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That's a bit of a silly thought experiment. If faced with a symmetric foe that has launched a nuclear holocaust upon my country, it would be absolutely essenti

That's a bit of a silly thought experiment. If faced with a symmetric foe that has launched a nuclear holocaust upon my country, it would be absolutely essential to retaliate in kind so as to ensure that they could not mount a second assault and kill even more people. If I were president, I would not hesitate.

ekianjo 11y ago
> If faced with a symmetric foe that has launched a nuclear holocaust upon my country, it would be absolutely essential to retaliate in kind so as to ensure that they could not mount a second assault and kill even more people. If I were president, I would not hesitate. OK, and it's the end of the world as we know it. Like, Game Over, the survivors are back to the Stone Age and the civilization can start from scratch with 99% less people. Sounds like a sound decision you'd make.
- jerf 11y ago
  This is well-trodden ground, though perhaps long enough ago that younger people have never heard it. A lot of stuff that sounds really sweet and nice and moral turns into nightmares if you play it out in the real world. Advertising to the world that you won't strike back even if you are wiped out is, over the long term, an invitation to be wiped out. Of course if you want to signal your morality to certain types by valuing your own people at zero that may sound better than striking back, but you're still in the end advocating for millions of deaths, whether you meant to or not. If nothing else, allow me to appeal to your own naked self-interest in pointing out you'd be one of them. It is ironic, but by taking a strong "We will strike back" stance, you decrease the chances of ever having to strike. On the flip side, some of the well-trod ground is now out of date, too. Arguments about how maybe we could try non-proliferation instead become irrelevant as nuclear weapons become relatively speaking easier and easier to acquire due to advancing and dispersing technological sophistication. Anyhow, upshot, if you're serious about thinking through the issues this turns out to be a really challenging stage to get up and morally preen at people on. It's very easy to end up advocating a strategy that kills billions of people while preening. It may be unpleasant to you, but you do in fact have to think. Hard. With neither rose-tinted glasses nor excessive cynicism. The easy answers don't work. The sweet answers don't work.
  - kstenerud 11y ago
    Precisely. Tit-for-tat has always been the most effective strategy.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Assuming accurate information. It's far less useful in the real world.
      - notahacker 11y ago
        Indeed given that in the real world a false alarm is far more likely than an actual inbound missile strike, maintaining a convincing illusion of willingness to carry out tit-for-tat" is a far better survival strategy than one which involves actually launching the nukes. If you're too late to retaliate, it doesn't really make much difference to your civilians' survival rates but it certainly does if you fire prematurely when the enemy wasn't* in the process of escalating the conflict
        vidarh 11y ago
        Even that is dangerous, because it means that an adversary who think they have inadvertently crossed a line will have every reason to go all out, because they'll expect a full scale retaliation. Indicating a willingness to use nuclear weapons at all may also make an adversary more willing to believe you may deviate from policy and strike first, which again may lead them to believe an all out first strike is safer than holding back (e.g. I've mentioned Able Archer 83, where the Soviet leadership allegedly considered a first strike because they thought the US was planning one) Part of the problem is that neither you nor the other side knows whether your opponent will stick to any given strategy, nor if they will behave rationally.
  - csallen 11y ago
    Parent was merely saying that you shouldn't actually launch missiles back, not that you shouldn't advertise that you're willing to do so. Deterrence is no longer relevant once missiles are in the air.
dogma1138 11y ago
What if the first strike wasn't a disablement strike but an exterminating one? If your foe launches a strike that would kill 99% of the population of your country would you retaliate to ensure same level of destruction?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- venomsnake 11y ago
  No. I will aim for 100%. 1% with enough technology will still rebuild.
- fanzhang 11y ago
  Let's put aside the likelihood of a exterminating strike (where the enemy achieves near-total destruction before you can even think about launching). Now suppose you do also decide to retaliate to ensure 99% destruction to your foe. Would your foe's knowledge of that change whether your foe even tries an eliminating strike in the first place?
  - PakG1 11y ago
    Well, this is basically the question upon which the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine hinged itself.
  - js8 11y ago
    That's the problem with the MAD doctrine, see. It assumes your opponent is rational. But if he is rational, then perhaps you can agree on not having nuclear weapons in the first place.
    - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
      Rationality is bounded by reality. It might be better if no one had nukes. But, if no one had nukes, what prevents a conventional war from breaking out on the scale of WWII or even larger? Nothing. Nuclear weapons are the greatest creator of peace in history.
archgoon 11y ago
> retaliate in kind so as to ensure that they could not mount a second assault and kill even more people The bigger issue is that they are more likely to initiate the strike if they know about this protocol and believe it will reduce the likelihood of a counter strike.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Or they might be less inclined to strike first to pre-empt a strike. I've mentioned Able Archer 83 elsewhere: The Soviets appears to have gotten close to strike first because they believe the US was preparing to strike. Knowledge of a policy that appeared to indicate a distinct goal of deterring the President from launching a strike might have made the Soviets less nervous. A while afterwards Reagan wrote that he long thought that the Soviet leadership, like the Americans, did not believe a US first strike was a serious possibility. But he eventually learned that this was a flawed assumption: The Soviet leadership saw the US as a possible - even likely - aggressor, and interpreted US actions accordingly. In that context, posturing was incredibly dangerous, and this realisation made him change tack and become determined to sit down and talk to them.
thu 11y ago
For those in this thread that speculate about hitting this or this before reacting: nuclear weapons take a certain time to reach a target and retaliation would happen before _any_ nuclear explosion occurs.
- hga 11y ago
  In the MAD era, there was the theory that we (the US) had a sufficiently robust retaliatory infrastructure that we could ride out the first wave of a first strike and only launch, or in the case of bombers give the PAL codes to arm the warheads to the crews, after the first nuclear explosions happened and were sufficiently confirmed. Launch on Warning was always recognized as an inherently dangerous doctrine.

ekianjo 11y ago

> If faced with a symmetric foe that has launched a nuclear holocaust upon my country, it would be absolutely essential to retaliate in kind so as to ensure that they could not mount a second assault and kill even more people. If I were president, I would not hesitate. OK, and it's the end of the world as we know it. Like, Game Over, the survivors are back to the Stone Age and the civilization can start from scratch with 99% less people. Sounds like a sound decision you'd make.

jerf 11y ago
This is well-trodden ground, though perhaps long enough ago that younger people have never heard it. A lot of stuff that sounds really sweet and nice and moral turns into nightmares if you play it out in the real world. Advertising to the world that you won't strike back even if you are wiped out is, over the long term, an invitation to be wiped out. Of course if you want to signal your morality to certain types by valuing your own people at zero that may sound better than striking back, but you're still in the end advocating for millions of deaths, whether you meant to or not. If nothing else, allow me to appeal to your own naked self-interest in pointing out you'd be one of them. It is ironic, but by taking a strong "We will strike back" stance, you decrease the chances of ever having to strike. On the flip side, some of the well-trod ground is now out of date, too. Arguments about how maybe we could try non-proliferation instead become irrelevant as nuclear weapons become relatively speaking easier and easier to acquire due to advancing and dispersing technological sophistication. Anyhow, upshot, if you're serious about thinking through the issues this turns out to be a really challenging stage to get up and morally preen at people on. It's very easy to end up advocating a strategy that kills billions of people while preening. It may be unpleasant to you, but you do in fact have to think. Hard. With neither rose-tinted glasses nor excessive cynicism. The easy answers don't work. The sweet answers don't work.
- kstenerud 11y ago
  Precisely. Tit-for-tat has always been the most effective strategy.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Assuming accurate information. It's far less useful in the real world.
    - notahacker 11y ago
      Indeed given that in the real world a false alarm is far more likely than an actual inbound missile strike, maintaining a convincing illusion of willingness to carry out tit-for-tat" is a far better survival strategy than one which involves actually launching the nukes. If you're too late to retaliate, it doesn't really make much difference to your civilians' survival rates but it certainly does if you fire prematurely when the enemy wasn't* in the process of escalating the conflict
      - vidarh 11y ago
        Even that is dangerous, because it means that an adversary who think they have inadvertently crossed a line will have every reason to go all out, because they'll expect a full scale retaliation. Indicating a willingness to use nuclear weapons at all may also make an adversary more willing to believe you may deviate from policy and strike first, which again may lead them to believe an all out first strike is safer than holding back (e.g. I've mentioned Able Archer 83, where the Soviet leadership allegedly considered a first strike because they thought the US was planning one) Part of the problem is that neither you nor the other side knows whether your opponent will stick to any given strategy, nor if they will behave rationally.
- csallen 11y ago
  Parent was merely saying that you shouldn't actually launch missiles back, not that you shouldn't advertise that you're willing to do so. Deterrence is no longer relevant once missiles are in the air.

dogma1138 11y ago

What if the first strike wasn't a disablement strike but an exterminating one? If your foe launches a strike that would kill 99% of the population of your country would you retaliate to ensure same level of destruction?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
venomsnake 11y ago
No. I will aim for 100%. 1% with enough technology will still rebuild.
fanzhang 11y ago
Let's put aside the likelihood of a exterminating strike (where the enemy achieves near-total destruction before you can even think about launching). Now suppose you do also decide to retaliate to ensure 99% destruction to your foe. Would your foe's knowledge of that change whether your foe even tries an eliminating strike in the first place?
- PakG1 11y ago
  Well, this is basically the question upon which the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine hinged itself.
- js8 11y ago
  That's the problem with the MAD doctrine, see. It assumes your opponent is rational. But if he is rational, then perhaps you can agree on not having nuclear weapons in the first place.
  - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
    Rationality is bounded by reality. It might be better if no one had nukes. But, if no one had nukes, what prevents a conventional war from breaking out on the scale of WWII or even larger? Nothing. Nuclear weapons are the greatest creator of peace in history.

archgoon 11y ago

> retaliate in kind so as to ensure that they could not mount a second assault and kill even more people The bigger issue is that they are more likely to initiate the strike if they know about this protocol and believe it will reduce the likelihood of a counter strike.

vidarh 11y ago
Or they might be less inclined to strike first to pre-empt a strike. I've mentioned Able Archer 83 elsewhere: The Soviets appears to have gotten close to strike first because they believe the US was preparing to strike. Knowledge of a policy that appeared to indicate a distinct goal of deterring the President from launching a strike might have made the Soviets less nervous. A while afterwards Reagan wrote that he long thought that the Soviet leadership, like the Americans, did not believe a US first strike was a serious possibility. But he eventually learned that this was a flawed assumption: The Soviet leadership saw the US as a possible - even likely - aggressor, and interpreted US actions accordingly. In that context, posturing was incredibly dangerous, and this realisation made him change tack and become determined to sit down and talk to them.

thu 11y ago

For those in this thread that speculate about hitting this or this before reacting: nuclear weapons take a certain time to reach a target and retaliation would happen before _any_ nuclear explosion occurs.

hga 11y ago
In the MAD era, there was the theory that we (the US) had a sufficiently robust retaliatory infrastructure that we could ride out the first wave of a first strike and only launch, or in the case of bombers give the PAL codes to arm the warheads to the crews, after the first nuclear explosions happened and were sufficiently confirmed. Launch on Warning was always recognized as an inherently dangerous doctrine.