FA: US could nuke Russia and China without serious risk of retaliation.

[oblivious]

The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy

Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006

Summary: For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia's decays and China's stays small, the era of MAD is ending -- and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun.

Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces. Unless Washington's policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China -- and the rest of the world -- will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85204-p0/keir-a-lieber-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-u-s-nuclear-primacy.html


Related: Russians Sense the Heat of Cold War
MOSCOW -- In this city, it's beginning to feel like a new Cold War, driven by what many people here see as an old American impulse: to encircle, weaken or even destroy Russia, just as the country is emerging from post-Soviet ruins as a cohesive, self-confident and global power.

The specter of a U.S. nuclear first strike even resurfaced this month. An article in Foreign Affairs magazine, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that the United States could hit Russia and China without serious risk of retaliation. That sent heads spinning here with visions of Dr. Strangelove.

"The publication of these ideas in a respectable American journal has had an explosive effect," former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar wrote in an article in London's Financial Times newspaper. "Even those Russian journalists and analysts who are not prone to hysteria or anti-Americanism took it as an outline of the official position of the U.S. Administration."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/02/AR2006040200749_pf.html

[IsItJustMe]

1. That's the craziest article I ever did read. They got war heads with up

to 12 missiles on it. One of them could destroy us with one of them.

[oblivious]

2. Scared the hell out of me. If the crazies get this in their head...

[Psephos]

3. Speaking of crazies...

...don't forget Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, this article is ludicrous. The cost of even a whacked-out surprise first strike by the U.S. would be any number of U.S. cities at minimum. Ain't gonna happen. There would be civil war for the second time in America.

As the old saying goes, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is. Even if, theoretically, the U.S. has nuclear superiority, in practice, it means nothing.

Peace.

[driver8]

4. Oh goody...nuclear supremacy!! I was hoping that would happen.

I feel much safer now.

These people are absolutely freakin' mad!!

[acmejack]

5. Simply a matter of whose definition of serious retaliation one uses!

I would imagine. Messieurs Lieber and Press are suffering from the same affliction as the unfortunate Mr. Helms, IMHO.

[Vitruvius]

6. All the Russians have to do is LAUNCH ON WARNING -- fire their missiles

at us before our missiles arrive to destroy their missiles. And that "U.S. nuclear primacy" means NOTHING.

The problem? Both sides have had numerous false alarms of attacks by the other -- due to equipment failures, software failures, birds, echos from the Moon, etc.

The bottom line? "U.S. nuclear primacy" could well cause nuclear-war-by-accident.

[K-W]

11. But if thier rediness degrades that would cease to be the case. EOM

[Capt_Nemo]

12. What happens in the current trends (at least for the last 3-4 years)

is that Russia has started to rebuild the infrastructure of their strategic forces
with new satelites being launched, to replace those at the end of their lives,
completing constelations that were not working with the complete network of satelites,
slowly introducing, modernized/new missiles, like the Topol-M and the Bulava (the SLBM
derivative of the Topol) and researching warhead manouvrability.
You can check out these developments in russianforces.org

The FA article seems to be a load of inaccurate chest-thumping BS for internal consumption,
in order to keep the american public from realizing that the defense and foreign policies
of the Bush administration have had exactly the reverse efect: eroding the strategic advantage
the US had gained over Russia up to the late 90s

[megatherium]

7. In the early 1960s, we had total strategic nuclear superiority over

the Soviets. Our leadership gave serious consideration to a first strike. But a RAND study was done saying that even though we would win a nuclear war, and it would be extremely one-sided, there was a significant chance that some of the Russian bombers would get through, and that as a result we should expect 2-4 million US fatalities in such a war. Our leadership elected not to do it. I can only imagine that the danger is that much higher than in the days when the only weapons the Soviets had were bombers.

[htuttle]

8. "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed."

"But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks. "
-- General "Buck" Turgidson

[bemildred]

9. Yeah, forget all those submarines and rail mounted ICBMs ... nt

[Capt_Nemo]

10. Speaking of which, here is the latest toy from the russians:

The Project 955 SSBN "Borey" Class
model photos

The first of the class, the Yuri Dolgoruky, should be commissioned in 2008
and since 2004 they have started construction on two others, the Alexander Nevsky,
and the Vladimir Monomakh.
link

And I won't even go into the Topol-M mobile ICBMs, and the new manouverable warheads
that some say feature a scramjet engine to sustain a non-ballistic trajectory...

Good luck if you're going to mess arround with these guys...

[Demeter]

13. I Move To Involuntarily Commit These Fools To Mental Hospital

That's what any SANE person would do!

[yurbud]

14. Potential use of this info--why fear Iran (did we fear Iraq) if true?

If we have nothing to fear from the two big dogs, why exactly are we supposed to wet our pants about countries getting their hands on at most a couple of dozen nukes when they know if they use them, we can wipe them off the map and still have enough nukes left to do the same to every other country on earth?

[cliss]

15. It's not the steak.....

it's the sizzle. The reason why nuclear armament has worked in the past is because all parties understand that if one party decides to engage nukes, the rest of them will and we're all toast.

It's like living with Russian Roulette, 24/7. One goes = we all go. This is a fear-based system which guarantees all parties will stay in line.

Even if the US massively builds up armaments which far outweighs the others, it's still the same result.

Our bombs will not save us. We can threaten all we want, but we are tied together with the same rope that will pull us all down the abyss.

[teryang]

16. More of the "worlds only superpower" bullshit

Without serious risk of retaliation????

This is in the same category as predictions of a cake walk in Iraq. The editors who allow this garbarge to be published belong in a rubber room.