Putin to Europe: Screw You! Arms Buildup! Wooo!

[Stuart]

I've always had a question for a nuclear policy expert I wanted to ask. That is, why strategic weapons at all, in this day and age. Or more appropriately, why not nuclear artillery. If the United States' strategy is to strangle opponents economically and politically, why not allow all strategic forces except a token force to rot. The Soviet tank swarm of the cold war comes to mind. Why not equip your army with very large number of tactical nukes ranging from less than one kiloton to twenty-five kilotons, nuclear artillery. It seems to me the aversion to using tactical nuclear weapons is because whoever first uses nukes opens himself for strategic retaliation, and that need not be the case, especially on defense.

What you're proposing is essentially the US Army between the mid-1950s and early 1960s. During that period, the ARmy was structured in "pentomic divisions". These were equipped with nuclear delivery systems (from Sergeant and Honest John rockets to Davy Crockett recoilless rifles) with the rest of the Army forming a bodyguard for said systems. The general concept was that WW3 would be fought on the ground by a PFC eating a can of beans while spotting for nuclear artillery; everbody else just made sure nobody disturbed his concentration.

The primary problem with the idea was that said Army wasn't much good for anything else (which was the whole point but that's another story).

Also, the Pentomic Divisions were tripwires, attack one, they hit back with their tactical nukes and everything goes to hell from that point onwards.

The reason for strategic weapons is that the armed forces of a country and the productive machinery of that country are an integrated whole. A country isn't defeated until both are gone. For obvious reasons, destroying the armed forces is the first priority and they're the primary target but eliminating the war-making potential of a country comes a close second. Usually the procedure is to destroy the mass of the enemy army first and then to occupy his territory. Doing things the other way around is rather like doing a tonsilectomy through the rectum.

For example, let's say all you say comes to pass. China launches strategic nuclear weapons against some Russian city, that gets defeated by Russian ABM. Russia retaliates -- with an invasion and widespread use of tactical nukes. Saturation will defeat any "multi-warhead" system. Plus maintaining a very capable tank force isn't as economically draining. It's not as if China has any moral ground to object in the UN in such a situation. It seems to me that the only reason for existence of strategic weapons is to be able to threaten the United States homeland, and if you're asking policy makers to concede the US will never pursue all-out war with Russia (they had many chances to do so in the past, even if they knew about the missile gap (the real one with the Soviets unable to respond until late 1970's not the fake one)) then why not forget strategic weapons all together except for a few subs that can possibly destroy ten or so major US cities.[/quote]

[Stuart]

Stuart: Personally, I'd say that the reason why no European coalition formed against Britain from 1815 to 1914 was because the British did not meddle in European affairs in any extensive manner. It was only around the time that Germany started throwing weight around overseas that European alliances started to form (that, and French desire for revenge against Germany, and ethnic nationalist issues in Eastern Europe).

That's true to some extent but minimal realism theory suggests that the very fact that Britain was the undisputed Hegemon should have caused coalitions to form against it. The fact that no such coalitions formed is a serious problem for Minimal Realism. Also, another example is the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. At the start of this process, Germany was a flat-broke and militarily insignificant player on the European scene. It took only a few years for it to rise to a point where it was a European hegemon. This was achieved by a series of small victories and limited advances that simultaneously enhanced its own power and diluted that of the existing Hegemon. Now, if “Minimal-Realism” was to prove correct, we should have seen a coalition of European powers arising to confront Germany. In fact, we don’t. What we do see is the smaller countries of Europe adopting many of the outward characteristics of Nazi Germany and the foundation of fascist parties in most of the European countries. In short, those countries were bandwagoning with Nazi Germany in exactly the manner predicted by “Maximal-Realism”.

I'd like to go on more, but I have a very long International Relations paper due in less than a week.

Be warned - for pete's sake don't quote me or anybody else from The Business in that paper. Academics hate us, quoting us will get you an F for sure and probably exorcised. There was a conference once up at the University of Halifax where some of us got invited. We drove them insane, we had one female professor weeping while a male colleague of hers was actually foaming at the mouth (never seen that before, interesting sight). You see, we did the unforgivable; introduced the real world into the hallowed halls of academe.

[Stuart]

Which means we won't be really listening to your advice.

I know, of course that doesn't mean you won't get it.........

As for Condoleeza, no, I don't believe her "just slipped". Today's government of the United States is acting behind a facade of simplicity and sometimes even what looks like blatant idiocy but my gut instinctively fears that they are a lot more cunning than they seem to be.

Of course they are. They always are. The problem is that Bush & Co are following two extraordinary Presidents, Ronaldus Magnus who was a superb policy president and Bill Clinton who had public relations and public persona down to the finest of arts. Compared with the one's grasp of basic policy issues and the other's ability to talk all four legs off a donkey, then persuade it to go for a walk afterwards, no administration would look good. If we'd had Jimmy Carter in place of Ronaldus Magnus and Hubert Humphrey in place of Bill Clinton, the Bush Administration would look a lot better. All a matter of comparisons. individually, the Administration is as mixed a bag as any other. Condi is incisively brilliant, Cheney is about as boring and unimaginative as a civil servant can be. The rest fall somewhere inbetween.

The basic idea is simple, assured destruction of the enemy in case a full-blown conflict arises. The basic problem so far is to create such a system that would not only reliably dodge ABM, but inflict the needed degree of damage to industrial targets since the scale, goals and extent of the war would most likely not be exactly known in the first days of such a conflict. The task is non-trivial.

You bet its non-trivial; I've earned a very good living for the last 30 odd years studying just such things. Been a hell of a ride too. Very satisfying career.

However, a lot of them are targeting&exploration assets like photosats, precise-targeting sats. Today we need to think a bit further than that. For example, in the 1980s we thought about using the "Buran" as a military space plane, as well as a civilian analogue of the shuttle.

I agree; although the new uses are coming faster than most people think. Armed space ships, killer satellites, they're much closer than people might guess - as the Chinese ASAT test showed.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Interesting, so we had about 35 years where we could've nuked Russia without any worry of retaliation, yet somehow nuclear reprisal stopped us from nuking Russia... Oh wait.

[Ace Pace]

Interesting, so we had about 35 years where we could've nuked Russia without any worry of retaliation, yet somehow nuclear reprisal stopped us from nuking Russia... Oh wait.

Where are you getting that from? Going roughly(Stuart, correct me if I'm wrong), the U.S had a nice strategic advantage in the fifties, but it was unknown due to lack of intel and fears from russian propaganda.
In the early 60s, we still had an advantage, but it was slipping away as the U.S was becoming mired in Vietnam, losing strategic focus. This continued untill the late 70s, when the U.S started tighting up, and during the 80s, the U.S was improving rapidly, but from what I understand, regarding strategic weapons they were mostly equal.

This is quite obviously generalised and ignores all sorts of minor points(I've avoided dealing with the specifics of missle and bomber 'gaps'), but hopefully passes across the picture.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I'm talking about Stas' complete dismissal of the fact that we had a chance to nuke them without reprisal and didn't do so, and continuing to claim that MAD was all that stopped us.

[Ace Pace]

I'm talking about Stas' complete dismissal of the fact that we had a chance to nuke them without reprisal and didn't do so, and continuing to claim that MAD was all that stopped us.

You rarely had a chance to nuke without repraisal. During the 50s, possibly, depending on specific year and more details which I don't remember without opening some books. But at that time, you belived the SU was far stronger then it actully was.

[Stuart]

You rarely had a chance to nuke without repraisal. During the 50s, possibly, depending on specific year and more details which I don't remember without opening some books. But at that time, you belived the SU was far stronger then it actully was.

The USSR was pretty much incapable of doing any serious damage to the US between the early 1950s and 1962/63. They good give Western Europe a bad mauling but their efforts to hit us would have been pretty feeble (firing nuclear-tipped torpedoes into ports was one of their better ideas). The ability of the USSR to hurt grew steadily during the 1960s and into the 1970s.

The Eisenhower administration was pretty much aware of the situation; the game plan was that we'd establish (and did) a massive offensive superiorty in the 1950s and early 1960s, then hold that force level while we built up a defensive shield in the 1960s and 1970s. The scheme was that as Soviet offensive power increased, we'd increase the efficiency of our defensive shield to match. In the end the combination of containment and an arms race would cause the USSR to collapse economically (which it did, eventually).

In the 1950s and into the Kennedy Administration, there was nothing mutual about the assured destruction (the balance was utter destruction for them and minor irritation for us). The overall Cold War strategy was always containment. The Mutual bit came in with McNamara (ritually cursed be his name and his soul sent to eternal damnation) and even then it was never US policy.

Deterrence was very real from the late 1960s onwards, but before that, we didn't nuke the USSR because it wasn't necessary. Basically, it was too much bother when we were pretty sure they'd collapse anyway given time.

[Sturmfalke]

Deterrence was very real from the late 1960s onwards, but before that, we didn't nuke the USSR because it wasn't necessary. Basically, it was too much bother when we were pretty sure they'd collapse anyway given time.

But at this time, the US could not be "pretty sure" about the collapse of the soviet system. In fact, during the 1950s, the economy of the UdSSR was growing quite fast (which slowed down during the 60s)... hardly a position from which one would be able to predict the decline of the Soviet Union thirty decades later.

[Enforcer Talen]

Stuart, Ive seen this a couple of places, that the U.S. likes spoiling attacks, and never fully commits - one of the complaints I found in Iraq was that we werent committing enough for our stated objectives.

My question is, how is this strategy maintained through the various admins? Its hard to picture that Reagan/Clinton/Bush all hold to an overarching idea - is there a class they give incoming admins, or something?

[Stuart]

But at this time, the US could not be "pretty sure" about the collapse of the soviet system. In fact, during the 1950s, the economy of the UdSSR was growing quite fast (which slowed down during the 60s)... hardly a position from which one would be able to predict the decline of the Soviet Union thirty decades later.

And yet we did. Very clearly. The whole strategy of containment was laid out by George F Kennan in 1949. His analysis of the weaknesses of the Soviet Union and how it could be brought down without a war was a masterful exposition and guided US policy up to 1962 and then again from 1980 - 86. Every prediction he made came true and its one of the great justices of history that Kennan lived long enough for his predictions and proposals to come true and for him to receive the honors he so richly deserved.

Do a websearch for him, he's a character worthy of admiration.

[Stuart]

Stuart, Ive seen this a couple of places, that the U.S. likes spoiling attacks, and never fully commits - one of the complaints I found in Iraq was that we werent committing enough for our stated objectives.

Probably because Stratfor did a rather neat paper on this not long ago that was a pretty good overview of how things work. Force commitment to Iraq was a balancing job - what could we send there that was powerful enough to do the job without leaving ourselves denuded of options everywhere else. That's been a problem for strategists ever since Ug decided he wanted to steal Gug's cache of mammoth bones. The other problem is that in every war in history, the commanding generals have demanded more troops and raised holy hell when they don't get them. Iraq's no different.

A lot of people have speculated on American objectives in Iraq and most of their comments are just that, speculation.

My question is, how is this strategy maintained through the various admins? Its hard to picture that Reagan/Clinton/Bush all hold to an overarching idea - is there a class they give incoming admins, or something?

We don't have to do that. At this level, strategy come sout of the way people think. Stalin called it "Permanently Operating Factors", others "Cultural Imperatives", others "National Character" but they all mean the same thing. How people think is something they absorb at a very early age and it's very hard for them to throw it off. It affects the decisions they make, how they make those decisions, almost every action they undertake, great or small. Their political opinions and so on are formed within those confines. In their paper, Stratfor compared this to Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" that guides a free market. It's presence is by definition undetectable but there's no serious doubt that its there.

Realism is built into the way America operates. Think of the classic definition of Realism then watch people driving into work every morning. Pure Realism in action.

Couple of books you might find useful on this.

"Vietnam - The Necessary War" by Michael Lind
"The Fifty Years War" by Norman Friedman

[K. A. Pital]

Ah... Stuart remembered an interesting person here (I mean Kennan). I must say that Kennan was perhaps the most ardent adept of the principles of Realpolitik of all U.S. politicians. Today's crooks at the White House are not even half as wise.

He [Kennan] was never pleased that the policy he influenced was associated with the arms build-up of the Cold War. In his memoirs, Kennan argued that containment did not demand a militarized U.S. foreign policy. Instead, "counterforce" implied the political and economic defense of Western Europe against the disruptive effect of the war on European society. Exhausted by war, the Soviet Union was no serious military threat to the United States or its allies at the beginning of the Cold War, Kennan argued, but rather a strong ideological and political rival.

[...]

Yet, he remained a realist critic of recent U.S. presidents, urging, in particular, the U.S. government to "withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights." "This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable," he said in an interview with the New York Review of Books in 1999. "I would like to see our government gradually withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights. I submit that governments should deal with other governments as such, and should avoid unnecessary involvement, particularly personal involvement, with their leaders." These ideas were particularly applicable, he said, to U.S. relations with China and Russia. Kennan opposed the Clinton administration's war in Kosovo as well as its expansion of NATO (the establishment of which he had also opposed half a century earlier), expressing largely unrealized fears that both policies would worsen relations with Russia [unrealized? yeah right, WikiMorons, talk about "unrealized" fears now - S.B.]. He described NATO enlargement as a "strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions."

[...]

In his later years, Kennan concluded that "the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union" [exactly, the Cold War itself was an overreaction blunder - S.B.] At age 98, he warned of the unforeseen consequences of waging war against Iraq. He warned that launching an attack on Iraq would amount to waging a second war that "bears no relation to the first war against terrorism" and declared efforts by the Bush administration to link al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein "pathetically unsupportive and unreliable." Kennan went on to warn:

“Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end."

I must say that Kennan was and remained until his very last days a voice of reason. I can't even think of the dramatic course history would take should his approach lose to the ideas of all-out warfare with the USSR (and there was quite a few people who wanted to incite a nuclear war, several wanted to incite civil war in Russia, many "Reaganites" are personally responsible for Afghanistan including Brzezhinsky the notorious Russophobe).

If there only were more realistic people like Kennan in the U.S. administration...

[Vympel]

Wow. Smart man.

In February 2004, scholars, diplomats, and Princeton alumni gathered at the university's campus to celebrate George Kennan's 100th birthday. Secretary of State Colin Powell led off the events. Powell extolled Kennan's prediction of the demise of the Soviet Union, made at the peak of its power, calling his prediction "no lucky guess, but a manifestation of genuine wisdom." Kennan met privately with Powell after the celebration.

I wonder what he said to Powell? Probably- "Resign, these fools are on the highyway to hell."

[K. A. Pital]

Wow. Smart man.

You bet. Among the hysterical jingoists who have dominated the White House, and especially in the latest times, he seems almost like a prophet. Sadly, today's leaders prefer moronic speeches and long-winded rethorics of the PNAC to realpolitik - which is really leading the US down the shitter on the political scene.

[MKSheppard]

He [Kennan] was never pleased that the policy he influenced was associated with the arms build-up of the Cold War. In his memoirs, Kennan argued that containment did not demand a militarized U.S. foreign policy. Instead, "counterforce" implied the political and economic defense of Western Europe against the disruptive effect of the war on European society. Exhausted by war, the Soviet Union was no serious military threat to the United States or its allies at the beginning of the Cold War, Kennan argued, but rather a strong ideological and political rival.

If that wiki is true, then Kennan was a open headed fool. What do we do if the Soviets don't play by the rules of economic warfare? Curtis LeMay's fleet of bombers kept the Soviets honest, especially Stalin.

[K. A. Pital]

What do we do if the Soviets don't play by the rules of economic warfare?

And by which rules do we play after a war which basically exhausted our society to such an extent that we were re-building it for 10 years since?

Curtis LeMay's fleet of bombers kept the Soviets honest, especially Stalin.

If you didn't notice, the already-existing WWII US forces were more than enough for that. The period is the beginning of the Cold War. The US has shitloads of bombers and the atomic bomb already.

[MKSheppard]

And by which rules do we play after a war which basically exhausted our society to such an extent that we were re-building it for 10 years since?

If you didn't notice, the already-existing WWII US forces were more than enough for that. The period is the beginning of the Cold War. The US has shitloads of bombers and the atomic bomb already.

The US actually did try Kennan's "economic warfare only!" stuff from 1945 to 1950; the US military massively massively demobilized after WWII; we literally threw away half of our tanks because it was more expensive to ship them home than to let them rust in place.

SAC in those early years was indeed a sad sack (pun intended)

SAC OOB 1946: (148 B-29, 85 P-51, 31 F-2, 15 C-54) About 30 of the B-29s were configured to carry nuclear weapons.

SAC OOB 1947: (319 B-29, 230 P-51, 120 P-80, 9 C-54, and 35 F-2, F-9, F-13, and FB-17)

SAC OOB 1948: (35 B-36, 35 B-50, 486 B-29, 131 F-51, 81 F-82, 24 RB-17, 30 RB-29, 4 RC-45, 11 C-54)

SAC OOB 1949: (390 B-29, 36 B-36, 99 B-50, 67 KB-29, 62 RB-29, 18 RB-17, 19 C-54, 11 C-82, 5 YC-97, 80 F-86, 81 F-82)

SAC OOB 1950: (38 B-36s and 20 RB-36s, 195 B-50s, 282 B-29s, 130 KB-29s,
19 RB-50s, 46 RB-29s, 27 RB-45s, 4 C-82s, 14 C-97s, 19 C-124s, and 167 F-84s)

SAC OOB 1951: (96 B-36s and 63 RB-36s, 216 B-50s, 346 B-29s, 10 B47s,
185 KB-29s, 22 KC-97s, 40 B/RB-45s, 40 RB-50s, 32 RB-29s, 4 C-82s, 36 C-124s,
and 75 F-84s).

It's not until 1951, that we actually gain a credible method of actually striking the Soviet Union in meaningful numbers (159 R/B-36s) with aircraft which don't get launched on one way suicide trips from the UK.

SAC from then on continues to grow exponentally, hitting 1,000+ R/B-47s by 1954.

What caused this huge buildup? Well, the Korean War. It basically showed us that Kennan style economic warfare only was not enough to defeat worldwide communism (which is what we percieved the Korean War as, an extension of the cold war, it's why we only sent Essexes and B-29s to bomb north korea, all the good stuff like Midways and B-36s was reserved for Europe)