hogg@utcsri.UUCP (John Hogg) (07/22/85)
In article <307@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: >It's my impression that most of the many nukes we have (if not all, officially) >are targeted at military targets, not at cities. The ones targeted at cities >are aimed at military targets located within them. >Nobody seriously considers a nuclear exchange involving everybody killing >off all the cities on the other side. It's pointless, insane, and would >result in bombs falling on your own cities. Nobody plans a "countervalue first strike", to use the approved buzzwords. Cities are targeted for purposes of retaliation. If the Americans implement SDI, however, "counterforce strikes" (i.e., hitting everything vaguely military) will not be feasible. The only way that the Soviets can maintain their bang for the ruble is to make sure that every warhead that gets through will have maximum effect, i.e., is aimed at a city. So SDI will not only increase the chance of nuclear war, but will cause missiles to be shifted from military to civilian targets. >As I understand it, the reason for our current massive nuclear buildup is >fear of a first strike. Even a 50% effective Star Wars system is enough >for this. It says, "don't try it, because no matter what you do, a fair >number of our silos will survive, and then it's bye-bye to you." As a matter of fact, this IS the current situation; even in the absence of SLBMs and bombers, the Soviets could not take out all the American ICBMs. The retaliatory force that would remain would still be sufficient to make the rubble jump. So why bother with SDI at all? >Nuking cities is something that was done once, strictly for dramatic effect, >to end the second world war. I don't think it's on people's minds today >as a direct end. (As an aside and in response to another reply to Brad: For those people out there who might be beginning to feel that I'm a foam-at-the-mouth peacemonger, I'll say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed for more than mere "dramatic effect". The numbers killed, using any reasonable estimate, were far less than the casualties that would have resulted from fighting the war to its bitter end in a conventional manner. "Mopping up" the inventors of the kamikaze airplane, including the final defence of their homeland, would have involved more Japanese CIVILIAN casualties than two small (by current standards) nuclear bombs. So it can be argued, quite reasonably, that the first use of atomic bombs SAVED lives.) >I know this will be an unpopular statement, but I trust the USA not to >engage in a first strike... ...They all thought they were "the supreme >power for goodness" on the earth. But they didn't use [the bomb], even with a >general for a President. After reading this morning's Mop and Pail, I'll retract a comment I made in an earlier posting about Nixon being an INTELLIGENT crook. It appears that he considered using nuclear weapons FOUR times during his ~6 years in office. No, I don't expect that the US would intentionally start an all-out nuclear war with the USSR, but the superpowers might accidentally escalate themselves into one. The chances of this are much greater if the Americans take steps which will drive the Soviets into a hair-trigger position. -- John Hogg Computer Systems Research Institute, UofT {allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsri!hogg