This is asinine - why do we need to spend billions and billions of dollars for more missiles for theoretical hot wars with Russia and China? Isn't a hot war what nuclear deterrence is supposed to prevent?
The tone of the article is "we've got a missile gap! but don't worry, only 24 billion dollars will fix it". Yet we already spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the military and don't seem to balance that against other things we could do with the money (pandemic preparations, anyone?).
A nuclear deterrent only works if you're willing to use it (and basically commit suicide in the process). China is betting that the US isn't willing to risk MAD over Taiwan, and I would say that they're probably right.
Would the US be willing to launch a bunch of non-nuclear missiles to China, though? Because I'd also bet they wouldn't. And if they would be, the missiles they already have would already work
This is all wild speculation on our part, as AFAIK, there hasn't been any direct attacks between two nations that have nuclear bombs except some skirmishes here or there (and being able to do that doesn't warrant an extra $24B spending). At most, war by satellite (USA supports country A, Russia supports country B, and A and B bomb each other). Maybe I'm being unimaginative, but I can't see how direct attacks between China and US wouldn't escalate to a nuclear war, even just due to egos.
When the US and Soviet Union established MAD the prevailing method of fighting wars was to fire/drop/shoot as many low-accuracy munitions as possible at the enemy. More ordinance was expended in the Korean war than in WW2, and by the Vietnam war planners had to moderate B-52 carpet bombing as 12x B-52s carry nearly a nukes worth of ordinance. North Korea lost roughly ~20% of its population in a conventional war.
It's easy to justify nuclear escalation when fighting this form of total war, and difficult to when the only casualties are military and the bombs mostly fall on equipment. While a land invasion or surprise strike of the continental US/EU/China/Russia would surely trigger a nuclear response, a direct battle over territories/international policy wouldn't be as clear cut.
Not to China, but to Chinese forces (even those within China controlled areas), I expect they would as does China or they would have already moved. China may ultimately win an exchange of value, but it ultimately is more exposed to other threats like Japan, Russia, India and internal struggles. China can't overcommit and win a battle to lose a war.
China would launch their own defensive missiles, as well as offensive missiles at aircraft carriers in the South China Sea and nearby US landing strips. This is exactly the wargames that they are discussing that the US continually loses at because they can't defend their base infrastructure in those areas.
If you state a MAD policy, how can your opponents be sure that the bunch of missiles you're sending aren't nuclear? They need to make a decision before those missiles detonate or else their own nuclear capability might be removed by the first salvo.
Sure, but my point is that, from China's perspective, they don't have the opportunity to validate that the swarm of missiles coming their way aren't nuclear. They have to assume that they are or they risk losing a large amount of their retaliation capabilities.
So to answer the question
Would the US be willing to launch a bunch of non-nuclear missiles to China
No, because China has to treat them as nuclear either way.
Nuclear deterrence is basically "whoever nukes first gets nuked second". As long as retaliation is assured, no country (barred extremists) will start a nuclear war unless someone else fired at them first. Nuclear weapons will only be used against non-nuclear countries.
Reagan wanted to upset that balance with his failed "Star Wars" program, but seeing how the nuclear powers interact, it seems no one has achieved asymmetrical nuking. Yet.
The recent concern is a situation where Russia or China know that the US is unable to retaliate without pushing the nuclear button and is also unwilling to push the nuclear button.
In the cold war a lot of military planning effort went into ensuring that direct conflict between the US and Soviet Union would escalate to nuclear conditions fast by ensuring that American forces were always in the critical path of a Soviet invasion of Europe. In reality the Americans would have lost a conventional war in Europe quickly, but this reality also ensured tactical nukes would be used to protect against a route and that the Soviets would need to respond with strategic weapons.
There is no trigger for a nuclear war if China invades Taiwan, and there is a lot which could go wrong in SK, Japan, or southeast Asia before nukes entered the picture. Arguably the US nuclear deterrent in Europe is also approaching the point where one could credibly assume that the US wouldn't escalate to nuclear war.
As smart munitions become commonplace its hard to see a world where a country escalates to a wold ending nuclear response over a few thousand well targeted cruise missiles. Even a crippling attack on the continental US military-industrial base with ~100k cruise missiles wouldn't have a fraction of the casualties a single strategic bomb would carry.
The nuclear threshold is being able to land nuclear bombs in the most strategic cities of any country, not carpet bombing them. USA already has that capability and more.
The nuclear threshold is being able to land nuclear bombs in the most strategic cities of any country, not carpet bombing them.
I mean that literally doesn't even make sense as a sentence... the threshold for deciding to use nuclear weapons in a given situation... is being able to use them in a particular way? What?
Yeah, I think since we're talking a 10-20 year time frame, they are vastly overlooking less obvious things like investing in the next generation in a broad way, rather than these tactical goals relating to theoretical conflicts.
But setting these agenda items are not the responsibility of the Military. Congress should be deciding where the money goes, and they should actually get around to infrastructure and education spending that will allow the next generation to be more effective.
Deterrence of any kind requires the other side believes you will (or even might) do it, not just that you have the capacity.
China in particular may well not believe you’ll use nukes on them, despite you having already used nukes twice on populated cities, given how dependent you now are on China for manufacturing.
Well, the article itself seems to be saying that the existing budget should be reallocated.
A bigger issue is how well (or poorly) past predictions on what is required for defense have turned out. Similar to how the U.S. was often ranked #1 in the world for pandemic preparations, with western Europe close behind, but in the first six months of 2020 all of the hardest hit countries were either west European, or the U.S. Figuring out how to spend the money to prepare for a crisis (medical or military) is harder than getting the money to do so.
It's important to know that the US and Europe also collectively have higher populations, and are more interconnected (so their risk of contagion is higher than for small countries).
And when it comes to research and vaccinations, it's clear that the US quickly developed effective vaccines and was able to distribute them. While this is still an ongoing process, you only need to look at India to see that other countries are still far behind on vaccine supply, research, and distribution efforts.
These kind of things are relative, I'd say that the US did seem handle the crisis relatively well, all things considered. Certainly room for improvement though.
The opportunity costs of military spending are often overlooked (likewise for space travel etc). The availability heuristic means we can all point to things that's spending money in these wasteful ways has produced... but it's hard to visualise the counterfactual case where were spent that money on strong public infrastructure, institutions, global development etc.
The article explains that the war games pertain to regional theatre wars, eg- defending Taiwan or the Baltics, which are threatened perennially by China and Russia respectively. The impact on US alliances and various global structures would be huge. Big enough that you want to prevent them, but not big enough to get into a full-scale nuclear exchange over.
Tldr: Nukes don’t solve all conflict, not even all major conflict.
Yes, but I don't think it's right to entirely ignore the point. Why are Mississipi and Alabama so high in the federal defense spending budget? [1] Each are spending more than $3k per capita, compared to the US average of $1772.
I guess we can disagree on which states benefit most from the program, but we shouldn't ignore the fact that essentially it is a program that is used to bribe senators and representatives through job spending. It doesn't have a lot to do with what is actually strategically sensible.
My guess is that because states like Alabama have just as many senators as states like California, the ROI is many times higher in states like alabama than the relative jobs created in much larger states.
Defense industries tend to need lots of room, water, energy, and nearby military bases for testing and logistics.
The southeast has cheap land, lots of rainfall, low living costs, and mild winters for year-round operation. Which is also why so many military bases were built there.
The USA will achieve less unrest if the 24B goes right into the law enforcement budget. Domestic incidents have been, from my point of view, more damaging than any alleged ISIS attack.
I think you're vastly overestimating how much domestic terrorists cause in terms of damage and loss of life.
The 9/11 attacks are estimated to have cost $40 billion in insurance losses alone, not even including all the additional spending that went into the military and security budgets (including the new Department of Homeland Security) afterward. [1] Additionally, it cost at least $10 billion in property damage, almost 3000 deaths, and 25k injuries. 340 of the dead were firefighters and 72 were police. [2]
Maybe if you are an avid consumer of twitter bubbles, you'd think that domestic terrorism is a more widespread problem (well, no argument there). But that doesn't mean it's a good use of money to try to prevent it by giving to local law enforcement, that has neither the ability, legal rights, nor will to seriously tackle. The way you reduce domestic terrorism isn't by hiring more cops, it's by tackling the things that lead to terrorism: namely conspiracy theorists, religious cults, and economic hardship. Cops don't factor into the equation at all.
It's incredibly rare for cops to know about a possible domestic terror incident before hand. We see it with every mass shooting. I can only think of one incident where people were arrested before hand, and that was a rare incident involving an entire gang of individuals, rather than the lone shooter which is the most common situation.
You are absolutely right. Terrorism is not even on the top 100 list for things that could potentially kill you. If you want to be scared about something then be scared about medical malpractice. It is #3 on the list for what is most likely to kill you.
In my state the police have started ticketing people for all the things that expired due to covid so they clearly dont need our help to find way to re-fund themselves after being defunded for deplorable standard operating procedures.
Comments
This is asinine - why do we need to spend billions and billions of dollars for more missiles for theoretical hot wars with Russia and China? Isn't a hot war what nuclear deterrence is supposed to prevent?
The tone of the article is "we've got a missile gap! but don't worry, only 24 billion dollars will fix it". Yet we already spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the military and don't seem to balance that against other things we could do with the money (pandemic preparations, anyone?).
A nuclear deterrent only works if you're willing to use it (and basically commit suicide in the process). China is betting that the US isn't willing to risk MAD over Taiwan, and I would say that they're probably right.
Would the US be willing to launch a bunch of non-nuclear missiles to China, though? Because I'd also bet they wouldn't. And if they would be, the missiles they already have would already work
Absolutely.
If China began to bomb Taiwan, the US absolutely should launch non-nuclear missiles at Chinese bombers / fighters / drones / missiles.
MAD assures that China won't use nuclear, and the US won't use nuclear either. But normal non-nuclear combat is fair game.
This is all wild speculation on our part, as AFAIK, there hasn't been any direct attacks between two nations that have nuclear bombs except some skirmishes here or there (and being able to do that doesn't warrant an extra $24B spending). At most, war by satellite (USA supports country A, Russia supports country B, and A and B bomb each other). Maybe I'm being unimaginative, but I can't see how direct attacks between China and US wouldn't escalate to a nuclear war, even just due to egos.
When the US and Soviet Union established MAD the prevailing method of fighting wars was to fire/drop/shoot as many low-accuracy munitions as possible at the enemy. More ordinance was expended in the Korean war than in WW2, and by the Vietnam war planners had to moderate B-52 carpet bombing as 12x B-52s carry nearly a nukes worth of ordinance. North Korea lost roughly ~20% of its population in a conventional war.
It's easy to justify nuclear escalation when fighting this form of total war, and difficult to when the only casualties are military and the bombs mostly fall on equipment. While a land invasion or surprise strike of the continental US/EU/China/Russia would surely trigger a nuclear response, a direct battle over territories/international policy wouldn't be as clear cut.
Not to China, but to Chinese forces (even those within China controlled areas), I expect they would as does China or they would have already moved. China may ultimately win an exchange of value, but it ultimately is more exposed to other threats like Japan, Russia, India and internal struggles. China can't overcommit and win a battle to lose a war.
Yes, that's what the article is about.
China would launch their own defensive missiles, as well as offensive missiles at aircraft carriers in the South China Sea and nearby US landing strips. This is exactly the wargames that they are discussing that the US continually loses at because they can't defend their base infrastructure in those areas.
If you state a MAD policy, how can your opponents be sure that the bunch of missiles you're sending aren't nuclear? They need to make a decision before those missiles detonate or else their own nuclear capability might be removed by the first salvo.
There are more than 2 sides with nukes. A pre-emptive strike would not prevent all the other countries from retaliating.
While first strike sounds good, don't forget that there are nuclear subs everywhere in the world, at all times, just waiting for the word.
Sure, but my point is that, from China's perspective, they don't have the opportunity to validate that the swarm of missiles coming their way aren't nuclear. They have to assume that they are or they risk losing a large amount of their retaliation capabilities.
So to answer the question
No, because China has to treat them as nuclear either way.
Mainland china, probably not. Chinese troops in Taiwan, more likely.
To be swapped for all the US bases in Guam, Japan and South Korea, etc, etc.
For some reason, most Americans seem to discount the fact that weapons are a two-way street.
Nuclear deterrence is basically "whoever nukes first gets nuked second". As long as retaliation is assured, no country (barred extremists) will start a nuclear war unless someone else fired at them first. Nuclear weapons will only be used against non-nuclear countries.
Reagan wanted to upset that balance with his failed "Star Wars" program, but seeing how the nuclear powers interact, it seems no one has achieved asymmetrical nuking. Yet.
The recent concern is a situation where Russia or China know that the US is unable to retaliate without pushing the nuclear button and is also unwilling to push the nuclear button.
In the cold war a lot of military planning effort went into ensuring that direct conflict between the US and Soviet Union would escalate to nuclear conditions fast by ensuring that American forces were always in the critical path of a Soviet invasion of Europe. In reality the Americans would have lost a conventional war in Europe quickly, but this reality also ensured tactical nukes would be used to protect against a route and that the Soviets would need to respond with strategic weapons.
There is no trigger for a nuclear war if China invades Taiwan, and there is a lot which could go wrong in SK, Japan, or southeast Asia before nukes entered the picture. Arguably the US nuclear deterrent in Europe is also approaching the point where one could credibly assume that the US wouldn't escalate to nuclear war.
As smart munitions become commonplace its hard to see a world where a country escalates to a wold ending nuclear response over a few thousand well targeted cruise missiles. Even a crippling attack on the continental US military-industrial base with ~100k cruise missiles wouldn't have a fraction of the casualties a single strategic bomb would carry.
No a nuclear deterrence is supposed to stop a nuclear war.
It doesn't help anything if you're both operating below the nuclear threshold.
The nuclear threshold is being able to land nuclear bombs in the most strategic cities of any country, not carpet bombing them. USA already has that capability and more.
I mean that literally doesn't even make sense as a sentence... the threshold for deciding to use nuclear weapons in a given situation... is being able to use them in a particular way? What?
Just tell everyone your nuclear threshold has changed to save $24B ;)
"roads and bridges", schools and teacher pay, health care, public arts, etc etc.
I'd be way more interested in a solution that cuts $24B from the military budget. Hopefully more.
Yeah, I think since we're talking a 10-20 year time frame, they are vastly overlooking less obvious things like investing in the next generation in a broad way, rather than these tactical goals relating to theoretical conflicts.
But setting these agenda items are not the responsibility of the Military. Congress should be deciding where the money goes, and they should actually get around to infrastructure and education spending that will allow the next generation to be more effective.
Deterrence of any kind requires the other side believes you will (or even might) do it, not just that you have the capacity.
China in particular may well not believe you’ll use nukes on them, despite you having already used nukes twice on populated cities, given how dependent you now are on China for manufacturing.
Well, the article itself seems to be saying that the existing budget should be reallocated.
A bigger issue is how well (or poorly) past predictions on what is required for defense have turned out. Similar to how the U.S. was often ranked #1 in the world for pandemic preparations, with western Europe close behind, but in the first six months of 2020 all of the hardest hit countries were either west European, or the U.S. Figuring out how to spend the money to prepare for a crisis (medical or military) is harder than getting the money to do so.
I think this is misinterpreting the figures.
It's important to know that the US and Europe also collectively have higher populations, and are more interconnected (so their risk of contagion is higher than for small countries).
And when it comes to research and vaccinations, it's clear that the US quickly developed effective vaccines and was able to distribute them. While this is still an ongoing process, you only need to look at India to see that other countries are still far behind on vaccine supply, research, and distribution efforts.
These kind of things are relative, I'd say that the US did seem handle the crisis relatively well, all things considered. Certainly room for improvement though.
The opportunity costs of military spending are often overlooked (likewise for space travel etc). The availability heuristic means we can all point to things that's spending money in these wasteful ways has produced... but it's hard to visualise the counterfactual case where were spent that money on strong public infrastructure, institutions, global development etc.
The article explains that the war games pertain to regional theatre wars, eg- defending Taiwan or the Baltics, which are threatened perennially by China and Russia respectively. The impact on US alliances and various global structures would be huge. Big enough that you want to prevent them, but not big enough to get into a full-scale nuclear exchange over.
Tldr: Nukes don’t solve all conflict, not even all major conflict.
Defense spending isn't about missiles, it's about jobs and ultimately Red state welfare.
You'll find plenty of blue states dependent on military industrial complex spending as well.
Yes, but I don't think it's right to entirely ignore the point. Why are Mississipi and Alabama so high in the federal defense spending budget? [1] Each are spending more than $3k per capita, compared to the US average of $1772.
I guess we can disagree on which states benefit most from the program, but we shouldn't ignore the fact that essentially it is a program that is used to bribe senators and representatives through job spending. It doesn't have a lot to do with what is actually strategically sensible.
[1] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...
My guess is that because states like Alabama have just as many senators as states like California, the ROI is many times higher in states like alabama than the relative jobs created in much larger states.
Defense industries tend to need lots of room, water, energy, and nearby military bases for testing and logistics.
The southeast has cheap land, lots of rainfall, low living costs, and mild winters for year-round operation. Which is also why so many military bases were built there.
The USA will achieve less unrest if the 24B goes right into the law enforcement budget. Domestic incidents have been, from my point of view, more damaging than any alleged ISIS attack.
I think you're vastly overestimating how much domestic terrorists cause in terms of damage and loss of life.
The 9/11 attacks are estimated to have cost $40 billion in insurance losses alone, not even including all the additional spending that went into the military and security budgets (including the new Department of Homeland Security) afterward. [1] Additionally, it cost at least $10 billion in property damage, almost 3000 deaths, and 25k injuries. 340 of the dead were firefighters and 72 were police. [2]
Maybe if you are an avid consumer of twitter bubbles, you'd think that domestic terrorism is a more widespread problem (well, no argument there). But that doesn't mean it's a good use of money to try to prevent it by giving to local law enforcement, that has neither the ability, legal rights, nor will to seriously tackle. The way you reduce domestic terrorism isn't by hiring more cops, it's by tackling the things that lead to terrorism: namely conspiracy theorists, religious cults, and economic hardship. Cops don't factor into the equation at all.
It's incredibly rare for cops to know about a possible domestic terror incident before hand. We see it with every mass shooting. I can only think of one incident where people were arrested before hand, and that was a rare incident involving an entire gang of individuals, rather than the lone shooter which is the most common situation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_the_Septem... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
You are absolutely right. Terrorism is not even on the top 100 list for things that could potentially kill you. If you want to be scared about something then be scared about medical malpractice. It is #3 on the list for what is most likely to kill you.
And overpolicing isn't?
Law enforcement tends to escalate unrest
Well a good portion of protestors would agree it's because of police training and less-lethal equipment, or lack thereof.
In my state the police have started ticketing people for all the things that expired due to covid so they clearly dont need our help to find way to re-fund themselves after being defunded for deplorable standard operating procedures.