Is there ushc a thing as acceptable losses in a nuclear war?

[Eternal_Freedom]

I watched the awesome 1983 Wargames film last night, and Dr. Flaken's talk about the Pentagon believing there was such a thing as acceptable losses got me thinking.

We know from history that it is acceptable to trade hundreds of thousands of lives over idealogy, territroy, resources, personal insults and so on. But when nuclear weapons enter the picture, and in large numbers, the numbers of the dead rise by orders of magnitude. Not just the dead, but the massive destruction of infrastructure that would result from a full nuclear exchange.

So, the question is this:

Is there such a thing as acceptable losses in a nuclear war? Can you see a situation where a government would willingly trade, say, the entirety of California, all it's residents and resources and infrastructure, for the destruction North Korea?

Would it be seen as an acceptable trade? And why?

Would the USA trade a couple of cities with the Chinese is the PRC invaded Taiwan? Would the USA still agree to help the ROK if Kim Jong-Il really does have ICBMs?

Sorry if this rambles and doesnt make a lot of sense. Sleep deprivation due to exams is a killer

[Samuel]

Is there such a thing as acceptable losses in a nuclear war?

Yes.

Can you see a situation where a government would willingly trade, say, the entirety of California, all it's residents and resources and infrastructure, for the destruction North Korea?

No. North Korea is just not that valuable to the United States. You need an enemy whose destruction is worth enough to take a large death toll.

[Iosef Cross]

To sacrifice 12% of the pop of the US for Nork is a bit ridiculous. Nork would never have the capability to kill 12% of the US, unless they have around ~200 ICBMs.

If the US and China enter in a nuclear war, well, in that case I hope there isn't any nuclear winter over the Southern Hemisphere. The people on the northern one, well, they will be death.

I think that even if the US and China enter in conventional war they wouldn't engage in nuclear war. That's because the cost will surely surpass the benefits, even if the US is being invaded, if they use nukes, China will retaliate en masse, and nobody will survive to tell the story. If they resist using conventional means, even if they lose the population is still alive, though under Chinese occupation.

[PeZook]

China has a rather small arsenal compared with the US, the northern hemisphere isn't going to die out even after a full exchange.

And to answer the OP: yes, just like in any other war. The problem is that it's hard to find a cause that would actually be worth it. Preventing imminent destruction of the US, for example, would probably be worth millions of deaths to the federal government, but neither north korea nor china actually have the capability to do that.

[Nephtys]

Let's say it's the height of the Cold War. You have the opportunity, right now, to use some means that you're absolutely sure is going to destroy 99.9 percent of the enemy's nuclear arsenal, instantly, across all platforms of theirs without any chance of the USSR ever striking back. This is during a major crisis. They may launch missiles any minute now. Will you do this?

Estimate say 10-50,000 people killed. Mostly military personnel. Something abysmally low, since the majority of missiles are targetted at things such as silos and military bases. If you don't do this, and they fire missiles, you'll lose an estimated 150 million.

Wouldn't that be 'acceptable' given the scale? It really is based on the situation of what the threat is.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Let's say it's the height of the Cold War. You have the opportunity, right now, to use some means that you're absolutely sure is going to destroy 99.9 percent of the enemy's nuclear arsenal, instantly, across all platforms of theirs without any chance of the USSR ever striking back.

This was the situation of the 1950s and early 60s. It was never our intention to fight the USSR.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Obviously the level of the threat and the situation matters.

Nephtys, obviously if I can trade 50,000 Soviet soldiers against 150 million US civilians, I would, even though I aint American.

I was thinking more in terms of an actual nuclear exchange, as in, both sides launch

[Shroom Man 777]

The idea of "acceptable losses" also involves trying to make sure you destroy the enemy's retaliatory capabilities by nuking his nukes. The losses become "acceptable" if the enemy's nuclear arsenal has been nuked, and the enemy has few remaining nukes left to nuke you in return with, that the few remaining nukes he'll nuke you in return with end up killing just a (relatively) few thousand/million of your civilians while you've turned his entire country into a nocturnally self-illuminating parking lot. In this randome altarnate realty hippotheticel senareo, the losses would be acceptable because you've killed/most of the enemy while the enemy has only killed relatively few of your people.

[Stuart]

Is there such a thing as acceptable losses in a nuclear war?

Of course there is. It's implicit in any strategic calculation and those calculations were made all the time from the 1950s through to the present day. There's two components to the question. The first component is "what damage will we do to the enemy as opposed to what he will do to us" and the second is "what is the cost of acting now as opposed to the cost of not acting now."

Can you see a situation where a government would willingly trade, say, the entirety of California, all it's residents and resources and infrastructure, for the destruction North Korea?

Frankly, I con't see the government presently in power doing anything. However, setting that to one side, your comparison is ludicrous. North Korea has nowhere close to the capability to inflict that kind of loss on us. Even if they could get a couple of missiles this far, we'd simply shoot them down. Assuming that is that the present government doesn't destroy the GBI system.

Would it be seen as an acceptable trade? And why?

Assuming that the chips come down that way, yes. Because the cost of not doing so would be to see the eventual price paid going steadily up as North Korea increased its nuclear arsenal. However, the great art is to make sure the chips stay up.

Would the USA trade a couple of cities with the Chinese is the PRC invaded Taiwan?

Whoaa, hang on. You've just had North Korea destroying the whole of California but China can only knock out a couple of cities? Are you aware of what the strategic balance of power is? Anyway, the question for the Chinese is - do they really want to try and deter the US from invading Taiwan by destroying a couple of cities when the result would be the nuclear demolition of the whole of China (assuming the jackass currently in the White House leaves us enough warheads to do it).

Would the USA still agree to help the ROK if Kim Jong-Il really does have ICBMs?

Yes

[Garibaldi]

Anyway, the question for the Chinese is - do they really want to try and deter the US from invading Taiwan by destroying a couple of cities when the result would be the nuclear demolition of the whole of China (assuming the jackass currently in the White House leaves us enough warheads to do it).

No, the real question is for us, and it doesn't involve any of your ridiculous maximum-retaliation fantasies. The question will be how do we respond when the Chinese drop a tactical nuke on the 7th Fleet. Clearly the answer isn't going to be nuclear demolition of China.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh yeah, "acceptable losses". If the enemy is really REALLY going to launch a nuclear attack on you, you would lose LESS people if you nuked him first, because by nuking him first then he'd have LESS nukes to kill you with. So if nuclear war is inevitable, then the one who nukes first has the advantage, and the one who gets himself nuked first gets fucked.

[Stuart]

No, the real question is for us, and it doesn't involve any of your ridiculous maximum-retaliation fantasies. The question will be how do we respond when the Chinese drop a tactical nuke on the 7th Fleet. Clearly the answer isn't going to be nuclear demolition of China.

You may not like the idea that the use of a nuclear weapon against a major U.S. strategic asset would be met by a full-scale response but that isn't germaine to the issue. The escalation of such a conflict into a major strategic exchange is very far from being either a fantasy or ridiculous - in fact it would be almost inevitable. There's an old expression in the nuclear strategy business that covers just this situation "one flies, they all fly". The use of a nuclear weapon by any of the major powers against one of the other powers would be an ice-breaker, one which would set a chain of consequences going which would inevitably - inevitably - lead to a full strategic exchange between those powers. In this context, a "good outcome" would be that said exchange would be restricted to the two powers concerned, the "bad outcome" would be that the other nuclear powers, seeing that things were going downhill with terrible inevitability would become involved and use their arsenals as well.

The reason why everything would go to hell with such speed and inevitability is built into the way nuclear weapons are used and the way such forces are structured. The initiation of a single weapon in the manner described would cause one simple question to be asked "what's next?" The first driving reaction would be to make sure that there are no more such attacks. The second would be to make sure that China got hurt so badly that it (nor anybody else) would never again attempt such an attack. The minimum immediate response would be to take out all of China's tactical nuclear delivery systems. That would happen, probably within minutes of the original strike. Unfortunately, a lot of those systems are co-located with things like major cities and the collateral damage from that response would be high. It gets worse; many of those systems are co-located with strategic Chinese systens (and they don't have that many of those) and eliminating the tactical weapons would also mean the elimination of a significant number of Chinese strategic weapons. Since they have very few of those, the loss of even a small number will have a major impact on Chinese strategic positions. They will be left with a strategic deterrent that is gravely weakened and with it their ability to influence international affairs. More importantly, the nuclear ice having been broken they would have no reason to believe that a main strategic strike was not coming. This would destroy what was left of their main strategic force on the ground.

This is where life gets to be very exciting very quickly. The Chinese have no reason not to believe that their strategic nuclear deterrent (what is left of it) will not be destroyed on the ground. So, they have to choices, they can fire it or not fire it. If they fire it, they will achieve at least some degree of damage against the U.S., if they do not they will receive massive damage anyway. So they have every reason to fire and no reason not to. Now, we come to the important bit. Since they know that their nuclear attack ona U.S. battlegroup will result in this situation, they know escalation to a full nuclear exchange is inevitable. It therefore makes it only reasonable that they will get their strategic attack forces off the ground and on the way before the first of the U.S. blows lands. Now, we know that is what they will be thinking (because it is just the way we think) and we know that the first warhead initiation over a U.S. CVBG will only be the first of many. The interests of damage limitation means that it behooves us to limit that Chinese blow as much as possible by getting as many of their strategic systems as possible before they launch. That means a massive strategic blow. In other words, the single warhead over an U.S. CVBG turns into a major strategic exchange within a few minutes simply by the internal dynamics of how the decisions are made.

This is why there are no such things as tactical nuclear weapons. Oh, I know there are nuclear wepaons labelled as tactical but they serve a strategic purpose. They act as tripwires. What their presence means is that an attack on a unit armed with those weapons wlll inevitably lead to a full nuclear exchange (and do so very quickly). So, those units do not get attacked unless people seriously mean business. That means they rate the gainf rom such an attack as being worth the almost total destruction of their country.

Massive retaliation is not a fantasy or a myth. It is a very cold, hard reality, one I have worked with for more years than I care to count. It is the idea that a flexible response is possible or that a nuclear weapon can be used without incurring a dreadful reaction that is a fantasy.

From another perspective, the kind of Chinese attack you describe would lead to another major question and that is Russian involvement. The Chinese know that popping a nuke over a U.S. CVBG will result in massive damage to their country and the total destruction of their strategic deterrent (either by American preemption or Chinese use). This will leave China completely exposed to a Russia that has quite a few scores of its own to settle. The Chinese leaders would have to take into account the possibility that Russia will exploit this vulnerability for its own ends. Pre-empting such an attack would be an immediate objective on the agenda. The Russian leadership know that; they see China launching, they have every reason to assume they're next so they pre-empt. And so the situation cycles out of control.

And that is all very good. Everybody knows that using a tactical nuclear against another nuclear power will immediately cycle into a full nuclear exchange so they don't do it. It's called strategic deterrence and its worked for sixty five years.

By the way your first line starting "the real question is for us" is, I find, arrogant and presumptious. I am reasonably certain you have not been appointed as determinant of what questions the community as a whole is asking.

[Stuart]

Oh yeah, "acceptable losses". If the enemy is really REALLY going to launch a nuclear attack on you, you would lose LESS people if you nuked him first, because by nuking him first then he'd have LESS nukes to kill you with. So if nuclear war is inevitable, then the one who nukes first has the advantage, and the one who gets himself nuked first gets fucked.

Exactly right Shroomie. That's exactly the point. Once the nuclear ice is broken, it's a desperate race to get one's strategic weapons off before they are pre-empted (hence MITO etc). There's no "not taking part" in that race because failure to participate means total destruction. Participating means there is a chance one might get a bit less annihilated.

Herman Kahn had a very good analogy to this process. Imagine a crossroads in a city controlled by traffic lights. Now, if nobody enters the box formed by those lights until their exit is clear, the junction flows smoothly. Only, that requires everybody to stop and wait. But, viewed from an individual perspective, if somebody does not wait for his exit to clear, they actually benefit because he'll be over when the lights change. Of course, this means he is blocking the traffic from the other roads and the junction freezes. When the lights change again, he goes but the other traftic lanes are in the junction and are now blocking the other lane. So the junction freezes up and everybody suffers.

Nuclear escalation works exactly that way. Everybody acts in their own interests and the result is a disaster. The only way to stop the road junction freezing is to impose severe penalties for running the lights so nobody does it (and have a police cruiser on station to impose those penalties) and the first step never happens. The only way to stop the escalation to a full nculear exchange is to make sure nobody takes that first step.

[Serafina]

This is why there are no such things as tactical nuclear weapons. Oh, I know there are nuclear wepaons labelled as tactical but they serve a strategic purpose. They act as tripwires. What their presence means is that an attack on a unit armed with those weapons wlll inevitably lead to a full nuclear exchange (and do so very quickly). So, those units do not get attacked unless people seriously mean business. That means they rate the gainf rom such an attack as being worth the almost total destruction of their country.

I sincerely hope that only applies when you take out that tripwire with nuclear means.

Or would that also apply when you sink, say, a carrier group carrying tactical warheads with conventional missiles?

[Stuart]

I sincerely hope that only applies when you take out that tripwire with nuclear means. Or would that also apply when you sink, say, a carrier group carrying tactical warheads with conventional missiles?

That is what is called "an area of rigidly defined doubt and uncertainty". The simple answer is that nobody knows. As a result, the general conclusion is that it's better not to find out. So, putting "tactical" nuclear weapons into a situation essentially means putting a lock on that situation. That's why possessing even a few nuclear weapons is so immensely important for a country.

[Samuel]

So this is a case of the prisoner's dilemma. Except instead of jail time you are playing with massive devestation. And the actors are self-centered and logical and only play once. Yeah, I can see why no one wants to get to the point where things go downhill.

[Sky Captain]

From another perspective, the kind of Chinese attack you describe would lead to another major question and that is Russian involvement. The Chinese know that popping a nuke over a U.S. CVBG will result in massive damage to their country and the total destruction of their strategic deterrent (either by American preemption or Chinese use). This will leave China completely exposed to a Russia that has quite a few scores of its own to settle. The Chinese leaders would have to take into account the possibility that Russia will exploit this vulnerability for its own ends. Pre-empting such an attack would be an immediate objective on the agenda. The Russian leadership know that; they see China launching, they have every reason to assume they're next so they pre-empt. And so the situation cycles out of control.

So that means theoretically if North Korea strikes first and blows up few US military bases in East Asia or attacks Hawaii with nuclear weapons there is a real chance that situation could quickly go to hell instead of ending just with limited US retaliatory nuclear strike against North Korea.

[Ziggy Stardust]

That means a massive strategic blow. In other words, the single warhead over an U.S. CVBG turns into a major strategic exchange within a few minutes simply by the internal dynamics of how the decisions are made.

Just out of curiosity, what is the real timescale in which this would occur? I mean, wouldn't there have to be some confirmation process before nukes are launched?

[Stuart]

So this is a case of the prisoner's dilemma. Except instead of jail time you are playing with massive devestation. And the actors are self-centered and logical and only play once. Yeah, I can see why no one wants to get to the point where things go downhill.

Absolutely; note that the Prisoner's dilemma was actually invented by RAND who were the pioneers in studying the dynamics of nuclear confrontations.

So that means theoretically if North Korea strikes first and blows up few US military bases in East Asia or attacks Hawaii with nuclear weapons there is a real chance that situation could quickly go to hell instead of ending just with limited US retaliatory nuclear strike against North Korea.

Indeed so; this is why the possibility of North Korea having a functional nuclear device (not a proven case yet; both their tests were fizzles) is so worrying. The chance of a situation escalating out of control is all too real. North Korea plays on that very heavily.

Just out of curiosity, what is the real timescale in which this would occur? I mean, wouldn't there have to be some confirmation process before nukes are launched?

A few minutes no more. The fastest I've ever seen a simulation of this exchange cycle from initial use to full exchange was around 20 minutes. The slowest was around four to five hours. The mean? Well, look at it this way, if China did initiate a nuke over a US CVBG at 8pm, you'd never get to see it on the 10pm news.

If China really wanted to send a message, they'd probably do it by torpedoing (with a conventional torpedo) a detached US ship. That way, they send the message without breaking the nuclear ice or endangering a nuclear asset. Another country might try the same thing by, say, torpedoing a small frigate doing coastal patrol . . . . . .

[TimothyC]

Nuclear escalation works exactly that way. Everybody acts in their own interests and the result is a disaster. The only way to stop the road junction freezing is to impose severe penalties for running the lights so nobody does it (and have a police cruiser on station to impose those penalties) and the first step never happens. The only way to stop the escalation to a full nuclear exchange is to make sure nobody takes that first step.

So the stalemate is a (potentially unstable) Nash Equilibrium correct? And thus the danger is when a player doesn't respect the equilibrium, because they don't recognize the danger to themselves if everyone else breaks the equilibrium?

[Samuel]

Nuclear escalation works exactly that way. Everybody acts in their own interests and the result is a disaster. The only way to stop the road junction freezing is to impose severe penalties for running the lights so nobody does it (and have a police cruiser on station to impose those penalties) and the first step never happens. The only way to stop the escalation to a full nuclear exchange is to make sure nobody takes that first step.

So the stalemate is a (potentially unstable) Nash Equilibrium correct? And thus the danger is when a player doesn't respect the equilibrium, because they don't recognize the danger to themselves if everyone else breaks the equilibrium?

It isn't unstable because everyone has access to the same information. Everyone knows that if you break the equilibrium, so will everyone else. The danger is individuals who believe that the rules don't apply to them (I'm guessing this is why Stuart focuses on religious fanatics). But the thing about this case is there is no reason for your opponents not to also act as quickly as you do- even if they cared about the lives of your people, attacking you would possibly save the lives of their countrymen so they would still act, even if they weren't coldhearted.

[Stuart]

Herman used to compare the situation to two men fighting a duel with sawed-off shotguns at one pace range. The only really satisfactory answer is don't do it. Bereft of that situation (and nobody can put the nuclear genie back in the bottle), both men keep their finger off the trigger. As long as they do that and are seen to do that, then everything is just peachy. The moment one starts to drop his finger to the trigger, things will get very messy, very quickly.

[Shroom Man 777]

If nuclear war's inevitable, then it's in one's best self interest to nuke the enemy first to prevent him from nuking you or at least diminish his capabilities in nuking you back. But even so, this is still goddamn horrible. So it's in everyone's self interest to AVOID getting into this situation in the first place. It's awesome how nuclear powers ended up doing the sensible thing (for once) out of each of their self-interests, thus saving us from nuclear war.

[Stuart]

If nuclear war's inevitable, then it's in one's best self interest to nuke the enemy first to prevent him from nuking you or at least diminish his capabilities in nuking you back. But even so, this is still goddamn horrible. So it's in everyone's self interest to AVOID getting into this situation in the first place. It's awesome how nuclear powers ended up doing the sensible thing (for once) out of each of their self-interests, thus saving us from nuclear war.

Once again, exactly. That's why one is always extremely careful about doing things around nuclear powers. A wrong decision can result in a cascade of events leading somewhere nobody wants to go. If we think about this a little further, it becomes apparent why Garibaldi's statement

The question will be how do we respond when the Chinese drop a tactical nuke on the 7th Fleet. Clearly the answer isn't going to be nuclear demolition of China.

Is so ill-advised and dangerous. If the response to a "tactical nuke on the 7th Fleet" isn't the nuclear demolition of China, then the perceptions of the risks inherent in popping a nuke over the 7th Fleet becomes blurred. Note, I said the perceptions might change because the reality won't. The path from that nuke to the full strategic response will still only be minutes long and one decision wide butit might not seem that way. So, by blurring the inevitability of the response, somebody might get tempted to try it. The response to popping a nuke over 7th Fleet was, is and always must be, the nuclear demolition of the country responsible. Anything else other than that clearly-understood consequence makes the world a much more dangerous place.

You see, back in the day, everybody involved was quite clear that nobody actually wanted a nuclear war. What scared everybody was one would happen by accident. This is usually interpreted to mean a technical failure but that isn't quite the case (although, the Mighty God Mota knows, there were enough of those). What was of more concern was that somebody would make a mistake, misinterpret something or simply do the wrong thing and the snowball was off, rolling down the hill. So, everything was very tightly scripted and ritualized. There was a special language, conventions on how things were expressed, conventions on how things were done. None written down anywhere of course but all very real. All had the same purpose; they were ways of telling people that "Look, my finger is nowhere near the shotgun trigger. See, it's well away from the trigger. Now,everybody just keep calm and we'll get through this. Look, my finger hasn't moved yet."

For example nobody ever said "Ah well, there's no smoke without fire." The word "fire" and nuclear weapons were deemed not to mix very well.

[Sky Captain]

Would a first strike be really that effective in destroying enemy retaliatory capability? I have always thought that early warning radars and space based IR sensors are meant to prevent that from happening. Suppose nation A launches first strike against nation B. Nation B detects missile launches and launches its own missiles on counterattack before enemy missiles hit and destroys their missiles on the ground resulting in MAD.

You see, back in the day, everybody involved was quite clear that nobody actually wanted a nuclear war. What scared everybody was one would happen by accident. This is usually interpreted to mean a technical failure but that isn't quite the case (although, the Mighty God Mota knows, there were enough of those). What was of more concern was that somebody would make a mistake, misinterpret something or simply do the wrong thing and the snowball was off, rolling down the hill

I remember some time ago when I watched a documentary about Cold War and one guy said that we are really lucky that there were no nuclear level meteorite strikes during various Cold War tensions between US an Soviet Union because a meteorite explosion in confusion could be easily interpreted as nuclear attack end led to full scale nuclear war. Is this true? Suppose a Tunguska event took place during Cuban missile crisis when everybody had finger on the trigger. What is the chance that this would cause full scale nuclear exchange?