Question: HOW US RESPOND TO ME COUNTRY W/ NUCLEAR WEAPONS

A reserve soldier still has a rifle/tank/airplane/helicopter/ship/artillery piece set aside for him or her to use in the event of war.

A reserve nuke has what waiting around to launch it at an enemy? A missile that has been destroyed or converted to carry a conventional munition? A bomber that has been decomissioned? A missile body that has been destroyed?

At one time we had almost 5,000 Minuteman Missiles. Today, we have 450. All of the other missiles were destroyed under observation of the USSR and later Russia. Most of the bases have been decomissioned, and many have actually been sold to the public or transferred to the National Park Service. We no longer have the missiles, nor the facilities to launch them from.

Yet we still have many of these warheads sitting in the "reserve" supply, ready to be used as a "hot swap" in the event that one of those on a missile goes bad. In that event, the bad warhead is removed and a good one put in it's place.

But there are still only 450 missiles. Period. So tell me, what good is the warhead of a Minuteman Missile, if there is no missile or launch facility to send it towards an enemy?

Your mistake here is assuming we have reserve missiles. We do not have reserve missiles, only reserve warheads.

 

I have made no mistake here,I am going on the figures provided in the link and it states that the Russians have more missiles than the Americans so the American do not have supremacy.

 

Sorry, you are making a mistake in taking a quote from me in regards to nuclear capability and expanding it.

Nukes actually have little to nothing to do with the "power" of a nation. The real power is almost universally economical and industrial. Having nukes is purely a secondary validation because any country that has them has the industrial, intellectual and manufactoring capability to build them in the first place. But that is not really all that impressive, if you consider somebody doing so now is simply duplicating the capabilities of the US in the mid 1940's to early 1950's.

Many Middle Eastern and other nations are powers because of their economy. However, it is fragile because their entire economy is based upon a single export raw product. If a safe low cost alternative fuel was to ever hit the world market, you will see the Middle East and North Africa return to being among the poorest nations on the planet.

China has recently risen from being a backwards introspective nation to a world power. But their hold is also tenuous. They have an economy based almost 100% on buying raw materials from one country, and selling a manufactured non-essential good to another. If either their sources of raw materials are cut off or they loose their customers, they are in serious trouble and their economy collapses.

What is different about the US is that we supply most of our own raw materials, and our major exports have no real replacement. And yes, if need be the implementation of rationing and increased production can make up a lot of the shortfall of another "oil embargo". We have gone through it twice before in my lifetime, and we did just fine.

But our major export is food. If we suddenly decided to cut all ties and become so isolationist, we could do fine. But millions around the world would starve.

That is what real power is.

China made delude itself by thinking that their cheap COSCO and manufacturing of iPods makes them a "power". That is all an illusion. I knew that the US would win the Cold War when I realized what it meant that the US had to constantly sell food to the USSR to prevent starvation there. When a nation can't even provide enough food to it's own population (while living in one of the richest farmland in the world), you know they have problems.

SO trust me, I am well aware it is not the bombs or guns or tanks that gave the US power, it is her capacity of agriculture more then anything else. And that power (and other raw materials) trickle down until all most people see is the guns. Totally oblivious to what the real power of the country is.

 

Mushroom, et al,

This is correct.

(COMMENT)

Most people, especially within the lower/mid level military, don't get this. But many, many senior officers have cited this in many different ways.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

In international relations, the role of nuclear weapons is often not related to power in the broad sense. Rather, a country's nuclear arsenal is a determinant of said country's security. The two best concepts for analyzing such are the prisoner's dilemma, and the security dilemma. Robert Jervis' 1978 article in World Politics is by far the best analysis on the matter.

 

Leave them alone unless they invade a neighboring country or protect extremist militias that conduct terrorist attacks against our citizens.

 

thediplomat2.0, et al,

Reference:

• Jervis, Robert. 1978 “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (2): 167-214. people.duke.edu/~na15/Jervis.doc
  ...............https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugex...611ef55f5813a2&bpcl=38625945&biw=1639&bih=882

• World Politics
  World Politics / Volume 30 / Issue 02 / January 1978, pp 167-214 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2009958 (About DOI), Published online: 13 June 2011 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7658944

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I would agree if the economies, political agendas, logic and countries we are talking about today, were the same as those of three (+) decades ago.

(COMMENT)

It does not matter if the strength of a country is based on political or military might, if it does not have the economic and industrial power to further and promote those two pillars, then it is no longer a global power.

The question of a nuclear arsenal is a question of what is available for practical use, if they are deployed. There, the Jervis Discussion has some merit. But as it sits today, there is no nation that will survive as a power if it initiates a first strike. If a country like Iran or North Korea deployed a nuclear weapon in a first strike scenario, neither would survive, nor would the goals of their either civilization. And with the global economy suffering as it is today, there would not be much international assistance forth coming; especially after what such cultures as Afghanistan, Iran and Yemen demonostrated.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

THe problem with that line of thinking is that if you wait until then, it is simply to late. Because if a nuclear armed nation is going to attack another as part of a plan to destroy or absorb them, it may be all to likely they will use them unless they have an overwhelming force.

Then we no longer have a war, we have a nuclear war.

 

Mushroom, et al,

I had to think about this question & answer exchange.

(COMMENT)

There are actually two components here in the answer, supra:

• The first being, the question of interventionism or preemptive policy.
• The second is the question of a nuclear exchange based on the premise that the nuclear strike is used as a prelude to invasion and conquest.

In the case of US Foreign Policy, the US is playing the role of "world police;" in that it knows best and has an obligation imperative to act when the conditions are set. The conditions are based on the best interest of the US at the time of the trigger event. In the case of the US, most of the international terrorist organizations that have assaulted US interest, the original motivation was that the US was not acting as an honest broker for peace and abusing its power. Most notable of these cases is in the Middle East where a number of anti-American Terrorist organizations have seen the US intercede on behalf of Israel; giving a state, which they perceive as rogue, the unfair advantage of having a superpower umbrella without a fair hearing of the aggrieved party. In this case, the US set the stage for asymmetric retaliation. The general consensus is that if the US had not intervened, there would have been no retaliation.

No nuclear power has ever used a nuclear strike for the purpose of invasion and conquest. So there are no real history that would suggest what might trigger such a first strike event. Again, the case of Israel is often used in conjunction with Iran as a model or potential. And again, the US is recognized as being the unfair broker in the enforcement of the "voluntary" NPT, and using it as a basis for sanctions. But iran knows that a use of a nuclear weapon to secure religious and political goals is impossible. It would spell the end of their culture and forever taint the wisdom of their religion.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

NATO gettin' ready to respond to use of chemical weapons in Syria...

NATO moves toward deployment on Syria border
7 Dec.`12 — As fears grow in the West that Syrian President Bashar Assad will unleash chemical weapons as an act of desperation, NATO moved forward Thursday with its plan to place Patriot missiles and troops along Syria's border with Turkey to protect against potential attacks.

 

Granny says drop dat abombic tom on `em...

What Assets Could US Military Use Against Syrian Chemical Sites?
December 06, 2012 - Western security experts say the U.S. military has three principal methods for carrying out a potential operation to secure or destroy Syria's suspected chemical weapons sites.