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To play devil's advocate that kind of makes sense... in the advent of a nuclear launch you have no idea how other people will respond, and if China et al were t
by pdeuchler 11y ago
To play devil's advocate that kind of makes sense... in the advent of a nuclear launch you have no idea how other people will respond, and if China et al were to respond it's reasonable to assume it would have been directed at the US (even if the US was not the aggressor). At that point you have to go scorched earth and take out any possible retaliation. It is nuclear war after all, when you're launching an arsenal of 32,000 warheads there's only going to be one survivor at best so you might as well do everything in your power to make sure it's you.
- mikeash 11y agoAmerican military planners don't seem to agree with that, since they revised it later on to add options. It looks more likely that the original all-or-nothing SIOP was just an organizational thing due to limited planning resources available. To make a bad and inadequate analogy, it's like writing a computer program that does a bunch of unnecessary work because it's easier and you want to get it out the door. Except instead of wasted CPU cycles, it's millions of lives.
- scrumper 11y agoI think this is exactly the case. I do remember reading that early versions of SIOP were designed to be easily triggered by a heavily compromised administration after an attack, so there wasn't any real room for options which would require a more complicated and confusing command protocol than just saying, "go". Command and Control (I think) touches on the back-and-forth evolution with SIOP between the various branches of military and civilian leadership.
- arethuza 11y ago"China et al were to respond it's reasonable to assume it would have been directed at the US" China didn't have nuclear weapons until '64 and I have no idea who the leaders of Albania were threatening apart from their own unfortunate population.
- rangibaby 11y agoI think military planners didn't fully understand what it really meant to use nuclear weapons until later. Things like tactical weapons (Davy Crockett, Genie missiles) and non-military (Operation Plowshares and the Soviet equivalent) were developed in the 50s and pretty much gone by the late 60s. Dr. Strangelove (1964) is probably the best documentary you can watch about what "they" thought at the time.
- dchichkov 11y agoIt only makes sense, if you'd put nations and nationalism above everything. "We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?" - Carl Sagan.
- arbuge 11y agoI always thought Sagan would have been the best spokesman, ironically.