"...men and women with all the right credentials, the proper family lineages and all the right resume boosters from firms like McKinsey Consultants, but with little actual accomplishment. As one reads Jacobsen’s dramatic re-enactments."
let me start by saying I did read Jacobsen's book and liked it however there is a great deal of inaccurate information in it most notably in the aftereffects of a nuclear exchange and the Nuclear Winter scenario.
Nuclear winter was proposed by a group of scientist back in the 1980 (the TTAPS report) and it was formulated to bolster the political argument against the development and deployment of nuclear weapons, the actual science behind it was awful. Sagan and the TTAPS team knowingly committed deliberate scientific fraud. They cooked up a computer model to concoct the results he wanted for political reasons. It subsequently became apparent that he had avoided using the already-available NCAR computer climate model precisely because he knew it would not produce the “nuclear winter” he wanted to sell to gullible journalists and an ignorant public. Many people familiar with atmospheric modeling, nuclear weapons and particle dynamics told Sagan and his team repeatedly their model sucked and its output was junk but because Sagan had celebrity status, no one listened to them.
During the first Gulf Way, Sagan and TTAPS had the opportunity to demonstrate the accuracy of their work as they cautioned against an invasion of Kuwait in 1991 on the threat of Saddam Hussein made to light the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire in the event of a counter invasion. Sagan and his teams model predicted climatic events so sever that a global famine would result. Well, we invaded, the wells were lit on fire but the broader climatic impact of these oil well fires were so small as to be immeasurable.
For a very thorough debunking of this, read “The Strategic Nuclear Balance: Exchanges and Outcomes? by Peter Vincent Pry”
Jacobsen got genuinely scared at the prospect of a full on nuclear war while writing this book (who in their right mind wouldn't) and that, unfortunately, led her more towards sensationalism.
A middle eastern country with nukes fires one that destroys a city in Israel. Not one of the 3 big cities, but one that most Americans and Europeans have never heard of, maybe Rishon LeZion, 4th largest in Israel. The offending country immediately condemns in public relations speak. " unauthorized ... rogue operation ... punished harshly ... victim compensation fund ... work toward peace with our Jewish neighbors ... wish for peaceful reconciliation of differences ... etc."
What happens now? Would there be retaliation immediately? Would there be retaliation in 1 year when the blood is not hot and it's obvious that the strike was ordered from the highest levels of government?
I wonder what would happen there. Very hard decisions to be made.
The President gets his 6 minutes AFTER some poor mook at NORAD* gets HIS 2 minutes to call it threat or head fake (usually a missile test). And yes, sometimes other folks (B-52s on the runway, etc) get perilously close to jumping the gun.
The emergence of hypersonic missile, which further reduce warning times over that of ballistic missiles, is also a risk factor, as is the likely use of AI systems and the uncritical acceptance of their recommendations because of that short time interval. I discussed these factors in a WarGames review that I published earlier this year:
Thanks! Will check it out, Jacobsen brought up the hypersonic missile issue during an interview she did with Joe Rogan during the book roll out. Interesting stuff. I think we need to spend a lot more time and money on missile defense
Good essay, David, thanks. Interesting that the filmmakers were impressed the the CO at NORAD. I’ve always thought it was interesting that in the movie the General in charge of NORAD is smart, funny, charming and ultimately the most reasonable guy in the room. Feels like Hollywood would never do that today in the current environment… he would have to be the villain.
Too many of our midwit 'leaders' embody that old joke about an American ambassador trying to bring peace to Israel by asking the Israeli PM and some important Arab diplomat to "come together and bargain like Good Christians."
They simply are so dumb they can't understand that other cultures are not much like theirs and don't think the same way. If you don't understand how the other guy thinks, you cant' really negotiate or deal with him.
Wargames alternate ending: AI is supposed to be super intelligent or at least super fast so it can consider all the scenarios and pick the best one by the time the President rolls out of bed at 3AM and puts on his slippers. So “What If?” What if Joshua finds/invents a winning scenario. One where no doubt a lot of bodies hit the floor but our civilization survives and our enemies do not? After all Alpha Zero came up with a winning double pawn gambit for the King’s Pawn Opening. Innovative moves such as Q-h1 and current engines are flirting with 4k ratings while Magnus Carlsen even with engine coaching is down at 2832 and considered the best player ever.
I had the same reaction to Jacobsen's book a few months ago. I served on the East German border in 1983-1986, when imminent war, including nuke, was all we practiced for. We were "trained" in these scenarios but Jacobsen's picture paints a far more dire, and plausible, outcome.
MAD theory requires you to convince an adversary that you are perfectly rational and completely insane. At the same time.
The flaw in the SDI approach is that a shield is a weapon too. There is really no distinction between an offensive weapon and a defensive one. The Soviets understood this and freaked out but they couldn't match the effort. Thus the implosion.
I believe SDI is better suited as a deterrent, rather than as an adjunct to any first strike scenario, because even imperfect SDI (say, an interception rate of 25%) is going to open too big a hole in an enemy’s war plan. If you have a decapitation plan, you can’t afford a random 25% of the attack to fail. There is no room for error, and the chances of success are slight enough that knocking out 25% or even 90%, of the enemy’s retaliatory strikes is going to destroy the attacking nation.
You are right that the USSR understood the implications of SDI, which is why they tried so hard to get Reagan to abandon it.
Down the rabbit hole we go. A decapitation strike is done as part of a first strike aimed at destroying the target's military power aka a counter force strike. It's purpose is to delay a response long enough to allow the full counter force strike to destroy enough of the nuclear weapons to eliminate the possibility of a second strike or at least reduce its impact. The second strike is a counter value strike (city busting). The second strike is what utterly destroys a country rather than just its military power. No point in nuking empty silos. It gets way more convoluted than this especially as weapons proliferated with talk of weapons withheld for a third and fourth strike and so on.
The rationale of SDI was to disrupt the entire first strike, not just the decapitation part. The method is as you say to make the success of the first strike problematic enough that the second strike remains viable. ICBMs are not the best weapon for a decapitation strike anyway. Better to use a FOBS. a close in launch from a boomer or an IRBM from a friendly place like Cuba or Ukraine or even a freighter. For that matter you could use a truck if you can get the weapon in without detection. This is the cause for the Cuban Missile Crisis, the No Nukes movement of the 80s (funded by the Soviets) and the current mess regarding Ukraine in NATO.
The trouble with SDI is that it was very Air Force centric. I never heard of anyone claiming the the Soviets could stop a second strike from the boomers although there were vague worries about a technical breakthrough that never happened. The argument was that protecting the ICBMs was a hedge against this possibility. The MX was a parallel development to enhance survivability of the ICBMs. There were all sorts of proposals for deployment options-mobile, south side of a butte, dense pack. In the end, they were put in the same silos as the Minutemen. Thus they were no more survivable though more powerful. The third leg of the Triad, manned bombers was pretty useless though not cheap. Standoff weapons were always a possibility but would miss the first several rounds of an exchange.
The US ICBMs and later the SLBMs were accurate enough for a first strike. The Soviets didn't have this capacity until late Cold War times and never for the SLBM. This made them more vulnerable to a first strike with the leading edge being a decapitation strike. The Soviet command and control system is unknown at least to me but the US system, while called Fail Safe, was actually Fail Deadly with alternate nodes taking charge in the event of a successful decapitation strike.
I love rooting about in the weeds of nuclear warfighting!
I don’t know what the USSR’s command & control was either, but it certainly could have meant commander’s owning their weapons after a set amount of time, like the USA.
Presenting an option of “only”
being able to destroy enemy cities (counter-value) targets never struck me as the best because of the relatively low number of weapons & delivery systems needed to functionally destroy a country.
Nuclear attacks on the
top 50 cities would do it, & that’s not a lot for us or Russia.
It won’t be a lot for the PRC soon enough.
Getting *ALL* the missiles and *ALL* the subs and *ALL* the planes that can either drop bombs or launch nuclear cruise missiles is what’s needed, and that’s too little room for error, even if you have excellent missile defense, which we do not.
Given SAC, everything in nuclear warfighting is Air Force oriented. SAC has been gone for decades, but there’s been no adequate replacement.
All this without talking about the really fun stuff - stealth cruise missiles with non-nuclear EMP. How many have we built? How many are we going to build?
I think we should continue a nuclear weapons policy of building to fight and win a war, as that is the best way to never fight one,
In the beginning, there was John Foster Dulles and the policy of massive retaliation for anything the Soviets did, nuclear or not. Eisenhower started edging away from this toward the end of his term and JFK completely repudiated it. Thus we entered the era of endless wars with the cloud of nuclear holocaust still hanging over us. Bush threatened nuclear destruction if Iraq used any WMDs which include chemical ( which Sadaam definitely had) under the American definition. Sort of a throwback.
Studies estimate that an EMP strike would kill 90% of the population within a year but who really knows and there is only one way to find out. Probably worse in Europe and not as bad in Russia but disastrous none the less..
This is a timely and stark reminder of the potential consequences of encouraging and supplying the lost cause of the Ukraine in joining NATO and realizing the neocon dream of dismembering the Russian Federation. The fiscal and human disaster of foreign entanglements of the US since Korea is proof of Eisenhauer's warning of the military industrial complex. Kennedy realized what was at stake during the Cuban Missile crisis and sanity prevailed (which likely cost him his life). Today's "leaders", not so much.
Interesting fact I learned from the book... how many missiles were fired and detonated during the Cuban Missile Crisis? The answer is not "zero."
That said, I agree with you. I am not a fan of the new isolationism that is such a big part of the America First movement, but given the incompetence of our leaders, this ongoing misadventure in Ukraine is starting to look like a really big gamble.
Surrender is not an option. SDI was Reagan's answer to MAD. Genius at the time. But the mediocraties of today will not be able to imagine a new strategy. At least Salieri recognized genius in the movie Amadeus.
When John Lehman was SECNAV, he had a set of Vu-Grafs he used to introduce his Congressional testimonies and other public presentations. It began with a summary of the Navy's mission, which I paraphrase from memory:
Deterrence cannot be the only element of a war-fighting strategy inasmuch--as you observe--it can only deter a well-informed, rational adversary. Adversaries who lack the same concerns we have for human life or even national survival cannot be deterred, nor--obviously--can one deter weapons launched in error or by rogue actors.
When Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983--a program intended to provide defenses against nuclear weapons--he was reacting in part to the very exercises you describe. Like President Kennedy before him, his visceral reaction to the nuclear war games was, this isn't a plan...it's a giant national spasm.
Hence the need for defenses.
The movie /War Games/ was released before SDI was announced...but ever since, it has been used as a minatory warning, as you have done. Which it might well have been...in the 1980s. But we've come a very long way since then. And while--despite the meretricious accusations of its adversaries--SDI was never conceived of as a perfect, impenetrable defense, it certainly would defend us against rogues, erroneous launches, and even some of the lesser nuclear powers, such as North Korea. Defense and deterrence are not separate and distinct elements of national security strategy but intertwined, complementary, and--most importantly--mutually reinforcing. As Tacitus famously observed, /Si vis Pacem, para Bellum/.
It has never--insofar as I am aware--been the declaratory policy of the United States that nuclear war is "winnable." Indeed, the only nuclear power I am aware of to have made such a claim is the former Soviet Union, which is part of the reason they were so viscerally opposed to the ongoing development and eventual deployment of ballistic-missile defenses: because the uncertainties that such defenses introduced into their own war planning made it a far riskier enterprise for them.
I have not closely followed the advances made in the realm of ballistic-missile defense since I left the employ of the Haze-Grey Navy in 1996--nearly thirty years ago--but even then the United States was making tremendous strides, a mere decade after Reagan gave his famous speech. I can only imagine what we've accomplished since then, but I would guess it's substantial.
Finally, I invite you to consider the logic of where your reasoning takes you. If nuclear war is inherently unwinnable...why maintain a deterrent at all? Should we not--in the name of and for the sake of humanity--simply disarm and hope for the best? This was exactly the position of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain and its analogues elsewhere in the 1980s. As one critic sarcastically characterized it, "Total nuclear disarmament...but the Western democracies first!" Is this the position you advance? And if not...what exactly are you advocating here?
Okay, let's operate as though what you said is true.
What are the other options?
It reminds me of the quote about our style of government being the worst, except for every other type of government that has been tried. Okay, MAD sucks, give us a better option. Nothing better exists? Well, as this one has worked so far, then I guess we should stick with it until something truly better comes along, eh?
Disarming totally has never been a realistic option for those who understand human nature. It wouldn't be very long at all before some aggressive country/leader who DIDN'T disarm would threaten to nuke other countries if they didn't succumb and do as instructed. Giving up and handing over our country to a terrorist fanatic so he could rob it or rule over us is a non-starter.
MAD can only be considered a terrible non-viable option if there is a significantly less-terrible option that could realistically be applied in the real world. Find and outline that option, then we can talk.
My complaint with the book comes very early, when the author heavily cites John Rubell’s “Doomsday Delayed”, and agrees with his description of attending a briefing of the first SIOP (Strategic Integrated Operational Warplan) as the same thing as being at the Wannsee conference.
Equating the defense of the United States of America against the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, both murderous dictatorships that had butchered and starved tens of millions of their own people, & were intent on extending their bloody rule over the entire planet, with their brothers in genocide, the Nazis, & their plan to kill every jew they could lay their hands on, is completely reprehensible.
Rubell, to his credit, at the end of his book, recognizes that MAD made sense in a bipolar world, & that multiple nuclear powers increases the threat of armageddon, but that there’s no better option because no country will give up their nuclear weapons (my inference, not his words).
I didn’t see that from Jacobsen.
Read “Doomsday Delayed”, which, despite its errors, is written by a key player, and an eyewitness. You can skip Jacobsen’s book.
"...men and women with all the right credentials, the proper family lineages and all the right resume boosters from firms like McKinsey Consultants, but with little actual accomplishment. As one reads Jacobsen’s dramatic re-enactments."
All the paperwork, none of the calluses.
let me start by saying I did read Jacobsen's book and liked it however there is a great deal of inaccurate information in it most notably in the aftereffects of a nuclear exchange and the Nuclear Winter scenario.
Nuclear winter was proposed by a group of scientist back in the 1980 (the TTAPS report) and it was formulated to bolster the political argument against the development and deployment of nuclear weapons, the actual science behind it was awful. Sagan and the TTAPS team knowingly committed deliberate scientific fraud. They cooked up a computer model to concoct the results he wanted for political reasons. It subsequently became apparent that he had avoided using the already-available NCAR computer climate model precisely because he knew it would not produce the “nuclear winter” he wanted to sell to gullible journalists and an ignorant public. Many people familiar with atmospheric modeling, nuclear weapons and particle dynamics told Sagan and his team repeatedly their model sucked and its output was junk but because Sagan had celebrity status, no one listened to them.
During the first Gulf Way, Sagan and TTAPS had the opportunity to demonstrate the accuracy of their work as they cautioned against an invasion of Kuwait in 1991 on the threat of Saddam Hussein made to light the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire in the event of a counter invasion. Sagan and his teams model predicted climatic events so sever that a global famine would result. Well, we invaded, the wells were lit on fire but the broader climatic impact of these oil well fires were so small as to be immeasurable.
For a very thorough debunking of this, read “The Strategic Nuclear Balance: Exchanges and Outcomes? by Peter Vincent Pry”
Jacobsen got genuinely scared at the prospect of a full on nuclear war while writing this book (who in their right mind wouldn't) and that, unfortunately, led her more towards sensationalism.
For those keeping score about how a nuclear war can start:
US First Strike
USSR First Strike
NATO / Warsaw Pact
Far East Strategy
US USSR Escalation
Taiwan Escalation
India Pakistan War
Mediterranean War
Hong Kong Variant
Seato Decapitating
Cuban Provocation
Inadvertent Launch
Atlantic Heavy
Cuban Paramilitary
Nicaragua Preemptive
Pacific Territorial
Burmese Theaterwide
Turkish Heavy
Argentina Escalation
Iceland Maximum
US Subversion
Australian Maneuver
Sudan Surprise
NATO Territorial
Zaire Alliance
Iceland Incident
English Escalation
Middle East Heavy
Mexican Takeover
Chad Alert
Saudi Maneuver
NATO Incursion
U.S. Defense
Cambodian Heavy
Warsaw Pact Medium
Arctic Minimal
Taiwan Theaterwide
Pacific Maneuver
Portugal Revolution
Albanian Decoy
Palestinian Local
Moroccan Minimal
Czech Option
Frenaach Alliance
Arabian Clandestine
Gabon Rebellion
Northern Maximum
Arabian Surprise
Czech Paramilitary
SEATO Takeover
Hawaiian Escalation
Iranian Maneuver
NATO Containment
Swiss Incident
Cuban Minimal
Iceland Escalation
Vietnamese Retaliation
Syrian Provocation
Libyan Local
Gabon Takeover
Romanian War
Middle East Offensive
Denmark Massive
Chile Confrontation
S. African Subversion
USSR Alert
Nicaraguan Thrust
Greenland Domestic
Iceland Heavy
Kenya Option
Pacific Defense
Uganda Maximum
Thai Subversion
Romanian Strike
Pakistan Sovereignty
Afghan Misdirection
Thai Variation
Northern Territorial
Polish Paramilitary
S. African Offensive
Panama Misdirection
Scandanavian Domestic
Jordan Preemptive
English Thrust
Burmese Maneuver
Spain Counter
Arabian Offensive
Chad Interdiction
Taiwan Misdirection
Bangladesh Theaterwide
Ethiopian Local
Italian Takeover
Vietnamese Incident
English Preemptive
Brazilian Heavy
Cypress [sic] Maneuver
Egypt Misdirection
Bangladesh Thrust
Mongolian Thrust
Polish Heavy
Albanian Discretionary
Canadian Thrust
Arabian Light
Pakistan Incident
Malaysian Manuever
Jamaican Decoy
Malaysian Minimal
Burmese Containment
Japanese Containment
Bulgarian Clandestine
Greenland Maximum
Ugandan Offensive
Here's the scenario I find most troubling:
A middle eastern country with nukes fires one that destroys a city in Israel. Not one of the 3 big cities, but one that most Americans and Europeans have never heard of, maybe Rishon LeZion, 4th largest in Israel. The offending country immediately condemns in public relations speak. " unauthorized ... rogue operation ... punished harshly ... victim compensation fund ... work toward peace with our Jewish neighbors ... wish for peaceful reconciliation of differences ... etc."
What happens now? Would there be retaliation immediately? Would there be retaliation in 1 year when the blood is not hot and it's obvious that the strike was ordered from the highest levels of government?
I wonder what would happen there. Very hard decisions to be made.
The President gets his 6 minutes AFTER some poor mook at NORAD* gets HIS 2 minutes to call it threat or head fake (usually a missile test). And yes, sometimes other folks (B-52s on the runway, etc) get perilously close to jumping the gun.
*Take it from a former mook.
The emergence of hypersonic missile, which further reduce warning times over that of ballistic missiles, is also a risk factor, as is the likely use of AI systems and the uncritical acceptance of their recommendations because of that short time interval. I discussed these factors in a WarGames review that I published earlier this year:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/70536.html
As to human engineering to find the password, it was done before that movie. Remember Mandrake and the Purity of Essence.
Thanks! Will check it out, Jacobsen brought up the hypersonic missile issue during an interview she did with Joe Rogan during the book roll out. Interesting stuff. I think we need to spend a lot more time and money on missile defense
Good essay, David, thanks. Interesting that the filmmakers were impressed the the CO at NORAD. I’ve always thought it was interesting that in the movie the General in charge of NORAD is smart, funny, charming and ultimately the most reasonable guy in the room. Feels like Hollywood would never do that today in the current environment… he would have to be the villain.
Too many of our midwit 'leaders' embody that old joke about an American ambassador trying to bring peace to Israel by asking the Israeli PM and some important Arab diplomat to "come together and bargain like Good Christians."
They simply are so dumb they can't understand that other cultures are not much like theirs and don't think the same way. If you don't understand how the other guy thinks, you cant' really negotiate or deal with him.
Wargames alternate ending: AI is supposed to be super intelligent or at least super fast so it can consider all the scenarios and pick the best one by the time the President rolls out of bed at 3AM and puts on his slippers. So “What If?” What if Joshua finds/invents a winning scenario. One where no doubt a lot of bodies hit the floor but our civilization survives and our enemies do not? After all Alpha Zero came up with a winning double pawn gambit for the King’s Pawn Opening. Innovative moves such as Q-h1 and current engines are flirting with 4k ratings while Magnus Carlsen even with engine coaching is down at 2832 and considered the best player ever.
I had the same reaction to Jacobsen's book a few months ago. I served on the East German border in 1983-1986, when imminent war, including nuke, was all we practiced for. We were "trained" in these scenarios but Jacobsen's picture paints a far more dire, and plausible, outcome.
MAD theory requires you to convince an adversary that you are perfectly rational and completely insane. At the same time.
The flaw in the SDI approach is that a shield is a weapon too. There is really no distinction between an offensive weapon and a defensive one. The Soviets understood this and freaked out but they couldn't match the effort. Thus the implosion.
I believe SDI is better suited as a deterrent, rather than as an adjunct to any first strike scenario, because even imperfect SDI (say, an interception rate of 25%) is going to open too big a hole in an enemy’s war plan. If you have a decapitation plan, you can’t afford a random 25% of the attack to fail. There is no room for error, and the chances of success are slight enough that knocking out 25% or even 90%, of the enemy’s retaliatory strikes is going to destroy the attacking nation.
You are right that the USSR understood the implications of SDI, which is why they tried so hard to get Reagan to abandon it.
Down the rabbit hole we go. A decapitation strike is done as part of a first strike aimed at destroying the target's military power aka a counter force strike. It's purpose is to delay a response long enough to allow the full counter force strike to destroy enough of the nuclear weapons to eliminate the possibility of a second strike or at least reduce its impact. The second strike is a counter value strike (city busting). The second strike is what utterly destroys a country rather than just its military power. No point in nuking empty silos. It gets way more convoluted than this especially as weapons proliferated with talk of weapons withheld for a third and fourth strike and so on.
The rationale of SDI was to disrupt the entire first strike, not just the decapitation part. The method is as you say to make the success of the first strike problematic enough that the second strike remains viable. ICBMs are not the best weapon for a decapitation strike anyway. Better to use a FOBS. a close in launch from a boomer or an IRBM from a friendly place like Cuba or Ukraine or even a freighter. For that matter you could use a truck if you can get the weapon in without detection. This is the cause for the Cuban Missile Crisis, the No Nukes movement of the 80s (funded by the Soviets) and the current mess regarding Ukraine in NATO.
The trouble with SDI is that it was very Air Force centric. I never heard of anyone claiming the the Soviets could stop a second strike from the boomers although there were vague worries about a technical breakthrough that never happened. The argument was that protecting the ICBMs was a hedge against this possibility. The MX was a parallel development to enhance survivability of the ICBMs. There were all sorts of proposals for deployment options-mobile, south side of a butte, dense pack. In the end, they were put in the same silos as the Minutemen. Thus they were no more survivable though more powerful. The third leg of the Triad, manned bombers was pretty useless though not cheap. Standoff weapons were always a possibility but would miss the first several rounds of an exchange.
The US ICBMs and later the SLBMs were accurate enough for a first strike. The Soviets didn't have this capacity until late Cold War times and never for the SLBM. This made them more vulnerable to a first strike with the leading edge being a decapitation strike. The Soviet command and control system is unknown at least to me but the US system, while called Fail Safe, was actually Fail Deadly with alternate nodes taking charge in the event of a successful decapitation strike.
I love rooting about in the weeds of nuclear warfighting!
I don’t know what the USSR’s command & control was either, but it certainly could have meant commander’s owning their weapons after a set amount of time, like the USA.
Presenting an option of “only”
being able to destroy enemy cities (counter-value) targets never struck me as the best because of the relatively low number of weapons & delivery systems needed to functionally destroy a country.
Nuclear attacks on the
top 50 cities would do it, & that’s not a lot for us or Russia.
It won’t be a lot for the PRC soon enough.
Getting *ALL* the missiles and *ALL* the subs and *ALL* the planes that can either drop bombs or launch nuclear cruise missiles is what’s needed, and that’s too little room for error, even if you have excellent missile defense, which we do not.
Given SAC, everything in nuclear warfighting is Air Force oriented. SAC has been gone for decades, but there’s been no adequate replacement.
All this without talking about the really fun stuff - stealth cruise missiles with non-nuclear EMP. How many have we built? How many are we going to build?
I think we should continue a nuclear weapons policy of building to fight and win a war, as that is the best way to never fight one,
In the beginning, there was John Foster Dulles and the policy of massive retaliation for anything the Soviets did, nuclear or not. Eisenhower started edging away from this toward the end of his term and JFK completely repudiated it. Thus we entered the era of endless wars with the cloud of nuclear holocaust still hanging over us. Bush threatened nuclear destruction if Iraq used any WMDs which include chemical ( which Sadaam definitely had) under the American definition. Sort of a throwback.
Studies estimate that an EMP strike would kill 90% of the population within a year but who really knows and there is only one way to find out. Probably worse in Europe and not as bad in Russia but disastrous none the less..
This is a timely and stark reminder of the potential consequences of encouraging and supplying the lost cause of the Ukraine in joining NATO and realizing the neocon dream of dismembering the Russian Federation. The fiscal and human disaster of foreign entanglements of the US since Korea is proof of Eisenhauer's warning of the military industrial complex. Kennedy realized what was at stake during the Cuban Missile crisis and sanity prevailed (which likely cost him his life). Today's "leaders", not so much.
Interesting fact I learned from the book... how many missiles were fired and detonated during the Cuban Missile Crisis? The answer is not "zero."
That said, I agree with you. I am not a fan of the new isolationism that is such a big part of the America First movement, but given the incompetence of our leaders, this ongoing misadventure in Ukraine is starting to look like a really big gamble.
Surrender is not an option. SDI was Reagan's answer to MAD. Genius at the time. But the mediocraties of today will not be able to imagine a new strategy. At least Salieri recognized genius in the movie Amadeus.
Read Jacobson’s book too; definitely will make your blood run cold.
When John Lehman was SECNAV, he had a set of Vu-Grafs he used to introduce his Congressional testimonies and other public presentations. It began with a summary of the Navy's mission, which I paraphrase from memory:
1. Show presence;
2. Deter adversaries;
3. *If deterrence fails*, establish and maintain maritime superiority [my emphasis].
Deterrence cannot be the only element of a war-fighting strategy inasmuch--as you observe--it can only deter a well-informed, rational adversary. Adversaries who lack the same concerns we have for human life or even national survival cannot be deterred, nor--obviously--can one deter weapons launched in error or by rogue actors.
When Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983--a program intended to provide defenses against nuclear weapons--he was reacting in part to the very exercises you describe. Like President Kennedy before him, his visceral reaction to the nuclear war games was, this isn't a plan...it's a giant national spasm.
Hence the need for defenses.
The movie /War Games/ was released before SDI was announced...but ever since, it has been used as a minatory warning, as you have done. Which it might well have been...in the 1980s. But we've come a very long way since then. And while--despite the meretricious accusations of its adversaries--SDI was never conceived of as a perfect, impenetrable defense, it certainly would defend us against rogues, erroneous launches, and even some of the lesser nuclear powers, such as North Korea. Defense and deterrence are not separate and distinct elements of national security strategy but intertwined, complementary, and--most importantly--mutually reinforcing. As Tacitus famously observed, /Si vis Pacem, para Bellum/.
It has never--insofar as I am aware--been the declaratory policy of the United States that nuclear war is "winnable." Indeed, the only nuclear power I am aware of to have made such a claim is the former Soviet Union, which is part of the reason they were so viscerally opposed to the ongoing development and eventual deployment of ballistic-missile defenses: because the uncertainties that such defenses introduced into their own war planning made it a far riskier enterprise for them.
I have not closely followed the advances made in the realm of ballistic-missile defense since I left the employ of the Haze-Grey Navy in 1996--nearly thirty years ago--but even then the United States was making tremendous strides, a mere decade after Reagan gave his famous speech. I can only imagine what we've accomplished since then, but I would guess it's substantial.
Finally, I invite you to consider the logic of where your reasoning takes you. If nuclear war is inherently unwinnable...why maintain a deterrent at all? Should we not--in the name of and for the sake of humanity--simply disarm and hope for the best? This was exactly the position of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain and its analogues elsewhere in the 1980s. As one critic sarcastically characterized it, "Total nuclear disarmament...but the Western democracies first!" Is this the position you advance? And if not...what exactly are you advocating here?
Okay, let's operate as though what you said is true.
What are the other options?
It reminds me of the quote about our style of government being the worst, except for every other type of government that has been tried. Okay, MAD sucks, give us a better option. Nothing better exists? Well, as this one has worked so far, then I guess we should stick with it until something truly better comes along, eh?
Disarming totally has never been a realistic option for those who understand human nature. It wouldn't be very long at all before some aggressive country/leader who DIDN'T disarm would threaten to nuke other countries if they didn't succumb and do as instructed. Giving up and handing over our country to a terrorist fanatic so he could rob it or rule over us is a non-starter.
MAD can only be considered a terrible non-viable option if there is a significantly less-terrible option that could realistically be applied in the real world. Find and outline that option, then we can talk.
My complaint with the book comes very early, when the author heavily cites John Rubell’s “Doomsday Delayed”, and agrees with his description of attending a briefing of the first SIOP (Strategic Integrated Operational Warplan) as the same thing as being at the Wannsee conference.
Equating the defense of the United States of America against the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, both murderous dictatorships that had butchered and starved tens of millions of their own people, & were intent on extending their bloody rule over the entire planet, with their brothers in genocide, the Nazis, & their plan to kill every jew they could lay their hands on, is completely reprehensible.
Rubell, to his credit, at the end of his book, recognizes that MAD made sense in a bipolar world, & that multiple nuclear powers increases the threat of armageddon, but that there’s no better option because no country will give up their nuclear weapons (my inference, not his words).
I didn’t see that from Jacobsen.
Read “Doomsday Delayed”, which, despite its errors, is written by a key player, and an eyewitness. You can skip Jacobsen’s book.