How About a Nice Game of Global Thermonuclear War?

Loconut1389 writes "According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has a revised doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks would give the president the authority for a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction."

printable version and article mirror

[codergeek42]

printable version, all one page [washingtonpost.com]
coral cache [nyud.net]

Re:Mutual?

[cybercomm]

There are at leat 19-20 countries with some kind of nuclear program, of which at least 6-8 have a full long-range nuclear capability. Wiki [wikipedia.org] Has some interesting information on that one. Just because USSR is gone doesnt mean that all their tech has dropped off the face of the earth.

Misleading summary

[Infinity Salad]

Did the submitter actually read the story?

The president already has the authority to launch a pre-emptive strike.* What the article is about is a new policy statement by the US (i.e. an international "FYI") about when the president will haul off and nuke something

*This, like the policy discussed in the article, depends on the situation being one where the President doesn't have to wait for Congress to declare war.

Uh?

[bluesoul88]

North Korea at the very least? Lots of places, sheesh. And there are a lot of old Soviet scientist with nothing in their wallets but nuclear warhead schematics. Come on, open your eyes a little bit.

Re:Mutual?

[Xerxus]

These countries have nuclear capabilities. [infoplease.com]
Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, United States, and I think North Korea as well.

Re:And who has the authority to adopt this policy?

[Quarters]

Panama and Grenada both fell under the Monroe Doctrine and the War Powers Act. The War Powers Act was adhered to much more strictly than it was for Iraq. Both Grenada and Panama were over and done with in less than sixty days, which is the time frame granted to the President under the WPA.

Re:And who has the authority to adopt this policy?

[Raul654]

You misunderstand what the law says. The Constitution says the President is Command in Chief of the United States armed forces. That power was more-or-less unrestricted until 1973, when the Post-Vietnam Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. That act says that the president cannot deploy the US military in the field for more than 100(?) days without congressional authorization. However, in this case (e.g, a pre-emptive strike) it has no bearing. The president is free under the law to do it, provided that he get congressional authorization within 100 days or withdraw the troops.

Re:Mutual?

[Wyatt Earp]

No, the only nation other than the United States with anything close to a MAD deterence capability is Russia. China, UK, France and DPRK have limited capabilities compared to the US/Russia.

Israel, India, Pakistan and others have very limited power projection ablities compared to the other Nuclear Powers.

Re:We would have nuked Iraq.

[Mad Leper]

Amazing "evidence" consists of two 25 year old artillery shells that contained cyclosarin that were purchased on the Iraqi black market.

Sounds like proof positive Saddam was up to no good, we should have nuked the bugger.

Sheesh, it seems some people still have a hard time accepting that there were no WMD found in Iraq. And no, you can't keep re-defining the word "WMD" to suit your purposes, show me physical proof of all those weapons that Colonel Powell displayed during his dog&pony show at the UN and then we'll see..

Re:Uh?

[TekPolitik]

Two nukes, well placed, could take out 18 million people. There are 295 million people in the US. That would be 16.39% of the US population.

Gotta love the American education system. 18 / 295 * 100 = 6.1, not 16.39 (which would of course be exceeding the two significant figures in "18" even if it were close to the right number).

To get to 16% you would have to take out 47million.

Re:Mutual?

[Martin Blank]

China?

China has about two dozen single-warhead missiles that can reach the US. That's hardly obliteration, though they're the old, heavy kind that are 2MT or more yield.

I did some research on this a while back. The original context was where someone asserted that a mutual exchange could destroy everything on the planet. The numbers for warheads are about two years out of date, so stats for certain weapons like the Peacekeepers are outdated (there are fewer deployed, possibly none by this point).

Along the lines of killing off all life on earth, no, we don't have that many. Virtually the entire planet is covered in life, and it's dealth with far greater catastrophes than we've been able to come up with.

From a strategic perspective, let's look at the numbers.

The US Navy has 16 Ohio-class subs available right now (two of those are scheduled for retrofitting to carry Tomahawks and two others are already undergoing or prepping to undergo this conversion). Twelve of those carry the Polaris D5 missile, and the remaining four carry the Polaris C4 missile. The D5 is capable of handling up to eight warheads, while the C4 can handle six. Of the 2880 warheads thus deployable (assuming all Ohios sailed at the same time), 2496 are W76 warheads with yields of 100kT, while the remaining 384 are W88 warheads with yields of 475kT.

The Navy also has 320 nuclear-armed Tomahawk cruise missiles in its inventory, though none are deployed. Each of these carries a W80-0 warhead (150kT yield).

The Air Force's ICBM inventory includes 150 Minuteman III with single W62 warheads (170kT yield), 50 with three W62 warheads, and 300 with three W78 warheads (335kT yield). There are fewer than 40 Peacekeeper MX missiles, each with 10 W87 warheads (300kT yield).

The Air Force's inventory also includes 430 ALCM (Air-Launched Cruise Missile) and 430 ACM (Advanced Cruise Missile), each capable of carrying a single W80-1 warhead (150kT yield). There are also 800 B61 (variable yield, from 0.3kT to 170kT) and 650 B83 gravity bombs (variable yield, from 30kT to 1200kT). There are other weapons scattered about for various reasons, mostly semi-deployed, but scheduled for collection and dismantling, so we'll leave those out of our calculations.

So, we have the following warheads/weapons, their counts/maximum yields/radius for near-certain death/radius for widespread destruction of buildings/radius of third-degree burns/area of widespread damage:

• B61 series -- 800/170kT/1500m/4000m/5600m/98.5 sq km
• B83 -- 650/1200kT/2900m/7700m/12,600m/498 sq km
• W62 -- 300/170kT/1500m/4000m/5600m/98.5 sq km
• W76 -- 2496/100kT/1300m/3400m/4500m/63.6 sq km
• W78 -- 900/335kT/1900m/5000m/7400m/172 sq km
• W80-0 -- 320/150kT/1500m/3900m/5400m/91.6 sq km
• W80-1 -- 860/150kT/1500m/3900m/5400m/91.6 sq km
• W87 -- 400/300kT/1800m/4900m/7100m/158 sq km
• W88 -- 384/475kT/2100m/5600m/8600m/232 sq km

For conversion purposes, 1000m = 0.6214 miles, and 1 sq. km. = 0.3861 sq. mi.

So we get a total area of near-certain death, assuming optimal air burst altitude and flat terrain conditions, of 1,006,854 square kilometers. The Russian arsenal is probably about the same, so we can call it, for sake of convenience, 2 million square kilometers. The world's land surface area is about 149 million square kilometers, and the total area is 510 million square kilometers. Thus, we have the capability to have 1.4% of the world's land mass fall into the 'wide-spread third-degree burns' category, but only 0.39% of the total world's area including oceans. We could have some effect, but it would not kill everything.

Throw it into the US and Russia, and the percentages jump to significant levels -- about 5.8% of Russia, and about 11% of the US. It doesn't factor in fallout, either, but as the numbers were intended to reflect airbursts, that wouldn't be as much of a probl

Not entirely accurate

[MrDiablerie]

The Pentagon is pretty sure that North Korea has a couple of nukes already but they don't have the ballistic missle technology to reach the United States. Currently, they are more of a threat to South Korea and Japan. They are selling their Taep'o-dong 1 boosters to Iran though, which is not good. If Iran develops nuclear weapons they can use these boosters to reach nations such as Israel. They estimate North Korea could develop booster technology necessary to reach the United States in a few years though.

Re:Mutual?

[chris_sawtell]

Who has the means anymore, besides the U.S.?

In no particular order, these are the 'Nuclear Nations':-

• France
• United Kingdom
• Israel
• India
• Pakistan
• China
• Russia
• United States of America

There is also reputed to be a fair amount of 'missing material' of which nobody knows the exact quantity or location.
Frightening isn't it?
The world's gone MAD, totally MAD

Re:Mutual?

[Wyatt Earp]

True on UK/French nukes, especially the UK's Tridents, however they don't have that many in the general scheme of things. Four Vanguard class with 16 SLBMs each, that'd kill alot of people in city bursts, but in the scheme of MAD, it's a minor threat.

"The British-designed warheads are thought to be selectable between 0.3 kt, 5-10 kt and 100 kt; the yields obtained using either the unboosted primary, the boosted primary, or the entire "physics package". Although it owns the warheads, the United Kingdom does not actually own the missiles; instead it leased 58 missiles from the United States government and these are exchanged when requiring maintenance with missiles from the United States Navy's own pool."

N.B. Preemptive != Preventive

[hey!]

All preemptive strikes are preventive, but not all preventive strikes are preemptive.

Preemption stops an action after it has been set in motion but before it has borne fruit. In order for an attack to be preemptive, the enemy must be engaged in an attack, albeit at a very early stage. When the gunfighter is going for his six-shooter, and the friend you've prudently stationed on the roof of the blacksmith's drills him with his winchester, that's preemption. When you shoot a guy in the back on the theory he might shoot you some day, that's merely prevention.

True preemption requires evidence, not of capability, not of hostility, but actual action being set in motion. Nobody who believes the self-defense is justifiable can deny that preemption is equally justifiable. But most forms of prevention are morally reprehensible.

Having a doctrine of preemption only means you prepare for the eventuality. I'd say it should be pretty uncontroversial, except that prevention/preemption distinction is one which many people aren't aware of. Unfortunately, the administration likes to blur the lines between these two things, giving mere prevention the status of preemption. The Iraq war was a preventive war, not a preemptive one, but the administration did its best to make it look preemptive.

U.S. NEVER ruled out nuclear first-strike

[Anonymous Coward]

People seem to think that the U.S. pledged never to use nukes first, but the truth is exactly the opposite. The Soviets repeatedly pledged to never use nukes first, and the U.S. refused to make the same pledge. To this day, the U.S. keeps open the option of using nuclear weapons first (and indeed, we remain the only nation have ever used them in war at all).

American justification for refusing the pledge during the Cold War was that we needed the nuclear deterrent to prevent the Soviets from invading Western Europe.

According to this article [wikipedia.org], the issue came up within NATO as recently as 1999 and NATO refused to make such a pledge. A 2002 Pentagon report also looked into new first-strike uses for mini-nukes. Modern Russia continues the no-first-strike policy.

Whether you think no-first-strike is a good policy or a bad one, I think the subject is interesting because (as this Slashdot article implies) most of my fellow Americans have an image of themselves and ourselves as a nation such that they would assume no-first-strike to be our policy - with Soviet and other "bad guys" refusing to agree. As usual, the truth is more complex.

A note about the tsar bomba.

[Ernesto Alvarez]

The tsar bomba, as it was tested was one of the cleanest weapons fired [nuclearweaponarchive.org].

The full bomb, however would have made a very big mess, though.

BTW, something that can cause third degree burns at 100km away is pretty impressive (even if that monster bomb was impractical).

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

18 million / 295 million isn't 16.39%. Moreover, Los Angeles County sprawls over such a vast area that nobody, not even the U.S., has a bomb that can destroy it in its entirety. Finally, North Korea does not have a missile capable of reaching L.A. or N.Y.

You're so stupid, you make baby Darwin cry.

First use was pollicy all through the Cold War

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

People didn't generally come out and put it that way, but the people who counted tanks didn't have much hope of stopping the Warsaw Pact using only conventional weapons. NATO defense plans depended on "tactical" nukes and the threat of strategic strikes. The code phrase used it public was that an attack on Europe would be treated as an attack on the US.

Re:Terrorism forces us into a no win situation

[Derling Whirvish]

I'll tell you what we do: We give them what they want! We get the fuck out of Saudi Arabia!

Dude! Nice rant, but it ignores one salient fact. We ARE out of Saudi Arabia. The United States withdrew all U.S. military forces from Saudi Arabia in 2002.

Re:Mutual?

[joewkelly]

No, US policy is not shifting to resemble the French doctorine. French, Britain, and US nuclear doctorines regarding "No First Use" are all already the same, they oppose No First Use, afterall these countries all are part of NATO. US has always rejected No First Use. US policy had been one of "calculated ambiguity," that is we would be ambiguious on nuclear questions as it would contribute to our security. Secretary of Defense William Cohen in November 1998: "We think the ambiguity involved in the issue of nuclear weapons contributes to our own security, keeping any potential adversary who might use either chemical or biological [weapons] unsure of what our response would be." But there are four major problems with Calculated Ambiguity. (And this new doctorine eliminates the benefits of ambiguity, and just strengthens the case that we should not make nuclear threats.) 1. It violates The Non-Proliferation Treaty's (1995 extension conference) guarantee not to threaten non-nuclear states with nuclear use. Violations of the NPT hurt credibility in persuading countries to forgo acquisition of nuclear weapons. And Proliferation is a Bad thing. (See Scott Sagan in _Nuclear Weapons: A debate renewed_) 2. Calculated Amiguity creates a "commitment trap." If a country does threaten WMD, or does use non-nuclear WMD, then the US will be expected to use nuclear weapons, starting a nuclear war. (See Scott Sagan "The Commitment Trap" 2000 [PDF] http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/20284/sagan_is_spr [stanford.edu] 00.pdf [stanford.edu] ) 3. Nuclear first use contributes to the tyranny of survival, whereby any imaginable evil can be committed in the name of survival. (See Daniel Callahan _Tyranny of Survival_ 1977) 4. Nuclear first use threats underly nuclearism, an ideology that makes nuclear use thinkable and more likely. (See Lifton & Falk _Indefensible Weapons_ 1982) (Sorry that most of these resources are off-line, but the Sagan article should keep most entertained for a while.) Here's the stance of the 5 major nuclear power states on the question of No First Use China has No First Use Russia had No First Use, but revoked it in recent years, due to a lack of reciprication. Britain and France both oppose No First Use. (NATO Members Canada and Germany support No First Use.) US policy is stated above. Also India has No First Use. For more information on US First Use Policy, see Stansfield Turner's _Caging the Genie_ 1998. Turner was of the CIA, and advocates establishing a global No First Treaty, and believes that it would be feasible. Having studied the question of No First Use literature for about a semester, I can say that the academic literature, especially critical academic literature, is slanted in favor of a US No First Use policy, even if not recipricated.

Re:Uh?

[Rakishi]

Anon so I doubt you'll even read this but morons have to be countered an all.

"It's also worth noting that while North Korea may or may not possess the ability to land a nuclear strike on the west coast of the continental US, China most certainly does, and we all know that China and N. Korea are essentially allies."

Allies? Hardy, more like China's annoying little neighbor who can't be gotten rid off. NK is tolerated since it doesn't jeopardize anything important (ie: trade with the west) and provides a buffer between SK. Also, China has more to fear from those NK nukes than anyone else except SK.

"(using tech Clinton sold them no doubt)"

Wow, how much tin foil do YOU cover your head with? OR are you simply as dense as DU? They're using Soviet technology, heck they copied decent amounts of it exactly.

"If they can put a person in orbit, they can land a warhead anywhere on earth they choose."

Not really, aiming and so on become more problematic and less accurate. In addition, such a weapon is easy to detect and potentially intercept. Right now China has 20 icbms it can lob at the West Coast, and either does or soon will have nuclear missiles on submarines (may have one, I'm not sure) which can hit more or less anywhere. It also would be committing economic suicide if it ever used them.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

MAD -- not likely

[gcanyon]

Unless we are expecting an attack from Russia, Great Britain, France, or China, we are not talking about MAD.

Read http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp3.sht ml/ [atomicarchive.com]

Then read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_wit h_nuclear_weapons [wikipedia.org] more carefully than some apparently have.

Apart from the above countries, it is unlikely that any of these so-called rogue states have anything much more powerful than Fat Man and Little Boy. The first site above lists the damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Note in particular:

  -- No casualties were suffered as a result of any persistent radioactivity of fission products of the bomb, or any induced radioactivity of objects near the explosion.
  -- The blast totally destroyed everything within a radius of 1 mile and caused significant damage out to about 3 miles.

Anyone who thinks that North Korea is going to figure out a way to send a missile across the Pacific, accurately, and manage to destroy all 465 square miles of Los Angeles, is not checking the facts.

China could destroy Los Angeles.
France could, probably.
Great Britain, most likely.

India, with 60-90 weapons, would have to place them carefully.

North Korea just can't do it

Which is not to say that hitting Los Angeles with even one nuclear warhead wouldn't hurt.

But consider the situation about a day after that, when the country that launched against Los Angeles isn't there anymore, and the US has used perhaps 5% of its arsenal.

MAD indeed.

Re:Terrorism forces us into a no win situation

[Anonymous Coward]

"Invaded". Damn straight. Good choice of words. I'm not being sarcastic; 1000 years ago, Muslim warloads plundered and raped northern India, eastablishing footholds that lead to the Mugal Empire that in turn lead to things like the Kashmiri problem, (which I refer to as the "Pakistani problem"). For some reason, Islam encourages expansion by the sword. I have muslim friends who say that the Koran does not endorse killing civillians, but then why do so many muslim terrorists do it? Where the hell are they reading it? Do they have a different version of the Koran?

Good ideas, wrong facts

[TrekkieGod]

Dude! Nice rant, but it ignores one salient fact. We ARE out of Saudi Arabia. The United States withdrew all U.S. military forces from Saudi Arabia in 2002.

Well, 2003 actually. The US had troops in Saudi Arabia to enforce the no-fly zone in iraq. Then the Iraq war broke out and we essentially moved those troops (and many more) to Iraq. Yeah...I'm sure that made those muslims who were so protective of their land happy and they have no more reason to feel like they're being invaded, right?

Not that I support removing troops from Iraq now. I was against the war back before it started, but the only thing that would be worse than that ill-conceived invasion would be to now wash our hands of the incident and tell the new government to go deal with their own problems. We dug ourselves into one big hole out of which there's no easy way. Essentially, the grandparent was right though...instead of trying to gain these people's support and stop terrorism by removing the incentive and Osama's excuses, we went and pissed them off more. Now we can't leave, and just have to weather it out until someone smarter than I am can come up with a better solution.

However, if you're thinking the better solution is to go and nuke anyone pre-emptively...well, you're just nuts, and I'm glad you don't have the power to do so (I have to believe even Bush understands that, if for no other reason than optmism).

I always find it funny to analyze the pro-war people, like the one in the post that started all this. They say things like "terrorism is about slaughtering women and children. It is a low-key form of genocide and is beyond mere criminality. A population that supports it and encourages it doesn't deserve to be let off the hook when it unleashes that on another group." while at the same time saying things like "I'd support anyone who would drive a nuclear bomb right into the middle of those fuckers dancing in the streets celebrating "The Great Satan(tm)" getting nuked." Dude, you are obviously NO DIFFERENT. When something disastrous like 9/11 happens, as much as it is painful to us, the virtuous thing to do is to get out of the "we must have our revenge" mindset and into the "how can we prevent this from happening again" one. You can't bring the dead ones back to life, and killing people who didn't have anything to do with it because they bought into the propaganda that we are 'The Great Satan' is just going to enforce the notion that we are indeed 'The Great Satan' to anyone that survives.

Re:_Great_ analogy

[CrowScape]

I hope you're refering to your grandparent, other wise I'd suggest that you read a book about the American revolution. Learn about Richard and William Howe, sent by the British to meet with representives of the Continental Congress to reach a compromise at the start of the rebellion (Surely something a country would do if they considered their enemies terrorists). And while American revolutionaries were considered traitors by many British, "traitor" is not a synonym for "terrorist."

Re:Non-existent WMDs Baaaad! Real WMDs Gooood!

[Slinky Saves the Wor]

and the Soviet sphere didn't gain a permanent nuclear strike base just off our coast

Let us discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis. The REAL reason why the Soviets went ahead to put nuclear missiles into Cuba was that the Soviet Union was merely returning a favor.

You see, the USA had already planted nuclear missiles into Turkey. Did you know that? And the location of Turkey happens to be just outside the Russian border.

So the Soviet Union was merely extending the courtesy of hauling nuclear missiles next to the other guy's border, and then having had a taste of their own medicine, USA freaked out. When the missile crisis ended, USA agreed to pull out their missiles in Turkey (a little bit delayed though, so that it wouldn't seem that it was the real reason).

The key to international security is really just common sense and respect from all parties. Hauling up nukes to someones backyard and expecting them to accept it is not common sense. Crying wolf when they do the same to you is also not common sense (since you sort of asked for it)?

For more information, have a read [gwu.edu].

Re:Terrorism forces us into a no win situation

[Rayonic]

"The terrorists attack us because we give them reason to attack us"

Yeah, like when the Jews invented AIDS to kill Muslims.

Or when the European powers tried to sterilize muslim women in Niger, with injections disguised as immunization shots.

Or when America used nuclear bombs to cause the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

Or when Israel slaughtered thousands of civilians in the "Jenin Massacre".

What, none of the above ever happened? Well, all that (and worse) were widely reported and believed in the various countries of the Middle East. It's because their religious and political leaders incite hatred in the masses, in order to distract them from problems at home and solidify their own personal power.

And no, the same cannot be said about the United States of America.

Didn't you get the memo?

[Chemical Serenity]

Not gonna happen.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNew s/1126539690860_121948890 [www.ctv.ca]

The christofundies can play hide-and-go-f***-themselves too. No special treatment.

You really need to keep up with the times, troll.

Re:Yippee kayay!

[jd]

It's a fairly basic trajectory. The missile will have fuel going up and will run out at some point. After that, it will follow a rough parabolic path on the way down. "Smarter" missiles would probably not use all their fuel going up, and have a way to turn the engines on and off to re-point the missile if it gets significantly off-track.

On the way down, the missile's warhead may scatter independently-targettable nuclear warheads. I believe the really big missiles can carry over a hundred such warheads. Those then rain down, totally unguided except for whatever initial kick the originating missile can give. Not all missiles do this, but most of the strategic ones (as opposed to tactical nukes) are supposed to be like this.

However, American missiles really aren't known for being that accurate, and past a certain point, there would be no way for the Americans to command the missile to self-destruct. (Even if you do, if the warheads inside are primed, that might not do a whole lot of good.) If the missile overshot and was going for China, the Americans might not have time between discovering this and not being able to stop it.

Even if the missile was going for the intended target, China might not be able to determine that. It depends on how good their Radar is. If the precision is too low, if there's some interference which distorts the image, or even if they decide the missile has enough fuel to repoint from North Korea to them, they may well conclude it is an attack on them and fire back.

There are a very large number of possibilities, there is currently no technology advanced enough to eliminate all of the variables, and as the Son Of Star Wars project proves, politicians are likely to ignore the details anyway.

Re:A challenge

[einhverfr]

1: Define "neocon".

I will decline to answer this because alas I feel that it is not limited to neocons.

2: Cite some specific examples of whom you are referring to.

September 11, 1973, Santiago Chile
August 19, 1953, Tehran
The overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatamala
The overthrow of José María Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador
I am sure there are others (the coup against Chavez fits the same pattern).

Also consider death-squad governments in places like El Salvador which were largely sponsored by the US. Things look better now, but I think we are going back to that same mentality of "we must make the world our slave for the sake of our security" which was prevalent in the cold war.

3: Cite some specific quotes by these people backing up your childish, absurd claims about them.

You might find the Reagan Administration's definition of communism interesting. That a government is communist if they believe that the government has an obligation to provide for the welfare of their people.

The parent is wrong in that this is not new in this country. It is just more blatant now.

4: Demonstrate that these particular fools have both the power and will to execute their idiotic claims.

Look at the examples above....

5: Demonstrate that the public support for such people is great enough that their words are likely to result in actions by others.

My point is that our history has been that of subjugating those we could, especially in our hemisphere and in the Middle East.

Clarification of an existing policy

[tnk1]

While it's interesting to see the reactions of people to nuclear weapons policy, the fact is that this is absolutely nothing new. It has been the policy of the US to strike back with nuclear weaponry against anyone using Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons for decades. Indeed, it was the stated policy of the United States that Nuclear weapons would be used against a conventional invasion of Europe by the Soviet Bloc, due to the incedible numerical superiority of those forces. They didn't even have to launch their nukes on us first, all they had to do is roll over into West Germany.

I don't think anyone, particularly me, likes the idea that there is a plan out there to nuke anyone, but the fact is that there are states out there that that need some reassurance that they will be living in a radioactive wasteland if they start wondering why they can't just a lob a few at us.

If you think it can't happen, think again. All it takes is one leader with nukes who thinks that the world will let him get away with it to ensure continued peace, and you've got a disaster waiting to happen. And don't think it couldn't. It takes a lot more planning to launch a full scale invasion of Europe than it does to launch a ballistic missile. The only way to forestall that is a policy that cuts out the realm of uncertainty that brinksmanship thrives on.

This sucks, but we managed to avoid blowing up the world for 60 years with such a policy in place, I don't think a revision is going to make that much of a difference.

Re:And in other news...

[smackdotcom]

Kaku didn't invent this. These are the Kardashev levels [wikipedia.org] of civilization, with the minor addition of a "Category 0" to describe our current level of development. However, the Kardashev levels are much more about our capacity for productive energy utilization within the various 'islands' that we will occupy as our development progresses. Due to the relative distances involved, the Earth is like an island in our solar system, our solar system is like an island in our galaxy, and our galaxy is like an island in our universe.
 
The reality, of course, is that the movement from one stage to the next will not be a series of discrete jumps, but rather a blurry escalation in capability. We will have started to move out into the solar system long before we can use all the energy available to us on Earth, and we will have started to move out into the rest of the galaxy long before we have completely and utterly transformed the resources of our solar system. Good of Kaku to promote the idea, though the world government stuff sounds way too hippy (not to mention being a very bad idea--if said unified government should turn despotic, there'll be no Berlin Wall to flee over).

Re:Once upon a time...

[DerekLyons]

Once upon a time the US Army developed an atomic artillery shell that could be fired from your standard 155mm Howitzer. I have heard rumors that authority to use atomic shells was (to be) vested in field commanders, possibly as low as the regiment level.

Partly truth and partly fiction.

Their are two different concepts at work here. First there is what is called Release Authority - which always resides with the NCA. He, and only he can make the decision to release the weapons (I.E. make them available to fire)[1]. The second concept is Firing Authority, the actual decision to pull the trigger and send a nuclear weapon downrange.

Regardless of who holds firing authority, he cannot excercise it until the weapon has been released. Thus while a regimental commander can make the decision to use the weapons, he cannot execute that decision until they have been released.

[1]Though release can be conditional - I.E. orders can be given in advance by the NCA to release the weapons to the field commanders if certain specific preconditions are met.

Disclaimer: I may have this wrong in some of the details, I was over on the strategic side (which works slightly differently), not on the tactical side.

Re:Doesn't anybody remember the W.O.P.R.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great movie, but when talking about the results of a nuclear exchange, people should see this movie [imdb.com].

Re:No...

[HanzoSpam]

Actually, he's an incompetent, incoherent, religous fundamentalist fool even with a war.

He may be an incompetent, incoherent fool, but he's a Methodist, not a fundamentalist. If you were familiar with Methodist doctrine, you'd realize that it's actually quite liberal compared with most other strains of Christianity (for example, Methodists generally support legal abortion).

Do not confuse Bush with some of his supporters.

Re:Doesn't anybody remember the W.O.P.R.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would also be the most devastatingly ironic event since Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize

You are too modest.

[Anonymous Coward]

"When it comes to terror and devestation, actual terror and devestation, America is strictly in the little leagues."

Really, and how "actual" must terror be before you take it serious? Or does "actual" mean "We didnt do that"?
But, actually, the good ole US of A is right up there with Saddam:

http://www.juancole.com/2005/06/12000-dead-in-iraq i-guerrilla-war-rate.html [juancole.com]

And, of course, youre forgetting the meager 50,000-300,000 deaths as a result of the Cambodia carpet bombing runs.

You disgust me.

VON.

b/c I actually stay informed

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Bush administration can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen it determines to be an enemy combatant in the war on terrorism, a federal appeals court ruled." [bloomberg.com]

Re:Nazism == Socialism

[pianophile]

But Nazism is a socialist doctrine, the name itself is an abreviation for "National Socialist German Workers' Party".

The party may have started out with Socialist leanings, but Hitlers government was Totalitarian, not Socialist. NSDAP is just a name, a label.

Nazist Germany and Socialist Russia were close allies at one time.

Not really. It was convenient to sign a non-agression pact at one time, but Hitler was fanatically anti-communist, and for that reason as well as for Lebensraum the destruction of the Soviet Union was high on Hitler's agenda.

Remember the so-called Ribbentropp-Molotov treaty by which the Soviet Union and Germany agreed on how they would split Europe among themselves.

They agreed to split Poland, not Europe.

Re:Pre-emption a severe move with these weapons

[EiZei]

Single warheads are often indeed sub-megaton but when theres 8 80-100Kt warheads in a single trident missile and 24 tridents aboard a single Ohio class submarine and 14 Ohio class subs.. even a single one of those boats could probably do more damage than any plague could dream of.

Re:Mutual?

[demachina]

I guess I should add some of the other prominent fabrictions used to justify wars and power grabs.

In 1898 the U.S.S. Maine [wikipedia.org] exploded and sank in Havana's harbor. The investigation at the time contended it was a naval mine and sabotage by either the Cuban's or Spanish. In 1976 Admiral Hyman Rickover conducted an investigation that concluded it was most probably a self inflicted fire of some kind that ignited the powder magazine. The conspiracy theorists argue it was probably self inflicted by the U.S. to create a justification for declaring war against Spain. The Spanish American war that followed was in large part due to a massive yellow journalism campaign by William Randolph Hearst [wikipedia.org], who was parodied in Citizen Kane, and his newspaper empire. In fact the Spanish American war was just a pretext for a massive imperial expansion of the U.S. by seizing Spain's Caribbean assets, including Cuba, and the Phillippines. The occupation of the Phillippines lead to a long and bloody insurgency in which hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed by the U.S., and where the U.S. routinely engaged in torture. The Phillipine-American War [wikipedia.org] has largely been purged from the history the U.S. teaches its children because of its raw brutality, but it is a good historical precedent for U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Iraq.

In 1965 we have the Gulf of Tonkin incident [wikipedia.org]. It is a bit different because I don't think anyone was actually killed. It appears it was a complete fabrication on the part of the Johnson administration used to push the Congress and the American people in to escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam. This was one of the more explosive revelations by Daniel Elsberg's leak of The Pentagon Papers [wikipedia.org]. The Johnson administration claimed the North Vietnamese attacked the U.S.S Maddox out of the blue in international waters. Most information since contradicts this claim. From Wikipedia:

"Daniel Ellsberg, who was on duty in the Pentagon that night receiving messages from the ship, reports that the ships were on a secret mission, codenamed DeSoto Patrols, inside North Vietnamese territorial waters. Their purpose was to provoke the North Vietnamese into turning on their coastal defense radar so they could be plotted."

"Regarding claims that the attacks on the US were unprovoked, veterans of US Navy SEAL teams say that US-trained South Vietnamese commandos were active in the area on the days of the attacks. Deployed from Da Nang in Norwegian-built fast patrol boats, the Lien Doc Nguoi Nhia (LDNN, soldiers that fight under the sea), made attacks in the Gulf area on both of the nights in question."

Re:Uh?

[Jamu]

What they said:

That is literally decimation.

What I said:

Also, to decimate you'd have to kill 29.5 million (1 in every 10 of 295 million).

The literal definition from your link:

1 : to select by lot and kill every tenth man of

The deci in decimate means tenth (from decimus). If you decimate a country it doesn't necessarily mean you've killed a tenth. But if you literally decimate a country it does mean you've killed a tenth of the population. See the difference?