daemon@ucbvax.UUCP (08/26/84)
From FFM@MIT-MC Sat Aug 25 18:29:56 1984
Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 2 : Issue 55
Today's Topics:
Re: Nuclear Winter & Crazy States(2 msgs), increased fall-out at home,
Re: Israel & Crazy States & Masada Complex, Samsonizing the world,
Nuclear Winter & Crazy States -> domino effect to doomsday etc,
British Nuclear Threat Against Argentina
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Received: from MIT-MC by MIT-OZ via Chaosnet; 23 Aug 84 02:20-EDT
Date: 23 August 1984 02:20-EDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Nuclear Winter & Crazy States
To: MDC.WAYNE @ MIT-OZ
cc: Arms-d @ MIT-OZ, Lin @ MIT-OZ, Oaf @ MIT-OZ, Prog-d @ MIT-OZ
In-reply-to: Msg of 22 Aug 1984 18:52 EDT (Wed) from Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ at MIT-MC.ARPA>
From: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ at MIT-MC.ARPA>
Actually, if we unkludge the nuclear winter and crazy state scenarios,
one realizes that the credible threat by a small crazy state "merely"
to take out, say, New York, Washington, and Boston, or Moscow,
Leningrad, and Kiev by a handful of briefcase nuclear devices would
provide that state with tremendous leverage. A crazy state wouldn't
need the capability to induce nuclear winter in order to make the U.S.
or USSR pay polite attention to its demands.
NOW that's a problem, and in any reasonable estimation worthy of much
more concern than third-world-induced nuclear winter.
(From Lin)
Moral: concentrate on the biggest problem first, because if that one
isn't solved, the little ones don't matter.
Well, maybe. I thought, however, that the consensus of opinion among
strategic experts was that a nuclear war between the U.S. and USSR was
highly unlikely. The now defunct magazine _Next_ carried a few years
ago the results of a Delphi-like survey of strategic experts which, If
I correctly recall, argued that the likeliest cause of a nuclear war
in the remainder of this century would be the Israeli-Arab conflict,
and the least likely cause a confrontation between the U.S. and USSR.
A deliberately decided nuclear war is quite unlikely according to
informed strategic opinion. One in which US/USSR face each other
conventionally (say by accident or miscalculation) is much more
worrisome; indeed, that is why US and Soviet troops tend not to have
direct confrontations.
One also has to consider that third world crazy states could trigger
the nuclear winter by dragging the U.S. and USSR into an unwanted
confrontation which could escalate into a nuclear exchange.
Scenario, please. I haven't yet discovered one that I could believe.
Wasn't, in fact, the U.S. put on a full nuclear alert during the
1973 Yom Kippur War?
No. The US went to Defense Condition 3 -- more planes on alert, etc.
The US has been on "full nuclear alert" (DEFCON 1 (or maybe 2)) only
during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
(From Chomsky)
".... It may also be surmised that nuclear-tipped missiles that
can reach southern Russia are not really intended to deter the USSR,
but rather to put U.S. planners on notice, once again, that pressures
on Israel to accede to a political settlement may lead to a violent
reaction that will bring the USSR into the Middle East, setting it in
inevitable confrontation with the United States, with a high
probability of global nuclear war."
Whose nuclear tipped missiles? The Israelis sure don't have them.
Besides, your claim that the US and USSR being fundamentally rational
enough to refrain from direct nuclear war directly contradicts this
statement above. Are Soviet interests in the Middle East worth a
global conflagration to the Soviets? I think not.
------------------------------
Date: 23 Aug 84 10:46:37 EDT
From: Robert Frederking@CMU-CS-A
Subject: Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V2 #53
To: ARMS-D@MIT-MC
One technical note: I don't think that a side-effect of blowing up
a number of weapons on one's own soil would be increased fall-out at home.
I seem to recall that the last time China had an atmospheric test, the fall-
out landed in central Pennsylvania.
The implication of nuclear winter that I hope takes hold is that
building any more weapons than we already have is a waste of money. At this
point, however, I'm not very optimistic. People are already trying to find
ways to turn this into a profit-making activity (e.g., sky-sweepers).
------------------------------
Date: 23 Aug 84 09:17:23 PDT (Thu)
To: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE@mit-mc>
cc: arms-d@mit-mc
Subject: Re: Israel & Crazy States & Masada Complex
From: Martin D. Katz <katz@uci-750a>
Received: from Localhost by UCI-750a; 23 Aug 84 09:17:43 PDT (Thu)
Re: the message from Wayne McGuire (MDC.WAYNE@MIT-OZ):
The "Masada complex" is best exemplified in this country by the sayings
"They will never take me alive" and "Better dead than read." That is, it is
better to commit suicide than be defeated. The "Sampson complex" on the
other had, is best exemplified by "If they're going to kill me, I'm taking
as many of them with me as I can." Although these are related, there is a
great deal of difference between them.
The Israeli political system is not monolithic. In fact, one of Israel's
greatest difficulties at present is a lack of political unity. The "policy
of messianic expansionism" which you mention is only supported (in full) by
a very small minority of Israeli's. The problem is that this small minority
can pull a lot of weight in a multi-party coallition government.
In addition, the best description of how Israeli's relate to society and how
Israel relates to the world is not "Masada" or "Sampson" or even "Hawk" or
"Dove," rather it is "Don't tread on me." Emerging nations are tired of
being treated as subordinate (even "Third world" implies this to them).
Combining this with the Middle Eastern concepts of dignity, tendancy to rate
tact as low in importance, and a feeling that it is important to appear
tough, I think that one can get a better idea of what is behind Israel's
"crazy" actions in the international and military scene.
Mention was made of lack of supplies being a major problem for Israel in
1973. Shortage of supplies has always been a problem for Israel's military.
Part of Israel's post 1973 build-up was intended to alleviate this, but it
is a problem which a country as small as Israel can't possibly beat -- both
money and land (for storage) are missing.
------------------------------
Date: 24 Aug 1984 02:25 EDT (Fri)
Message-ID: <MDC.WAYNE.12041916970.BABYL@MIT-OZ>
From: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA>
To: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC>
Cc: Arms-d%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA, Lin%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA,
mdc.wayne%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA, Oaf%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA,
Prog-d%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Nuclear Winter & Crazy States
In-reply-to: Msg of 23 Aug 1984 02:20-EDT from Herb Lin <LIN at MIT-MC>
Date: Thursday, 23 August 1984 02:20-EDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN at MIT-MC>
To: MDC.WAYNE
cc: Arms-d, Lin, Oaf, Prog-d
Re: Nuclear Winter & Crazy States
Wasn't, in fact, the U.S. put on a full nuclear alert during the
1973 Yom Kippur War?
No. The US went to Defense Condition 3 -- more planes on alert, etc.
The US has been on "full nuclear alert" (DEFCON 1 (or maybe 2)) only
during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
That's odd: I've read numerous times in the political science
literature that American forces were put on a nuclear alert during the
1973 Yom Kippur War. That fact has even been asserted in network
television documentaries. Chomsky comments (p. 450):
"In 1973, the U.S. called a strategic nuclear alert in the final
stages of the October war. Reviewing this incident, Blechman and Hart
conclude that 'there was a serious threat of military conflict between
the United States and the Soviet Union.' This is, in fact, a typical
example of how a nuclear war is likely to break out, sooner or later,
possibly through inadvertence or mistaken judgement as to intent."
(Full reference for the above-mentioned study: Barry M. Blechman and
Douglas M. Hart, "The Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons,"
International Security, vol. 7, no. 1, 1982. Cite me, if you will, an
authority for your assertion that U.S. forces were _not_ put on a
nuclear alert during the Yom Kippur War.)
(From Chomsky)
".... It may also be surmised that nuclear-tipped missiles that
can reach southern Russia are not really intended to deter the USSR,
but rather to put U.S. planners on notice, once again, that pressures
on Israel to accede to a political settlement may lead to a violent
reaction that will bring the USSR into the Middle East, setting it in
inevitable confrontation with the United States, with a high
probability of global nuclear war."
Whose nuclear tipped missiles? The Israelis sure don't have them.
Chomsky comments (p. 466) that in the study of Israel's nuclear
strategies and capacities by Perlmutter, Handel, and Bar-Joseph
(mentioned in an earlier message),
"[t]he authors ... proceed to review the nuclear capabilities
that Israel has developed in cooperation with South Africa and Taiwan.
They cite reports ... that Israel has about 200 'operational nuclear
warheads' (attributed to the CIA), including a tactical and strategic
arsenal, and is working on a netron bomb. The September 1979 incident
in which American and Soviet spy satellites detected a suspected
nuclear explosion over the Indian Ocean was in actuality the explosion
of a nuclear shell launched from a cannon in a joint experiment of
South Africa and Israel that involved 'one of the most advanced
tactical nuclear systems to be used anywhere in the world.' Cruise
missiles are under development, jointly with South Africa and Taiwan,
with a 1500 mile range, sufficient to hit 'many targets in southern
USSR.' Israel has 'a variety of launching systems,' including American
and Israeli-made planes, surface-to-surface missiles, and soon to
come, a nuclear gun and cruise missiles."
That Israel would be strongly motivated to develop the capacity to hit
the USSR with nuclear weapons can be safely assumed when one realizes
that, according to Oded Feingold in an earlier message, Israel thinks
that it has already three times been threatened with a nuclear attack
from the Soviet Union.
Besides, your claim that the US and USSR being fundamentally rational
enough to refrain from direct nuclear war directly contradicts this
statement above. Are Soviet interests in the Middle East worth a
global conflagration to the Soviets? I think not.
I can't think of a better way inadvertently to bring on a global
thermonuclear war than for either of the superpowers to underestimate
how important a particular strategic interest is to the other. One has
to factor in such irrational elements as ego and pride, as well as
practical interests, when deciding how far to push an opponent. If the
U.S. adopted your assumption that the Soviet Union was unwilling to
fight ferociously for its interests in the Middle East, then I think
we might well find ourselves in a situation ripe for the start of
World War III.
I'll give Chomsky the last word (pp. 449-450):
"The disasters threatening the Palestinians and Israel are
evident enough. It also does not take a great deal of thought to
perceive the risks to the United States, and in fact the entire world,
from the unresolved Israel-Arab conflict. The world contains many
trouble spots, but none pose such dangers of superpower confrontation
as the Middle East, and of the many conflicts in this region, none
approaches the Israel-Arab conflict--and at its heart, the conflict
between Israel and the Palestinians--in the threat it poses of global,
nuclear war. In comparison, the threat of a superpower confrontation
in Europe, or elsewhere, seems slight....
"The risk that a nuclear war might erupt from a Middle East
conflict is nothing new. When Eisenhower sent U.S. forces to Lebanon
in 1958, it was his judgement that there was a risk of 'general war
with the Soviet Union' (Eisenhower's words, in his memoirs), an
opinion shared by some of his advisers, for example, Loy Henderson,
who felt that 'we should face the risk now as well as any time.' At
the time of the 1967 war, the 'hot line' between Washington and Moscow
was used for the first time....
"During the 1982 Lebanon war, American nuclear forces were not
alerted, so far as we know, but the danger of superpower confrontation
was not slight. In their sharp condemnation of the Israeli invasion,
the foreign ministers of the European Community warned that it posed
the risk of 'leading to a generalized war.' The U.S. and Soviet fleets
were present in force in the Eastern Mediterranean. A senior Soviet
official 'expressed concern the Mideast fighting may provoke a
full-scale confrontation between Israel and Syria, triggering greater
Soviet involvement,' and it has been alleged that 'the Russians had
threatened to intervene militarily, if the fighting [between Israel
and Syria] did not stop.' If Israel's attack on Syrian forces had
continued and the fighting had escalated a notch or two higher, the
USSR might have made some move in defense of its Syrian ally, a step
that surely would have brought about a U.S. mlitary response and
possibly a superpower confrontation. As noted earlier, the USSR has
warned that it would become directly involved if Damascus were
attacked, and the war might well have escalated to Israeli bombing or
shelling of Damascus. By September, Israeli forces were deployed north
of Beirut and Syrian forces in Eastern Lebanon had been cut off, with
Israeli artillery in a position to shell Damascus. It is possible that
further steps would have been taken in what military analyst Ze'ev
Schiff describes as Israel's war 'to expel Syria from Lebanon,' had it
not been for the unexpected international reaction to the Beirut
massacres. It is, in short, not impossible that the victims of this
atrocity saved the world from nuclear confrontation.
"Even apart from the Syrian phase of the war, the risk of
superpower involvement was considerable. The Soviet Embassy was hit on
several occasions and was 'heavily damaged' during the Israeli
shelling of West Beirut. Furthermore, during the Israeli invasion of
West Beirut, Israeli troops occupied parts of the Soviet Embassy and
held them for two days, a gratuitious act of defiance in the course of
the conquest of a virtually undefended city."
Can you present a more plausible scenario than Chomsky's for the
occasion of an outbreak of global nuclear war?
------------------------------
Date: 24 Aug 1984 09:13:46-EDT
From: sde@Mitre-Bedford
To: arms-d@mit-mc
Subject: Samsonizing the world
Cc: sde@Mitre-Bedford
How does it happen that the discussion has been focussing on the nuclear
variety of Samsonism (to coin a word). If a country really wanted to assure
its continued existence through a Samson threat, it would be MUCH more
feasible to use biological weaponry.
1) It can be very small;
2) It can be totally non-metallic, hence easy to smuggle;
the trigger electronics could be added on site from readily
available materials;
3) It does not require the acquisition of fissionable materials;
4) It can be tailored to national characteristics;
5) It is cheap;
6) It is demonstrable in sample (non-lethal) form;
7) It doesn't have the uncertainty of questionable weather phenomena;
8) Its origins can be made untraceable;
9) It real target need not be the country or countries in which the
devices are installed;
10) It does not require anything near a thousand locations;
11) It does not need to be in populated or strategic regions to reach
populations and strategic installations, especially if air transmissible;
12) It can target the staple foods of specific regions, rather than humans
directly, killing by starvation and starvation induced violence (either
individual or national) rather than by primary sickness.
Should I continue, or have I made a convincing case yet?
David sde@mitre-bedford
------------------------------
Date: 24 August 1984 12:12-EDT
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Nuclear Winter & Crazy States -> domino effect to doomsday etc.
To: OAF @ MIT-OZ
cc: ARMS-D @ MIT-MC
If Israel has indeed the capability of making nuclear winter as their
doomsday threst to anyone who destroys them, they should announce the
deterrent loud and clear. Unfortunately it's so easy to destroy Israel
with a small number of nukes that some lesser nuclear-power may use
Israel's doomsday deterrent second hand. It goes like this: "I'll set
all my weapons so if you destroy me my weapons will destroy Israel,
which will provoke them to destroy the world. Thus if you destroy me
I'll in effect have the world destroyed." If each nation has more
destructive power than it takes to destroy that nation, in particular
if each nation has enough power to destroy the next-more-powerful
nation, than each nation in effect has doomsday deterrent power by
threating to activate the upward nuclear domino chain. If the number
one power has nuclear winter power (as it in fact does, in fact both
of the top two do currently), and if the domino chain extends to the
top (for example if China or France could destroy the USA and Israel
could France, Lybia could destroy Israel), what happens if some small
nation in the chain feels in danger of destruction? Does one of the
links in the chain allow itself to be destroyed without executing its
doomsday-domino, or does the chain work all the way to the top and we
have the end of life as we know it?
In my opinion the basic problem is that each nuclear power has more
weaponry than it could absorb if used against itself, thus a domino
chain of attacks is expanding (unstable) instead of diminishing
(stable). The above upward domino-to-doomsday is but one example of
this instability. The traditional two-nation first-strike instability
is another example. I suspect the whole situation of having more
weaponry than would be tolerable against self (i.e. more
offense/deterrent than true defense) is inherently unstable in general.
Rebuttal welcome!!
(Reasoned agreement welcome too of course.)
------------------------------
Date: 24 Aug 1984 1723-PDT
From: CAULKINS@USC-ECL
Subject: British Nuclear Threat Against Argentina
To: armsd at MIT-MC
From a story on P3 of the 24 Aug issue of the New York Times on
reports that the Thatcher Government sent a Polaris submarine to
the South Atlantic during the early stages of the 1982 Falklands
war:
"...the left-wing magazine The New Statesman published an article
suggesting that the [British] Government had contemplated a nuclear
threat or attack against Argentina...
Accompanying the article were the full texts of two Government
documents, one classified confidential, the other never issued to the
press.
The documents ... had been sent anonymously to Tam Dalyell, a Labor
Member of Parliament, ...
The magazine said a series of highly classified telegrams sent to the
British Embassy in Washington detailed the deployment of a
Polaris-armed submarine to the South Atlantic...
Spokesmen at the Ministry of Defense and the Foreign Office ... had
no comment ...
The article quotes Mr. Dalyell [who said] ... a political source told
him that such a submarine had been deployed in th event that one of
the British task force's principal ships was destroyed in a missile
attack, jeopardizing the entire expedition. The likely target for the
submarine, he was told, was Cordoba [population 990,000], in northern
Argentina. Both he and the magazine assumed the missile launched by
the submarine would have had a nuclear warhead [Polaris A3 warheads
have a yield of 200KT; 800KT for A1 and A2]."
I find this alarming in the extreme. I had always thought that the
nuclear threahold was reasonably high, and that it would only be
crossed by a nuclear power if it were under grave threat or actual
attack by another (probably nuclear) power.
Instead a second-rank nulcear power (Britain) feels free to threaten
the incineration of => 100,000 civilians of a non-nuclear opponent if
the British suffer a reverse in a military operation which can hardly
be classified as affecting British survival, or even her vital
interests.
Several questions arise:
1) Are the allegations false ? If so, I would expect the Defense
Ministry and Foreign Office to respond with a vigorous denial, instead
of the equivocal 'no comment'.
2) How much did the US Government know about this ?
3) If the US did know (which seems likely), did we encourage or
discourage the British plan ?
4) Are other nuclear powers, large or small, equally casual about
initiating nuclear weapon use ?
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[End of ARMS-D Digest]