DOD I would keep an Arleigh-Burke parked outside of North Korea at all times. 2. A North Korean submarine makes it to the coast of California without being tailed and isn't immediately destroyed by a sub after the initial salvo. 3. Russia keeps their phone on silent while nuclear war breaks out
I don't lose sleep over this