Another socialist blog

Nuclear deterrence is once again in the news. I’ve always found the theory behind nuclear weapons a little implausible, for so many reasons. Here are just a few:

1. We can’t win a nuclear war. Once nuclear weapons are used on any significant scale, say 1 percent of the total arsenal, it doesn’t matter whether you were the winner or the loser, because you have to deal with the resulting nuclear winter. Nuclear winter would kill a billion people worldwide, above and beyond the number killed outright during the war.
2. The people we are angry at are few, the innocent victims would be many. After all, what is our beef with North Korea? Among other grievances, North Korea is not democratic. By definition, people who are governed by a dictatorship have no control over their government. If they have no control, then they have no culpability either. Yet we are prepared to kill them for the sins of their dictatorial government. When anyone else threatens to use weapons of mass destruction against innocent civilians, we rightly call such threats terrorism.
3. For deterrence to work, we have to believe that our enemies are rational. They must examine the facts, weigh their options, evaluate risks versus benefits, and then decide that the price of attacking the United States is too high to bear. If they aren’t rational, if they get angry or stupid, if they decide that they are willing to die and go to heaven rather than submit, then our nukes are worthless as a deterrent. And, of course, they in turn have to believe that we are out of our fucking minds. They have to be convinced that we are willing to blow up the whole world in a nuclear counterattack, ourselves included, for spite.