Space Weaponization

[Medic]

One could have made the same argument for the USSR back in the day, but there we were, ratcheting up the count of warheads for decades. Why did Russia find the need to build a nuclear arsenal if they were rational players? By your logic, surely they knew we wouldn't perform a unilateral strike against them. Of course, they couldn't be sure of that, could they? For that matter, if ABM is such a swell thing for everybody, why did we find the need to limit it with the ABM treaty in the first place?

The USSR very much had the industrial capacity to acquire WMD and with such a great territory and weakened post-war status (in the sense of casualties) nuclear weapons would be an invaluable deterrent for them. It was also very obvious at the time the USSR and US were going along divergent political paths.

I can't say I'm knowledgeable enough of the 1st ABM Treaty and between PT and work I have no time to try and read more than wikicrap -- which is funny cause I'm reading the ABM Treaty on just that website and MIRV is posited as making ABM impotent.

On top of that, the China argument you're making ignores the other side of this, which is the assumed irrationality of other third-party states like Iran (as Stuart was arguing).
[...]
Which was false, of course. From the perspective of the PRC or, perhaps more importantly, Iran, this was an irrational move by the US (and I would agree with them).

I went to great lengths to detail our belief that Iraq was dealing with religious radicals because Iran itself is a theocratic state run by the Ayatollah, not that poser Ahmadinejad. That doesn't mean he cannot be reasonable but it's a fair point of concern.

North Korea doesn't have such influence but is sane enough to do ballistic missile tests aimed in Japan's general direction. (even if one failed and just happened to fall in the Sea of Japan )

[Stuart]

China would require two orders of magnitude more interceptors to stop a US first strike than the US would need to stop a Chinese first strike (not even considering the fact that the US has a lot more harder-to-intercept SLBMs and plenty of advanced cruise missiles and bombers), and they don't have as many existing resources to leverage to build that system. I don't think it will be practical for China to deploy an ABM system to block Soviet or US ICBM strikes for some time yet, and it wouldn't do them a lot of good if they did, because both countries have other ways to nuke them. OTOH deploying a system to block Indian (note that China has gone to war with India several times in the 20th century), Pakistani and assorted bit player (Iran and NK now, who knows in another decade or two) nukes is relatively practical for them.

Exactly! Very, very succinct assessment of the situation. China is (now) painfully aware of how much damage even a small nuclear assault can do. A Tale from the Crypt for you -- back in the late 1980s, we had a Chinese officer with us on an exchange. Many are the tales concerning him - especially his efforts to pass the driving test - but one day he started to give us the "Human rights are shirt-on-back in food-in-belly" and "you cannot kill a billion Chinese" which, to people like us, is a professional challenge. So we sat him down and plotted out a nuclear attack on the Chinese mainland usinga few tricks and concepts that were probably a little strange to him (they shouldn't have been since one of them involved a target called China's Sorrow). Within a few minutes he was upchucking his cookies into a wastepaper basket and he never tried that argument again.

Your comment about the Indians etc is spot-on. The Chinese know they cannot stop and American or Russian nuclear assault , they just don't have the industrial wealth or assets. However, stopping an Indian assault is well within their capability so they are going for it. They know (just as we do) that the Indians see their nuclear weapons as a force multiplier that will offset China's huge numerical advantage so denying that force multiplier to the Indians is a major step for them.

Also, its a message to the United States. Why did they make the fact of their ABM program so public? They know their ABM can't stop us, we know they know, and they know we know they know. What they were telling us is that their nuclear firepower points south towards India, not east towards the USA or North towards Russia. The Chinese "deterrent" to India isn't nuclear, its their hige conventional army. So their ABM by taking the Indian nukes off the board puts any conflict with India back into the conventional sphere. This sort of "message sending" is very subtle and goes on all the time.

By the way, Russia has just sent the US an extremely conciliatory and friendly message. Would anybody like to try a guess on what that message was and how it was sent?

[Stuart]

[quote="metavac"] I think at this point the conversation would benefit from Stuart explaining what a 'rational state actor' is in the realm of political science and strategic studies, how analysts like himself determine a likely space of behaviors for this abstract entity, and how he would measure deviations from said behavior.

I'm running short of time now; I'll try and get back to this later today.

In a nutshell, a rational state player does not undertake actions that are contra-indicative to the goals of national strategy. For example, NK's actions over the last year have been fundamentally irrational, they've alienated their few remaining allies, they've made the Japanese reverse their position of studied non-militarism - and resulted in most countries in the region to accept that change which has always been something they've bitterly opposed. NK's habits of making agreements and then reneging on them is also counter-indicative. What's the point of forcing people to a conference table if one then goes out of one's way to demonstrate that any agreements made at that conference table are worthless? That's why I say that NK is a irrational actor, their actions don't match their policies.

Iran is an interesting case. Their policies are actually rational in many senses. Iran is a powder keg and the rulers know it. There's immense internal pressure and the leadership believes the only way they can keep it from blowing up is to guarantee serious external pressure. Hence the kidnapping of the British sailors a few weeks back, the nuclear dispute, etc etc. The problem with that policy is that its like drug addiction, the "doses" of pressure have to keep increasing in order to get the same effect. That's where the irrationality creeps in. The Iranian leadership is creating tension to maintain their own hold on power. Yet, the process has a limited life before the extra tension gets too high and the situation explodes. So, they're buying time only they're not doing anything with that time. I suspect that increasing external pressure in order to guarantee internal order has now become so well-established that its now an end in itself rather than a means to an end.

[Ritterin Sophia]

By the way, Russia has just sent the US an extremely conciliatory and friendly message. Would anybody like to try a guess on what that message was and how it was sent?

Trying to get us to turn back on our ABM screen? Creating an ammendment to the treaty to include other nations? Don't leave me hanging Stuart, your stories of the non-apocolypse we were actually facing is intrigueing... like a drug if you will/

[fgalkin]

By the way, Russia has just sent the US an extremely conciliatory and friendly message. Would anybody like to try a guess on what that message was and how it was sent?

Something that Condi did? I know that Dobbie agreed to tone down the US-bashing.

Knowing you, it will probably be something completely different.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Kane Starkiller]

A Tale from the Crypt for you -- back in the late 1980s, we had a Chinese officer with us on an exchange. Many are the tales concerning him - especially his efforts to pass the driving test - but one day he started to give us the "Human rights are shirt-on-back in food-in-belly" and "you cannot kill a billion Chinese" which, to people like us, is a professional challenge. So we sat him down and plotted out a nuclear attack on the Chinese mainland usinga few tricks and concepts that were probably a little strange to him (they shouldn't have been since one of them involved a target called China's Sorrow). Within a few minutes he was upchucking his cookies into a wastepaper basket and he never tried that argument again.

A nuclear strike on Huang Ho? Damn now you've got me intrigued. Is that nuclear strike you plotted out classified? Can you tell us more about it?
What exactly would you do to the river? Contaminate it or try to disrupt it's flow?

[Patrick Degan]

A Tale from the Crypt for you -- back in the late 1980s, we had a Chinese officer with us on an exchange. Many are the tales concerning him - especially his efforts to pass the driving test - but one day he started to give us the "Human rights are shirt-on-back in food-in-belly" and "you cannot kill a billion Chinese" which, to people like us, is a professional challenge. So we sat him down and plotted out a nuclear attack on the Chinese mainland usinga few tricks and concepts that were probably a little strange to him (they shouldn't have been since one of them involved a target called China's Sorrow). Within a few minutes he was upchucking his cookies into a wastepaper basket and he never tried that argument again.

A nuclear strike on Huang Ho? Damn now you've got me intrigued. Is that nuclear strike you plotted out classified? Can you tell us more about it?
What exactly would you do to the river? Contaminate it or try to disrupt it's flow?

If I recall in another run-through of this tale, the model demonstrated just how vulnerable the bulk of the Chinese population was to a nuclear attack given how its clustered so densly in a few large urban centres. Like smashing eggs in baskets with a few anvils dropped on them.

[fgalkin]

A Tale from the Crypt for you -- back in the late 1980s, we had a Chinese officer with us on an exchange. Many are the tales concerning him - especially his efforts to pass the driving test - but one day he started to give us the "Human rights are shirt-on-back in food-in-belly" and "you cannot kill a billion Chinese" which, to people like us, is a professional challenge. So we sat him down and plotted out a nuclear attack on the Chinese mainland usinga few tricks and concepts that were probably a little strange to him (they shouldn't have been since one of them involved a target called China's Sorrow). Within a few minutes he was upchucking his cookies into a wastepaper basket and he never tried that argument again.

A nuclear strike on Huang Ho? Damn now you've got me intrigued. Is that nuclear strike you plotted out classified? Can you tell us more about it?
What exactly would you do to the river? Contaminate it or try to disrupt it's flow?

Remember what happened when the GMD blew up the dikes in 1938? The Yellow River changed course, literally.
I imagine that today, the area is even more populated than in the 30s. You could easily kill millions (probably more than 10) with very few well-placed strikes.

Same thing as with Egypt and the Aswan Dam, hit it and the country goes DOWN, hard. Although, in China the impact will be considerably less due to its size.

Oh, by the way, Stuart, did I ever mention that you guys are completely and utterly EVIL?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Stuart]

Trying to get us to turn back on our ABM screen? Creating an ammendment to the treaty to include other nations? Don't leave me hanging Stuart, your stories of the non-apocolypse we were actually facing is intrigueing... like a drug if you will/

This is going to sound odd in context but Russia has just announced that it will be equipping its land-based ballistic missiles with MIRVs (at least three per missiles, perhaps later going up to seven). So why is that friendly and conciliatory?

As Grazhdanin Stas and I have been discussing, Russia has been developing an atmosphere-skimming missile-based warhead delivery system that is intended to penetrate the developing US ABM shield. Remember, there's no conceptual difference between a thin shield and a thick shield, the one can become the other quite quickly so the ABM system now developing in Alaska is as potentially capable of stopping a Russian attack as anything else. The problem with that air-skimming delivery system is that its fuel and weight inefficient; in fact the Topol-M missile can only carry a single on of that type of warhead.

Now, that makes the Russian declaration that they are MIRVing Topol-M very interesting because it signifies the Russian are not planning to deploy their ABM-penetrating delivery system.

Only, its even more marked than that; MIRV missiles are only really viable in the absence of a capable ABM system; long-range ABMs (like the now-departed Zeus-XER) could hit the MIRV bus before it started to discharge its warheads. In other words, the warheads on a MIRV bus are all eggs in the same basket and somebody has just hit it with a sledgehammer. Even worse, the use of MIRV reduces the number of incoming targets so the possibility of saturating the defense goes down.

The only way to saturate an ABM system is to use large numbers of single-warhead missiles - which is precisely the solution that the Russians have announced that they are walking away from. So, the announcement that they are MIRVing their Topol-Ms is, in fact, a statement that they are not pointing them at the US of A. There's a strong hint they are pointing them at China but that's really the Chinese's problem.

So its really quite a conciliatory statement; the Russians have said that they're not going to try and penetrate the US defense screen with ballistic missiles (that takes a lot of heat out of things) and said missiles aren't pointing this way. Expect to see a reciprocal US gesture in the not too distant future.

A nuclear strike on Huang Ho? Damn now you've got me intrigued. Is that nuclear strike you plotted out classified? Can you tell us more about it? What exactly would you do to the river? Contaminate it or try to disrupt it's flow?

Contaminate it. Basically, China's agriculture depends on (IIRC) five major rivers. What we did was use the Titan IIs (that dates this little story for you) with their 5 megaton warheads to give ground bursts in the watershed areas. That would result in those rivers being very heavily contaminated for anything up to a decade. Not only would the rivers and their water supply be gone but the crops that grew using the water would also be contaminated and unusuable. We also took out the major cities with their transportation nexi and industrial facilities. By the end of the strike, the Chinese survivors would either have nothing to eat or be unable to move what supplies were left to those who needed them. The famine would be biblical in its proportions. A hideous thing to contemplate.

Something to stress here, this was a purely theoretical exercise, there was never any intention of pulling a strike like that and real US strategic plans for China were (and I assume still are) quite different. At no point in the Cold War did we ever deliberately target the civilian population. We targeted things (factories, transportation centers, military installations and so on) and some of those were where destroying them meant killing vast numbers of civilians but we never targeted the civilians per se. It's a fine and largely arbitrary distinction but it was quite important to us. It was a point of honor that if we had two ways of taking down a given target set, we would adopt the one that caused the fewest civilian deaths.

That's also why we don't see huge warheads any more. They were needed when missiles were so inaccurate that a big warhead was essential to ensure target destruction. Then, we went to MRVs which replaced the big warhead with three smaller ones. Then, as missiles got more accurate, we scaled the warhead sizes down still further. Technically, the manoeuvering RVs Stas mentioned are accurate enough we could use conventional warheads to do the job - and in some cases we will. Obviously not from ICBMs though.

[fgalkin]

Wow. That is even more evil than I expected.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Starglider]

I get the impression that adjusting the patrol areas of SSBNs was commonly used to 'send a message' in the cold war (and maybe still is, I don't know, though Russia doesn't have much of a fleet left to send messages with). Moving the SSBNs in closer is provocative in that it cuts down warning time and presuambly makes ABM harder (as well as clarifying which country you're treating as the threat), but also risky in that it makes the subs easier to target and possibly more accident prone.

[Stuart]

[Oh, by the way, Stuart, did I ever mention that you guys are completely and utterly EVIL?

We do our best........

We scare people sometimes because we look at things the way they are, not the way we would like them to be. International action is a classic example, earlier in this thread, the subject of concerted international action (complete with forcible agreement) was proposed. The suggestion was so absurd that I dismissed it with a quip and some brief power-politics but it's interesting to return to it. Such "multinational agreement": proposals all sound very nice but lets forget the warm cozy "wouldn't it be nice if" sloganeering and look at cold, hard reality.

It's almost impossible to get the international community to agree on anything. You remember the Great Tsunami back in 2004? There was a classic case of international aid being needed and needed now. For the first couple of days there were three groups at work. One was a US carrier sitting off Indonesia using her helicopters to fly food (cooked in the ship's galleys) and water (from the ship's distillation gear) to the refugees. There were a number of religious groups who sent in what they had (the first aid plane to arrive in Thailand was from a group of American Baptists) and a group of UN bureaucrats who holed up in the best hotel in Djakarta and "studied the situation". That was in a case of unquivocal need and UN politicking still took first priority.

In the case of Iran developing nuclear weapons, there has been absolutely no realistic action at all; agreement is impossible. That's against a country of very little military significance. Now, the idea of multi-national action wants to take on the twelve leading military powers in the world including one that has more military moxie than the rest put together over an issue of extremely dubious validity? It may sound warm and cozy but the erality is it isn't going to happen and if it did, the consequences would be catastrophic. Ask Grazhdanin Stas what Russia would do if a group of UN TPLDs told the Russian armed forces to disarm or else.

Also, we're quite proud of being utterly evil. Why do you think we were all cheering the Death Star on?

[K. A. Pital]

Now, that makes the Russian declaration that they are MIRVing Topol-M very interesting because it signifies the Russian are not planning to deploy their ABM-penetrating delivery system.

Minor correction. The 1st November 2005 tests of the manuevering re-entry vehicle were done with a 3-MIRV fitted "Topol-M". Therefore the fact that Topol-M will be fitted with MIRV doesn't indicate the manuevering warhead will not be used. The MIRVs are fitted with rapid throw-off manuever engines which act (according to the MoD) in a seemingly random pattern and making the trajectory non-ballistic, thus greatly reducing the chance of an ABM system striking it.

Note that this system has already been tested, so I don't think were abandoning it.

We know that it will be enough to have several penetrators which will more or less sure break the US ABM to be deterred - the loss even of several cities would be unacceptable to the US. So we proceed.

[metavac]

Wow. That is even more evil than I expected.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Not terribly evil. You start from a realist point of view (first image), assigning (hopefully defensibly valid) interests to entire states. If you find and get others to agree that states are reasonably pursuing those interests, you can say they're acting rationally. In this case, for the sake of argument, consider the US-Russia relationship as within the range of US-OECD state rationality. Given its means, interests, and ability to perceive other nations' intertions (i.e., it doesn't foresee the US trying to one up it in counterforce), Moscow can't justify spending rubles to build the rockets needed to flood an emerging ABM frontier it doesn't even consider a threat.

Now second and third image considerations--events and conditions at the level of elites, the public, state and non-state institutions, everything that shapes politics within a country and specific behaviors in its dealings with others--are a bit more complex. It makes sense for Putin to be rhetorically harsh on American ABM, he's dealing with an institutional and public memory with such a long memory that Estonia might have triggered a cyber-attack against it over a perceived slight of the Russian history of WWII. Russia had something to gain diplomatically if it succeeded in defeating US ABM deployment, but it would not lose anything in its strategic perspective if it failed to convince Europe to act differently. There's very little to be gained by strategically confronting ABM in Eastern Europe vis a vis the damage that could be done to the extraordinarily wide scope of US-Russian relations. At the same time, this week we've seen the Secretary of State wrangle an agreement to tone down the rhetoric and at the very least agree to disagree. Publicly they're agreeing to disagree, privately the US has already offered Russia the opportunity to consult on and profit from the ABM deployment, it's hard to see Russia not taking up this offer period.

I'm sure the decision tree is far a great deal more intricate than this and at the very least can give you some rough numbers for the likelihood of a given space of judgements, but in the Russia still has made a budgetary decision against an option that would conceivably confront ABM.

[Stuart]

Therefore the fact that Topol-M will be fitted with MIRV doesn't indicate the manuevering warhead will not be used. The MIRVs are fitted with rapid throw-off manuever engines which act (according to the MoD) in a seemingly random pattern and making the trajectory non-ballistic, thus greatly reducing the chance of an ABM system striking it.

That one doesn't really worry us too much; the target manoeuvers are within the interceptor envelope (in other words, the interceptor is agile enough to cope with them). There's enough slack in the system to accommodate the limited manoevers the RVs are capable of performing. If it got to be a problem, we'd just hit the bus, that's a demonstrated capability.

The one that concerned us is the atmosphere skimmer; that gave us limited wraning time (very limited) and was a tough target. That was only a single warhead one though and its disappearance is a very accommodating gesture. It doesn't leave Russian without a means of getting at us, you still have your SLBMs etc but the one we were really disturbed about is gone. So, as I said, expect something nice form Uncle Sam. Whatever it is, has already been decided at the meeting.

the loss even of several cities would be unacceptable to the US. So we proceed.

Depends if they vote Democrat of course

[K. A. Pital]

The one that concerned us is the atmosphere skimmer; that gave us limited wraning time (very limited) and was a tough target.

Ah, I see. Well, I guess then we rely on something else as a last-chance deterrent.

[RedImperator]

From what I can gather from this thread, it sounds as if we're approaching the point where ballistic missiles will be totally obsolete, and we will have to shift back to delivering nuclear weapons by bomber or reconsider nuclear deterrence entirely. Would this be a more-or-less correct conclusion?

[K. A. Pital]

The main problem is the ballistic trajectory of ICBM which Stuart pretty much detailed in his posts. And yes, for the major nuclear powers, a need to shift from ICBM to other methods of delivery in the next years is crucial. I would personally have the nuclear weapons in space, expand the bombers with ultra-long-range, supersonic nuclear cruise missiles and submarines too with their shorter delivery time and cruise missiles with nuclear payloads.

[Turin]

This thread has moved quickly, so unfortunately I'm not going to be able to address every point made at the moment.

I'm trying to keep this discussion on an adult level so please spare me the juvenile posturing. It might win you a few cheers elsewhere but all it does here is serve to discredit anything you might say.

It's not posturing, it's an illustration of how many people outside this country view our leadership, you snide fuck. This is a democracy where a significant chunk of the population has a religious belief that Armageddon is a good thing. Our international policies towards Africa and the Middle East have provided the seeds for terrorism to grow. Yet you seem to want to claim the US has some kind of monopoly on rationality.

If you were actually following this situation in any detail, you would be aware that NK behavior has resulted in even the Japanese talking openly about launching a pre-emptive attack on NK. They're also changing their constitution to allow for such an attack and have recently raised the Japanese armed forces to full ministerial level. All as a result of NK behavior.

In which case Japan (and the US who would probably have to give the green light on any such strike) would incite NK to level Seoul. The political cost of which is becoming less-and-less viable to the US government, and NK knows this.

For that matter, if ABM is such a swell thing for everybody, why did we find the need to limit it with the ABM treaty in the first place?

The USSR was worried about the US technical lead and the fact that widespread US ABM deployment would leverage the US economic advantage to an even greater extent than the cold war already was. The US signed it because idiot academics and politicians were overruling the defence establishment at the time (inter-service politics didn't help; the Air Force didn't like ABM because it was essentially an Army project).

Oh, see, here I was thinking rational nation-states always act in their own strategic interests.

Which was false, of course. From the perspective of the PRC or, perhaps more importantly, Iran, this was an irrational move by the US (and I would agree with them).

It was rational in the context of the PNAC world view, which is to say rational under the same kind of reasoning that led the Soviets into Afghanistan. The flimsy justification was just PR nonsense; the evidence is pretty clear on the Bush administration wanting to attack Iraq from pretty much the day they got into power.

Are you not paying attention? If you say "rational in xyz world view" applies to the US, it can just as easily be applied to the allegedly "non-rational" states that are Stuart's current bogeymen.

I still haven't seen any evidence that ABM is workable short of lobbing a nuke up,

Because you're using wall of ignorance tactics to try and ignore the Nike Zeus results, the PAC-3 results versus theatre missiles and the fact that both the recent US and Indian strategic ABM test results are pretty good for a brand new missile system. As always, wall of ignorance just confirms that you are in fact ignorant.

No, pissant, it means I'm asking for evidence. You know, as per the board rules? Your post is the first mention of a successful ABM result that was more specific than "back in the 60's." A quick search indicates to me that Nike Zeus was not hit-to-kill but a nuclear interceptor, with the exception of one unsupported mention in Wiki. And PAC-3 is theatre defense so no good against ICBM.

But I haven't seen any support for the idea that it's necessarily zero-sum.

I don't personally think it's always zero sum. There are always winners and losers for a given agreement, but for a set of agreements it seems to me that there can be a net win (arguably opposed alliances such as in the cold war provide a stability for both sides). But the vast majority of individual cases are zero-sum. If you have any counterexamples I suggest you detail them.

Well, that's the argument that Stuart is making -- that it's always zero-sum. The easy counterexample is the opposed alliances one you've just brought up. A well-designed anti-global-warming treaty, while not yet in existence, could potentially be non-zero-sum. The difficulty of this exercise is coming up with something that Stuart will accept as "political, not economic" (as if the two were ever not intertwined).

The problem with that policy is that its like drug addiction, the "doses" of pressure have to keep increasing in order to get the same effect. That's where the irrationality creeps in. The Iranian leadership is creating tension to maintain their own hold on power. Yet, the process has a limited life before the extra tension gets too high and the situation explodes. So, they're buying time only they're not doing anything with that time.

The Iranians could be just as easily maintaining tension high as a means to make the Iraq situation worse for us, in order to encourage us out. You're making an assumption that they're generating an external threat entirely to cool internal strife, rather than to aid their external strategic situation.

Such "multinational agreement": proposals all sound very nice but lets forget the warm cozy "wouldn't it be nice if" sloganeering and look at cold, hard reality.

It's almost impossible to get the international community to agree on anything. You remember the Great Tsunami back in 2004? There was a classic case of international aid being needed and needed now. <snip international bungling> That was in a case of unquivocal need and UN politicking still took first priority.

But it was also a case of unequivocable need on short notice. No one (well, not me anyway) is expecting large scale organizations to be able to easily work together in this kind of time scale. And once again you've strawmaned the idea of international cooperation into sitting around in drum circles singing kum-by-ya. When in fact, I've argued a number of times in this thread that international cooperation is damned hard.

[Medic]

From what I can gather from this thread, it sounds as if we're approaching the point where ballistic missiles will be totally obsolete, and we will have to shift back to delivering nuclear weapons by bomber or reconsider nuclear deterrence entirely. Would this be a more-or-less correct conclusion?

Based on comments from not just this thread, yes I believe that is correct. There isn't just one or two ABM systems being developed but nearly 10 with about a dozen country's buying in. As Stuart is so quick to point out: "think systems, not weapons." An ABM shield involves getting a certain amount of technology researched, and infrastructure set up and running and once that's done, adding more and more missiles to that defense is done at little cost relative to the system as a whole, even if you only plan to get something like 50 interceptors at first. (sort of like the acquisition of this many Raptors or that is against the R&D of the entire program and the money spent setting up the factories, hence more units purchased divides more and the fly-away cost per unit drops)

That's obviously good for us, we have plenty of heavy bombers already. Also, all the discussion on nuclear weapons since Stuart came back raised my consciousness to the very plain fact that ICBM's on your own soil means the enemy will use groundbursts to destroy them. (well, an enemy with enough nuclear devices to target silo's and strategic targets; someone like a rogue state or random lucky terrorist would go for a city I suppose) That means lots of fallout and I don't care to invite that kind of shit on this soil.

Oh, see, here I was thinking rational nation-states always act in their own strategic interests.

Well, it's like you said, this is a democracy. Administration's change, Congress changes hands, shit happens. It would be nice to have an infinite succession of leaders that maintain a coherent strategy and policies and acquire weapons systems accordingly but that doesn't happen in a democracy because enough voters can be dumb and enough politicians can be ignorant or crooked.

Killing viable systems on one hand and forcing upon the military stuff it doesn't want or need on the other both happen and we've prevailed all in spite of it simply cause we're fucking rich and we have the bomb... in that order, I think.

[Medic]

Actually, I have to ask, if it can be said Stuart: do both viable POTUS candidates and elected POTUS's get a 'this is what's actually happening, realistic, viable blah blah blah this is reality' brief? Obviously over the course of 4-8 years of governing, they'd get it piecemeal. All the same, does it happen? It seems to be largely assumed by laymen like me.

And is there a name for that kind of clearance? I'd imagine it's something like "Over-the-Top Secret Clearance."

[fgalkin]

[Oh, by the way, Stuart, did I ever mention that you guys are completely and utterly EVIL?

We do our best........

We scare people sometimes because we look at things the way they are, not the way we would like them to be. International action is a classic example, earlier in this thread, the subject of concerted international action (complete with forcible agreement) was proposed. The suggestion was so absurd that I dismissed it with a quip and some brief power-politics but it's interesting to return to it. Such "multinational agreement": proposals all sound very nice but lets forget the warm cozy "wouldn't it be nice if" sloganeering and look at cold, hard reality.

I don't think that that's the problem. Yes, I sometimes want to believe that things will get better by themselves because people are nice, but I am quickly reminded of where I live, and such moments pass.

No, it's something else completely. It's the fact that you could sit down and come up with a way to commit the worst act of mass murder in human history, and then look back on it as an amusing incident. I mean, it's not like I'm a member of the "OMG! TEH NUKZORZ ARE EVIL!" crowd, or I'm afraid of talking about using nukes, I also cheered the Death Star on, I've read TBO, and hell, in the current sci-fi universe I'm developing 99.9% of humanity is wiped out by an alien race, so it's not like fictional depictions of death scare me. It's the fact that you could consider it in REAL LIFE that scares me. I know what you're proposing, I've read accounts of China's famines, of my own country's famines, and hell, I'm from Leningrad, if I want to find out what it was like to starve, I need not look beyond my own family (well, technically I do now, since since all of that generation of my family are now dead), so, I know what you mean when you said "The famine would be biblical in its proportions. A hideous thing to contemplate." And it scares the SHIT out of me. That's what I meant when I said that you guys are utterly evil. A necessary evil perhaps, but evil nonetheless.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[metavac]

Oh, see, here I was thinking rational nation-states always act in their own strategic interests.

It's a model out of the social sciences, a conditional one that when applied also has measurable error and precision.

[Enforcer Talen]

Actually, I have to ask, if it can be said Stuart: do both viable POTUS candidates and elected POTUS's get a 'this is what's actually happening, realistic, viable blah blah blah this is reality' brief? Obviously over the course of 4-8 years of governing, they'd get it piecemeal. All the same, does it happen? It seems to be largely assumed by laymen like me.

And is there a name for that kind of clearance? I'd imagine it's something like "Over-the-Top Secret Clearance."

I asked that to Stuart in a previous thread, actually. Apparently, every country has a certain style of looking at the world, and no matter where you end up on the political spectrum, if you get power, you hold to a realist perspective. By the same token, our situation in the world tends to change the same - if we played a game, we would always play the same side, if that makes sense. With that understanding, only a few options are really available for any given administration.

[Enforcer Talen]

Ghetto edit: When you get power in the U.S.

I dont know if Europe favors the liberal method of political theory, for example.