Is our nuclear deterrent credible?
By Neil Stevens Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I've been kicking around for a while the idea of asking this question in a Military Roundtable essay, then researching a solid answer, but with other projects on my hands I don't think I'm ever going to get around to it.
So here it goes in a modest littie diary: Is our nuclear deterrent credible anymore? And if it's not, how does that change how we deal with nuclear weapons seekers like Iran and North Korea?
It's become the conventional wisdom that in an age of vicious terrorism, a strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction will not work to ensure safety against nuclear-armed states. After all, the claim goes, why would Iran fund all these terrorists to do all these bad things, risking conventional retribution, if they feared even that?
The problem is, the events since the US Army rolled into Baghdad have put the credibility of a conventional US threat, let alone a nuclear one, into question. If a President's popularity can fall THIS much after setting and making a goal to take out an undeniably dangerous strongman, then why should they fear invasion now?
And so I'm left to wonder: maybe the reason these states are trying to go nuclear, isn't that MAD doesn't work, but rather that they just don't think we have the nerve to use our arsenal in the event we need to?
Maybe Americans are just seen as too darn nice to be dangerous to anyone. Wouldn't that be a kick, given the shrieks from the left about how we're imperalists, expansionists, militarists, and all that stuff?
If we are, I don't know what we can do about it. Ultimately our government is run from the bottom up, and making big change on the ground takes lots of time and effort if it can succeed at all.
I hope you're right, and the fear is high right now, but when I think of what CNN and the New York Times spread to the world, I wonder.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.
Of course the fear factor is high. The Mullahs aren't stupid. Osama and his buddies had defeated the Russians; that sounded like a big deal. Turned out it wasn't. The best Iran could do against Saddam was fight him to a draw in eight years. He didn't last two weeks with us. They wouldn't last two weeks either, and they know it.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
I really can't see our using strategic nuclear weapons, even after a WMD terrorist strike on one of our cities, even if we knew for certain where the weapon originated. I also don't see us using them in response to any kind of attack on any of our allies. We are just not willing to deal that many civilian deaths in response to anything short of an invasion of the US or in response to a strategic strike on the US. We just don't have the will. Do our enemies know this? Probably.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
In the wake of a WMD strike on one of our cities, this war would become a "them or us" proposition to the American people. No American President, especially a Democrat from the Weak Sister Party, would want to face the wrath of an aroused populace by doing nothing, or throwing a subpoena at the terrorists. You totally underestimate the willingness of the American people to deal out death when death has been dealt out to them in mass numbers.
To any American President, unpopularity and impeachment are worse options than vaporizing several million fanatical Muslims.
An Iranian who had been foolish enough to build Natanz and Bushehr would wish that he had not after a WMD strike in this country. The Usual Suspects would be rounded up, and the American people wouldn't care who had shot Major Strasser. An example would have to be made.
The notion that we are a nation of liberal weenies who will do nothing in the face of a WMD attack is a dangerous fantasy that the jihadists tell each other. In fact, I am almost certain that the opposite is the truth.
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it"-Winston Churchill
Look at how quickly the outrage over 9/11 dissipated. There were protests against and general opposition by the left to conventional action in Afghanistan. A third of the country now thinks that the government might have been involved in it. Look at Iraq. It took us over a year of talking and a half dozen reasons to even get conventional troops in there. Look at Iran and NK. All we can do with them is talk... if they are in the mood to lie to us that day, otherwise we are happy to just talk to ourselves.
Even if we were in a total war situation for years with a sovereign nation, as we were in WWII, we would not use nuclear weapons as we did at the end of that war. If we had to make the same call today, the answer would have been no. We don't fight wars like we used to.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
except in response to a nuclear attack by a sovereign nation. Even if we knew for certain that a terrorist attack using a suitcase or dirty bomb originated from and was financed by, say, Iran, we wouldn't use nukes.
That said, at least as long as Republicans are running the government, we have and would use conventional forces to kick the **** out of anybody who's likely to stick their head up.
In Vino Veritas
In fact, I strongly suspect that we have signalled that we will use nukes if AQ graduates to nuclear weapons.
If we did not, especially if we knew who the primary source was for the material, that would set a terrible example. We could become a nuclear target site for any terrorist group on this planet. This country would become unliveable and ungovernable, as the social contract of defense between the Government and its people broke down upon a failure to retaliate.
There's a point at which AQ and the Iranians don't cross. They don't do so for a reason.
There comes a time when fear becomes your friend. It is always better to be feared than loved.
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it"-Winston Churchill
One thing is sure about our conventional deterrence post Taliban and Baathist-Iraqi regime changes and post Fallujah, etc.: The deterrent effect of the United States is infinitely greater today than at any time since at least 1991 and maybe since The Bay of Pigs. I think that Iran is scared to death.
Now, as to the nuclear deterrent, I don't know how to test it (save the fact that no one has attempted a first strike) unless we launch a blockade against China due to Cuban oil drilling alliance near Florida!
"If they attack us, it means we're winning." - Rush Limbaugh