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One of my hobbies is reading news/op-ed articles from a year or so ago and seeing how they measure up to events today. It's how I gauge which magazines are worth reading, and which are full of it.
One of the magazines that consistently gets things right is The Diplomat, a foreign policy rag focused on the Asia-Pac region. They tend to have an offensive realist slant, but for the most part, base their analysis on hard power, which is a lot less circular than soft power-based analyses. This makes them right more often than liberal internationalist rags like Foreign Policy, for example.
Here's an article that I think deserves a deeper look, if only because it could potentially affect each and every one of us.
http://thediplomat.com/2011/08/17/america’s-dangerous-battle-plan/
America and China are frenemies. Not rivals, not friends, but "peer competitors". Neither country wants to completely destroy each other, since both share a lot of core/present interests (namely, both nations' economies depend on the other)--but both nations also have mutually incompatible peripheral/future interests.
To break it down a little further, here is what I mean by core/peripheral and present/future:
Common interests in italics Conflicting interests in bold
Core/Present interests for US and China
- Finding a way out of the 2008 recession
- Political stability of the Chinese regime
(The US has a vested financial stake in the Chinese one-party state)
- Opening US assets to Chinese investment/limiting Chinese investment to just US treasuries
- Stable global energy prices
- Unrestricted global shipping
- Preserving the status quo on the Korean peninsula/keeping Japan non-nuclear and de-militarized
Peripheral/Present interests for US and China
- Human rights
- Keeping Russia out of Northeast Asia/keeping Russia focused on Europe
- South China Sea/Straits of Malacca--who controls it?
- India/Pakistan--US wants India freed of Pakistani threat so it can contain China; China wants India perpetually focused on Pakistan so its never threatens China
- Cyber-security--who wins in cyberspace?
Core/Future interests for US and China
- Taiwan
(The US and China both are working towards peaceful reunification, no matter what the people of Taiwan will say)
- Regional hegemony in the Western Pacific/SE Asia vs. continued Global hegemony
- Australia--who does it belong to?
- Central Asia--who does it belong to?
Peripheral/Future interests for US and China
- Middle East--who is the security guarantor?
- Africa--who gets the goods?
- Keeping the EU fragmented/weak
- Keeping Russia "internally focused"
- Keeping India "internally focused
- Finding a way to solve Global Warming without economic suicide
- Space exploration--who owns space?
As you can see, China and the US right now have a lot of things in common right now. But when we look at non-core interests, we see storm clouds, and as time marches on, those storm clouds will loom larger and larger. The main sticking point is the following problem:
- Regional hegemony in the Western Pacific/SE Asia vs. continued Global hegemony
This is probably the single "deepest fault line" for a great power conflict today. While Indo-Pak and Israel+Saudi/Iran are more likely to occur, US/China is by far the more destructive conflict that could occur. Why?
It needn't be this way. The conflict *could* be limited. But the way the US and China are building up their weapons systems guarantees that any conflict between the two will have a massive incentive for escalation.
This goes back to the Diplomat article posted above. But before we delve into the technical details of it, let's run down in brief what any conflict between the US and China would look like.
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pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs
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Naval combat in the modern age can be summed up as thus.
http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-031.htm (paraphrased)
Imagine two football teams in a stadium at night each on their defended goal line. Each team will provide the backfield players with rifles and the linemen all have a pistol. Each weapon is equipped with a flashlight fastened to the barrel. The quarterback is equipped with a flashing signal light.
Now turn out all the lights so it is absolutely dark.
Who wants to turn on their light first?
Now lets throw in civilian shipping. Put half the fans in the stands more or less evenly distributed on the field, wandering around randomly in the dark. We also put two blimps overhead, one for each team, equipped with flashing light and binoculars.
The light will replicate both communications and radar systems. Everybody's eyes replicate ESM, ELINT, COMINT, and radar receivers.
Obviously if you want to hide the best way is run silent and blend into the general traffic.
There are several conditions of hiding a task force. First is undetected. In this condition the presence of the force is not known. For this to really work it should be coupled with a deception plan so that the opposition not only does not know the force is present, but does not know they don't know and for some reason believes the force to be elsewhere. I will say no more about deception. The second condition is that you have been detected, but not located. This can include the presence of the force is known, but no system has detected the force, or the force has been detected but not identified. And finally, the force has been detected and located which implies identification of the targets.
One's tactics will change based on the above.
If the force has not been detected one can run in to a launch point and hit the target with the first wave while operating completely silent until initial weapon impact. Once the survivors pick themselves out of the rubble they will deduce the presence of the carrier force from the initial wave.
With a force underway the opposition for some reason believes it knows that the ships are elsewhere and has no information to the contrary. Such operations are most effective when coupled with a deception plan that keys the opposition to know for a certainty that you are somewhere else and is therefore not looking. This goes far beyond local efforts of the group.
Every man in the entire task force is kept informed of the tactical situation and what is going on. Full awareness, training, and discipline by all hands is essential.
The force transits to its objective area in complete electronic silence. Deceptive formations are used dispersed over a broad area to ensure any detection system does not see the classic "bullseye" formation made famous in countless Public Affairs shots and never used in operations. Broad surveillance systems are known so any detection method is countered either by denying sensor information, misleading, or providing expected results consistent with something else. For example, ESM systems rely on active emissions from radars or communication systems. So nothing is radiated. Overhead systems are in known orbits, are predictable, and their sensing capabilities known. So the track is varied, weather is sought out to hide in when vulnerable, blending into sea lanes (while staying out of visual detection range of ships) and such techniques. Deceptive lighting is used at night so that the obvious "blacked out warship" is instead thought to be a merchant or cruise liner. Surface search radar identical to commercial ones are used. Turn count masking is used by the ships. Aircraft maintenance on the CV and other helo equipped ships is limited to prevent transmissions.
Basically, hide amongst civilian traffic and make your giant armada look like... idk, a fleet of fishing boats (to a radar receiver, at least.)
This is where it quickly becomes apparent that naval warfare is really signals warfare. The whole objective of naval combat is to "find & blind" your opponent before he does the same to you. This is because the thickness of armor no longer really matters given that the average anti-ship missile is a 1,500 pound chunk of TNT flying at upwards of 6 times the speed of sound on its terminal descent.
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Does shit really matter when nuclear bombs are in play?
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Drafting up war plans between nuclear powers always seems a bit uninteresting, because if you don't make arbitrary rules like no-nukes (rules which don't exist in real life) you just get the same scenario.
Today:
Every country on the globe is turned to ashes, nuclear exchange murders everyone.
Once missile shield is functional:
China becomes a smoldering pile of ashes.
Any conventional war is impossible to be won against America and NATO. It wouldn't even be close.
On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
But again, the end result of any conflict between big nuclear powers is a nuclear holocaust.
The most realistic nuclear exchange is between India and Pakistan, which could be one of the rare regional nuclear wars, like North/South Korea and the middle-east.
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On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote: Drafting up war plans between nuclear powers always seems a bit uninteresting, because if you don't make arbitrary rules like no-nukes (rules which don't exist in real life) you just get the same scenario.
Today:
Every country on the globe is turned to ashes, nuclear exchange murders everyone.
Once missile shield is functional:
China becomes a smoldering pile of ashes.
Any conventional war is impossible to be won against America and NATO. It wouldn't even be close.
On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
But again, the end result of any conflict between big nuclear powers is a nuclear holocaust.
The most realistic nuclear exchange is between India and Pakistan, which could be one of the rare regional nuclear wars, like North/South Korea and the middle-east.
Exactly. China can't create knock-offs off knock-offs and expect everything to be fine!
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So then, we go back to the Diplomat article. What was the US naval officer in the opening paragraph so sad about?
The officer, a senior leader in US Pacific Command, looked down, fumbled with his papers and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It was 2009, and he was answering a question about whether, in a Taiwan Straits crisis similar to that which occurred in the mid-1990s, the United States could confidently respond by again deploying aircraft carrier groups around Taiwan. ‘No,’ he conceded after a long pause, ‘and it’s the thing that really keeps me up at night.’ It was a telling response.
The Taiwan Straits are right next to China's Fuzhou province. Basically the US Navy is sad that it can't hide a naval strikeforce right off the Chinese shore anymore, because the Chinese have invested in a whole bunch of "eyes and flashlights" that can see the opposing team. Essentially China is building a bubble stretching into the Western Pacific, where anything entering the bubble can be identified, tracked, and destroyed via land-based "see-deep strike-deep" systems.
The US Navy has made its mission to prick that bubble using what it calls "AirSea Battle". Basically, it wants to retain the capability to steam up the 7th Fleet next to China's coast with impunity and perform gunboat diplomacy as it sees fit. But if it wants to do that, it has to invent ways to kill China's signals systems first, with things like the X-47/B long-range unmanned stealth fighter/bomber and better, more lethal sub-launched cruise missiles.
This is where it gets dangerous. You see, signals systems for a national defense grid typically don't just track ships. They also track aircraft and ballistic missiles. So if the US Navy, in a time of future crisis, decided to "find and blind" the Chinese defense grid, Chinese leaders would have no idea of knowing whether the United States has also decided to go nuclear first to make damn sure the Chinese don't launch their nukes in retaliation. So the Chinese leadership would be put in a "use-it-or-lose-it" situation with regards to their nuclear arsenal, which, if game theory is anything to be believed, is something you should never do if you want maintain peace.
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On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote: On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's
1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have.
In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales.
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I'd say a no score draw personally....a war between 2 big countries make no sense for anybody....this isn't 1938
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On August 10 2012 19:22 Aelonius wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote: On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's 1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have. In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales.
China may be the factory of the world, but what exactly is being produced? Foreign products for cheap labour.
Saying that China is the sweatshop of the world would be a more accurate statement.
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So how does this matter to you and me?
The reason it does is that ever since the end of the Cold War, there has never been conventional war plan drafted by the US or NATO that has a strong likelihood of ending in nuclear war. Part of the reason is because the US and NATO don't have active conflicts with nuclear weapons states. Another part of the reason is because policymakers got a sudden dose of sanity during the Clinton administration and revised the SIOP (Single Integrated Operating Plan) away from being on hair-trigger alert. The final part of the reason is that somehow, every other nuclear weapons state on Earth backed their conventional doctrines away from relying on strategies that would end up in nuclear bloodshed.
But sanity, as they say, is a commodity in short supply.
The AirSea battle put forth by the United States, and the Chinese "anti-access/area-denial" strategy, both make use of substantial amounts of military assets which could also be used to deliver and track nuclear weapons. This means that these conventional warfare operational plans have a substantial chance of resulting in nuclear war, and what's more, both China and the United States are going to focus the next decade or so of weapons investment into this area.
This is how the Cold War got started. As citizens of the world, shouldn't it be our responsibility to make sure a new Cold War doesn't happen on our watch? The world has gone through 2 decades with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation being a distant memory. Do we really want it back?
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On August 10 2012 19:22 Aelonius wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote: On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's 1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have. In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales.
China's industry in this regard is often vastly overrated.
The US is not some pure service-based economy. It is still an extremely industrial nation with plenty of factories running just fine.
China's larger labour force is not an advantage, it is a disadvantage. The Western Chinese are not going to enjoy being drafted to the other end of the country, leaving their farms behind so they can work for people that have, so far, done little to "share the wealth."
Building factories in western China, given its infrastructure, is also begging for a disaster.
America on the other hand doesn't have such a gigantic blindspot.
America can very easily scale up its industrial output in case of war. Contrary to popular belief, they do still have a production industry.
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On August 10 2012 19:37 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:22 Aelonius wrote:On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote: On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's 1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have. In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales. China's industry in this regard is often vastly overrated. The US is not some pure service-based economy. It is still an extremely industrial nation with plenty of factories running just fine. China's larger labour force is not an advantage, it is a disadvantage. The Western Chinese are not going to enjoy being drafted to the other end of the country, leaving their farms behind so they can work for people that have, so far, done little to "share the wealth." Building factories in western China, given its infrastructure, is also begging for a disaster. America on the other hand doesn't have such a gigantic blindspot. America can very easily scale up its industrial output in case of war. Contrary to popular belief, they do still have a production industry.
zalz, do you have a source on all this? Just wondering since this topic has piqued my interest
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China's forces are too technologically undeveloped to stand a chance against USA. Can China's forces reach USA in a timely manner? If so, how many of them can? Also, don't forget about NATO.
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America has a military technology lead, china can put a lot more boots on the ground. Assuming that nukes stay out of it, it comes down to lower tech higher numbers, vs a (currently) technologically superior foe. That's in a land war. In naval tech may be telling, but defenders advantage has a large role. And if it goes nuclear, its m.a.d. all over again.
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Russian Federation748 Posts
America and China are frenemies. Not rivals, not friends, but "peer competitors".
Could we say "froes" instead ? It sounds better to me.
Poll: Which souns better, froes or frenemies ?Frenemies (17) 65% Froes (9) 35% 26 total votes Your vote: Which souns better, froes or frenemies ? (Vote): Frenemies (Vote): Froes
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To recap: the argument here is that the new US naval warfare plan relies upon blinding the entire Chinese land-based command network even if the Chinese haven't launched a single nuclear weapon, meaning that the Chinese will have an incentive to launch their nukes in the event of conventional war with the US, as they will lose the capability to launch nukes at all, or detect a US launch, if the US blinding effort is successful.
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Zurich15241 Posts
On August 10 2012 21:01 Shady Sands wrote: To recap: the argument here is that the new US naval warfare plan relies upon blinding the entire Chinese land-based command network even if the Chinese haven't launched a single nuclear weapon, meaning that the Chinese will have an incentive to launch their nukes in the event of conventional war with the US, as they will lose the capability to launch nukes at all, or detect a US launch, if the US blinding effort is successful. I am not entirely sure what you want to discuss. As the linked article prominently features, the "blinding" part of the AirSea strategy is at this point entirely hypothetical (outside of the use of nuclear weapons), and would require, to quote the article, "disproportionately costly (and vulnerable)" investments, and further: "[..] the cost of AirSea Battle is likely to be prohibitive. [..] it remains a largely notional concept".
The idea of an conventional anti naval access denial system is ludicrous and as realistic as SDI was in the 80s.
I understand your argument of a risk of escalation into nuclear use. However the reasoning appears to be way too complicated. Rather than a hypothetical, ridiculously sophisticated conventional anti denial system, a comparatively much cheaper nuclear strike in space is more likely to escalate a possible conventional war.
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I think the most obvious issue here is that there would be no conflict if the US didn't insist on being a global hegemon. That being said, there are plenty of times where two nuclear powers can go to war and NOT use nukes on each other. It's not like people are insane here. There are degrees of conflict.
Also, missile shield defense is so bogus. Just another way to funnel off taxpayer money.
Tbh, I could care less about a war though. I'm more worried about the economy and QE3
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dude, rights are not real, rights are made up by a group of owners so that they can own the rest of the people in their country. Take USA for example, somehow slavery is left out? oh wait that's not a surprise since the founding fathers of the USA are slave owners, they just wanted to keep on owning after they fought for freedom against the British oppressor. If you think your country will uphold it's rights when it matters to most look no further than The japanese Americans during WW2
USA calling anyone else in the world lacking of human rights is the biggest hypocrisy of all time in a global magnitude.
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On August 11 2012 01:16 rei wrote:dude, rights are not real, rights are made up by a group of owners so that they can own the rest of the people in their country. Take USA for example, somehow slavery is left out? oh wait that's not a surprise since the founding fathers of the USA are slave owners, they just wanted to keep on owning after they fought for freedom against the British oppressor. If you think your country will uphold it's rights when it matters to most look no further than The japanese Americans during WW2USA calling anyone else in the world lacking of human rights is the biggest hypocrisy of all time in a global magnitude.
Might it be a small difference that the US regrets the internment whilst other nations, like North-Korea just to name one, continues to this day to imprison, torture, and murder its own citizens for crimes such as:
Being the child of someone that owns a radio able to receive South-Korean transmissions?
The US has has the moral authority to demand that other nations step up their human rights record. There are people rotting away in prisons for no crime other than expressing an opinion. You make light of human right violations across the world when you attempt to portray their plight as similar to the US.
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Theres nothing to worry about.....America would rape China in war.
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Im a bit uneducated on military happenings... but, hypothetically, what is the process behind actually nuking a country? Like does Obama just order some high ranking general to press a big red button? Would it be voted on by a military council? Congress? What would be the process?
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On August 11 2012 02:31 Rice wrote: Im a bit uneducated on military happenings... but, hypothetically, what is the process behind actually nuking a country? Like does Obama just order some high ranking general to press a night red button? WouldWould it be voted on by a military council? Congress? What would be the process?
currently all nations adopt a don't fire until fired upon rule for nukes. The us president has a person carrying the nuclear launch codes in a brief case next to him at all times, called the football.
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On August 11 2012 02:09 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 01:16 rei wrote:dude, rights are not real, rights are made up by a group of owners so that they can own the rest of the people in their country. Take USA for example, somehow slavery is left out? oh wait that's not a surprise since the founding fathers of the USA are slave owners, they just wanted to keep on owning after they fought for freedom against the British oppressor. If you think your country will uphold it's rights when it matters to most look no further than The japanese Americans during WW2USA calling anyone else in the world lacking of human rights is the biggest hypocrisy of all time in a global magnitude. Might it be a small difference that the US regrets the internment whilst other nations, like North-Korea just to name one, continues to this day to imprison, torture, and murder its own citizens for crimes such as: Being the child of someone that owns a radio able to receive South-Korean transmissions? The US has has the moral authority to demand that other nations step up their human rights record. There are people rotting away in prisons for no crime other than expressing an opinion. You make light of human right violations across the world when you attempt to portray their plight as similar to the US.
It's easy to claim the US regrets the internment half a century after the fact when Japan is a staunch US ally. They obviously don't regret the torture and internment of many Middle Eastern and African jihadists considering they are still actively torturing, imprisoning, and shipping them to other countries to be tortured.
A country that's assassinated democratically elected leaders, propped up dictatorships, and supplied weapons to genocidal regimes does not have any moral authority.
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On August 11 2012 02:15 SarR wrote: Theres nothing to worry about.....America would rape China in war.
Just like America rape Vietnam?????
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On August 11 2012 02:31 Rice wrote: Im a bit uneducated on military happenings... but, hypothetically, what is the process behind actually nuking a country? Like does Obama just order some high ranking general to press a big red button? Would it be voted on by a military council? Congress? What would be the process?
It isn't exactly clear how each country has its own chain of command, but the US president has acces to the nuclear launch codes at all time, reffered to as the nuclear football.
In theory, the US president could call a nuclear strike, though in practice it is highly unlikely that a US president would order a first-strike.
There is actually a school of thought that revolves around nuclear warfare and how a large scale nuclear exchange would work in practice. Most people agree that MAD is the only outcome, but some people argue that there are first-strike scenarios where the counter-attack can be limited.
The problem is mostly in escalation.
Some nuclear exchange scenarios can be expected to remain regional, like North/South-Korea, India/Pakistan, Israel/middle-east, whilst others are global nuclear exchanges like Russia/America.
Whilst it is true that there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire earth, a realistic scenario would most likely spare regions that are of little strategical or economical value. This is pretty much limited to areas with a low people/square mile.
It is possible to target every part of the world, but in practice, it would not be an effective way to use nuclear weapons.
For example, a nuclear weapon at the heart of NY city would not only kill millions of people, it would also inflict infrastructural damage, kill an extreme amount of important people, and break moral. The loss of New York alone would send America in an economical crisis that it would not recover from for decades.
Now, to cover every part of the earth, you need to spread the nukes out evenly, but that isn't a smart move to do, because you don't know:
1) Which nukes will fail 2) Which nukes are taken out before they can be deployed
Adding onto this uncertainty is the fact that not all nuclear strikes are of equal value.
A nuclear strike on the Trinity nuclear testing grounds would not inflict any damage on the US, nor would many heartland strikes.
Regions have numerical values based on various factors like economical, strategical or number of citizens. Taking out major cities or infrastructures can make relief impossible, thus contributing to more deaths and destruction.
As such, it is unlikely that the entire would would ever be destroyed in a nuclear war. High-value targets like New York would most likely receive multiple strikes, whereas areas of low value might not be targetted at all, simply because they would not survive the aftermath anyway.
Regional values are different depending on first strike, reactionary strike, or simultanious strike.
For example, high value first-strike targets are enemy nuclear bases, crippling the possibility of a counter-attack, whilst reactionairy strikes are aimed at destroying the enemies country altogether, because your own loss is already unavoidable, thus prioritising governmental and economic hubs, like Washington.
Further down the list of priorities are capitals of nations that are thoroughly aligned with the target nation, so for example in a Russia/America exchange, Tokyo would undoubtedly be attacked.
The largest threat in a full nuclear exchange is the escalation. During the period in which the nuclear missiles are in the air, the realization will occur to either parties that once the strikes are finished, neither side will be a super, or even regional power.
Long-term planning, of the machivallian kind, shows that firing on unrelated super powers is a smart move. After all, if America and Russia exchanged nuclear strikes, but avoided China, the winner of that war would undoubtedly be China.
Thus, the biggest fear is the involvement of other super and regional powers, which will trigger even more nuclear strikes on more or less all major nations, purely in the hope of assuring a strong post-nuclear world position.
If you want to avoid the nuclear holocaust, you would be best off living in the following regions, going from best to worst:
1) Central-Africa 2) Central-Asia 3) Eastern Russia 4) Western China 5) Heartland-America
Europe would most likely suffer the highest number of casualties %-wise, largely due to most of the population living in urban regions, the total living space being very small, and the close proximity to Russia, which not only makes the impact-time short, but also makes it a crucial target for destruction for the post-nuclear world.
Which government has the best chance of survival, that remains to be seen. The question mostly comes down to whether any nation will be able to rally the forces in time to keep people from "seceding" from their respective nations.
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You cvould say they represent alleged extreme opposite sets of ideals which is why they both have a place in the world
At least china is fairly obvious about what its doing the Us is scary
The Us historically used to be the guys that helped out the people getting bullied.
Now you have the vietnam war memorial building whos claim to fame is that it would of been the tallest building int he world, but the terrorists won. What does that tell you about a countries psyche?
You will find us and china are symbiotic or at least dont need to resort to bombs to fight, its all about economy and information now.
Also deterrant arguments have been shown to be logically flawed, and flawed through many many evidence based studies.
Let me put it this way ,.... you can get any pacifist to hit you if you try hard enough (if *you* cant then you clearly arnt as annoying as me)
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Zurich15241 Posts
On August 11 2012 03:22 zalz wrote: 1) Central-Africa 2) Central-Asia 3) Eastern Russia 4) Western China 5) Heartland-America Rural Australia, Oceania, South America, Central America?
I would argue anything Asia, Europe, or NA would be a bad idea for chances of fallout and billions of people seeking refuge from fallout.
To enforce the point that major cities would be leveled: Receiving multiple hits doesn't mean several single nukes on Manhatten. Major cities would be targeted by MRVs / MIRVs, meaning that the entire area would be leveled by a dozen or more nukes. It would not look like Nagasaki. There would be literally nothing left but nuclear desert for miles and miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle
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What i'm saying is two things, first USA has no moral high ground to look down on anyone about human right. and second, the whole idea of human right is created by human trying to control other human being by listing things that others can and can not do, which often than not, does not apply to the ones who came up with their so call human right to begin with, there lies the hypocrisy.
When it comes down to it, honestly, people are going to do, and have been doing "whatever they can get away with" for their own benefits, regardless of any installed rules or ideas of moral. History has shown this over and over again all around the world.
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On August 11 2012 03:42 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 03:22 zalz wrote: 1) Central-Africa 2) Central-Asia 3) Eastern Russia 4) Western China 5) Heartland-America Rural Australia, Oceania, South America, Central America? I would argue anything Asia, Europe, or NA would be a bad idea for chances of fallout and billions of people seeking refuge from fallout. To enforce the point that major cities would be leveled: Receiving multiple hits doesn't mean several single nukes on Manhatten. Major cities would be targeted by MRVs / MIRVs, meaning that the entire area would be leveled by a dozen or more nukes. It would not look like Nagasaki. There would be literally nothing left but nuclear desert for miles and miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle
Fallout would most likely be a global effect, and could reasonably be ignored, simply because it is unlikely that any place not be affected by it. Perhaps some areas are better due to favorable wind patterns, but in general it can be expected that every region will suffer fallout, all to such an extent that people will suffer from early-age cancer for many generatios to follow.
Central Australia would probably go unharmed.
South and Central America would probably suffer similar destruction as super-power areas. They would probably receive more intensive nuclear strikes by America, for the same reason that Europe would be a prime target for Russia, to establish a favorable post-nuclear position.
Ideal places would have acces to fresh water, low people/square mile (reducing risk of direct strike), and ideally poor infrastructure, which would make it impossible or difficult for other refugees to reach.
Food would be the main problem, considering the majority of people cannot hunt. Canned food is relatively safe from radiation, making it probably the ideal food of choice for any post-nuclear survivor.
Nomadic peoples probably have the best odds, like people living on the Mongolian steppes. Their areas are often largely uninhabitted, making them unlikely targets for direct strikes, and their population already has a source of food at hand, and experience surviving.
As for the MIRV's, they would still be targetting high-value targets multiple times. Deploying multiple nukes on a high value target is more valuable than using some to target low-value regions, just for the sake of full-nuclear extermination.
During a nuclear exchange, there is no chance to fire, wait for results, fire again. Multiple nukes need to be fired on high value targets, simply because allowing a city like New York to survive because of a faulty nuke would be catastrophic in a post-nuclear war, whilst not targetting one of the heartland states would be of trivial importance.
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Two nations that depend on each other for their economic prosperity probably would not declare war on each other. There would almost certainly have to be a major rift in China and the USA's economic situations and policies that polarize each other before a war can start.
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On August 10 2012 21:24 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 21:01 Shady Sands wrote: To recap: the argument here is that the new US naval warfare plan relies upon blinding the entire Chinese land-based command network even if the Chinese haven't launched a single nuclear weapon, meaning that the Chinese will have an incentive to launch their nukes in the event of conventional war with the US, as they will lose the capability to launch nukes at all, or detect a US launch, if the US blinding effort is successful. I am not entirely sure what you want to discuss. As the linked article prominently features, the "blinding" part of the AirSea strategy is at this point entirely hypothetical (outside of the use of nuclear weapons), and would require, to quote the article, "disproportionately costly (and vulnerable)" investments, and further: "[..] the cost of AirSea Battle is likely to be prohibitive. [..] it remains a largely notional concept". The idea of an conventional anti naval access denial system is ludicrous and as realistic as SDI was in the 80s. I understand your argument of a risk of escalation into nuclear use. However the reasoning appears to be way too complicated. Rather than a hypothetical, ridiculously sophisticated conventional anti denial system, a comparatively much cheaper nuclear strike in space is more likely to escalate a possible conventional war.
Paradoxically, nuclear attacks in space are actually the least likely nuclear action for escalation, because most rockets have limited fueled ranges, which means that if you launch a rocket on any trajectory that doesn't fly on an optimal path towards the other country, it's very easy to see (within 20-30 seconds of launch, in fact) that the strike is not directed at the other country.
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On August 11 2012 03:22 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 02:31 Rice wrote: Im a bit uneducated on military happenings... but, hypothetically, what is the process behind actually nuking a country? Like does Obama just order some high ranking general to press a big red button? Would it be voted on by a military council? Congress? What would be the process? It isn't exactly clear how each country has its own chain of command, but the US president has acces to the nuclear launch codes at all time, reffered to as the nuclear football. In theory, the US president could call a nuclear strike, though in practice it is highly unlikely that a US president would order a first-strike. There is actually a school of thought that revolves around nuclear warfare and how a large scale nuclear exchange would work in practice. Most people agree that MAD is the only outcome, but some people argue that there are first-strike scenarios where the counter-attack can be limited. The problem is mostly in escalation. Some nuclear exchange scenarios can be expected to remain regional, like North/South-Korea, India/Pakistan, Israel/middle-east, whilst others are global nuclear exchanges like Russia/America. Whilst it is true that there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire earth, a realistic scenario would most likely spare regions that are of little strategical or economical value. This is pretty much limited to areas with a low people/square mile. It is possible to target every part of the world, but in practice, it would not be an effective way to use nuclear weapons. For example, a nuclear weapon at the heart of NY city would not only kill millions of people, it would also inflict infrastructural damage, kill an extreme amount of important people, and break moral. The loss of New York alone would send America in an economical crisis that it would not recover from for decades. Now, to cover every part of the earth, you need to spread the nukes out evenly, but that isn't a smart move to do, because you don't know: 1) Which nukes will fail 2) Which nukes are taken out before they can be deployed Adding onto this uncertainty is the fact that not all nuclear strikes are of equal value. A nuclear strike on the Trinity nuclear testing grounds would not inflict any damage on the US, nor would many heartland strikes. Regions have numerical values based on various factors like economical, strategical or number of citizens. Taking out major cities or infrastructures can make relief impossible, thus contributing to more deaths and destruction. As such, it is unlikely that the entire would would ever be destroyed in a nuclear war. High-value targets like New York would most likely receive multiple strikes, whereas areas of low value might not be targetted at all, simply because they would not survive the aftermath anyway. Regional values are different depending on first strike, reactionary strike, or simultanious strike. For example, high value first-strike targets are enemy nuclear bases, crippling the possibility of a counter-attack, whilst reactionairy strikes are aimed at destroying the enemies country altogether, because your own loss is already unavoidable, thus prioritising governmental and economic hubs, like Washington. Further down the list of priorities are capitals of nations that are thoroughly aligned with the target nation, so for example in a Russia/America exchange, Tokyo would undoubtedly be attacked. The largest threat in a full nuclear exchange is the escalation. During the period in which the nuclear missiles are in the air, the realization will occur to either parties that once the strikes are finished, neither side will be a super, or even regional power. Long-term planning, of the machivallian kind, shows that firing on unrelated super powers is a smart move. After all, if America and Russia exchanged nuclear strikes, but avoided China, the winner of that war would undoubtedly be China. Thus, the biggest fear is the involvement of other super and regional powers, which will trigger even more nuclear strikes on more or less all major nations, purely in the hope of assuring a strong post-nuclear world position. If you want to avoid the nuclear holocaust, you would be best off living in the following regions, going from best to worst: 1) Central-Africa 2) Central-Asia 3) Eastern Russia 4) Western China 5) Heartland-America Europe would most likely suffer the highest number of casualties %-wise, largely due to most of the population living in urban regions, the total living space being very small, and the close proximity to Russia, which not only makes the impact-time short, but also makes it a crucial target for destruction for the post-nuclear world. Which government has the best chance of survival, that remains to be seen. The question mostly comes down to whether any nation will be able to rally the forces in time to keep people from "seceding" from their respective nations.
I'd replace the American heartland with South America/Carribean in that example. The US Heartland is where most American command/control assets, large airbases, and nuclear launch facilities are located.
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On August 11 2012 00:22 StorkHwaiting wrote: I think the most obvious issue here is that there would be no conflict if the US didn't insist on being a global hegemon. That being said, there are plenty of times where two nuclear powers can go to war and NOT use nukes on each other. It's not like people are insane here. There are degrees of conflict.
Also, missile shield defense is so bogus. Just another way to funnel off taxpayer money.
Tbh, I could care less about a war though. I'm more worried about the economy and QE3
Well the flip side of that logic is that there would be no conflict if China decided to cede any pretense of regional hegemony to the United States, and accepted the US security umbrella (a la Japan.)
The thing with this sort of logic is that there is no "moral imperative" on either side. In international relations, particular as it relates to hard power calculations, the only rule of thumb is that "might makes right".
What I would feel really sorry for is the SE Asian countries and Australia. They have the misfortune of being caught up in this game. How do they actually maintain even a semblance of sovereignty?
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On August 11 2012 03:00 StorkHwaiting wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 02:09 zalz wrote:On August 11 2012 01:16 rei wrote:dude, rights are not real, rights are made up by a group of owners so that they can own the rest of the people in their country. Take USA for example, somehow slavery is left out? oh wait that's not a surprise since the founding fathers of the USA are slave owners, they just wanted to keep on owning after they fought for freedom against the British oppressor. If you think your country will uphold it's rights when it matters to most look no further than The japanese Americans during WW2USA calling anyone else in the world lacking of human rights is the biggest hypocrisy of all time in a global magnitude. Might it be a small difference that the US regrets the internment whilst other nations, like North-Korea just to name one, continues to this day to imprison, torture, and murder its own citizens for crimes such as: Being the child of someone that owns a radio able to receive South-Korean transmissions? The US has has the moral authority to demand that other nations step up their human rights record. There are people rotting away in prisons for no crime other than expressing an opinion. You make light of human right violations across the world when you attempt to portray their plight as similar to the US. It's easy to claim the US regrets the internment half a century after the fact when Japan is a staunch US ally. They obviously don't regret the torture and internment of many Middle Eastern and African jihadists considering they are still actively torturing, imprisoning, and shipping them to other countries to be tortured. A country that's assassinated democratically elected leaders, propped up dictatorships, and supplied weapons to genocidal regimes does not have any moral authority.
One thing I consistently don't understand is how people can give moral authority to any state or government at all.
People have morals, because they are capable of making moral decisions. States, like corporations, are not programmed to have morals at all. States pursue interests for the welfare of their citizens; corporations pursue profits for the benefit of their shareholders. From a moral standpoint, they are no different from computers programmed to do certain tasks.
Furthermore, given how the world, viewed from the standpoint of these large institutions, is an anarchy, then nations/corps that stray from the programmed objectives are quickly eliminated. Over time, only the nations that can best play this game survive. Sad, but true.
Hence, it is incorrect, as citizens, to expect our governments to behave in a moral fashion. The most we can hope for is that our governments uphold our interests, in whatever manner is most efficient. If that means adopting a veneer of morality to engender soft power, then so be it; however, we must not mistake that pursuit of morality as anything more than a means to the ends the greater national interest.
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On August 11 2012 07:17 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 03:00 StorkHwaiting wrote:On August 11 2012 02:09 zalz wrote:On August 11 2012 01:16 rei wrote:dude, rights are not real, rights are made up by a group of owners so that they can own the rest of the people in their country. Take USA for example, somehow slavery is left out? oh wait that's not a surprise since the founding fathers of the USA are slave owners, they just wanted to keep on owning after they fought for freedom against the British oppressor. If you think your country will uphold it's rights when it matters to most look no further than The japanese Americans during WW2USA calling anyone else in the world lacking of human rights is the biggest hypocrisy of all time in a global magnitude. Might it be a small difference that the US regrets the internment whilst other nations, like North-Korea just to name one, continues to this day to imprison, torture, and murder its own citizens for crimes such as: Being the child of someone that owns a radio able to receive South-Korean transmissions? The US has has the moral authority to demand that other nations step up their human rights record. There are people rotting away in prisons for no crime other than expressing an opinion. You make light of human right violations across the world when you attempt to portray their plight as similar to the US. It's easy to claim the US regrets the internment half a century after the fact when Japan is a staunch US ally. They obviously don't regret the torture and internment of many Middle Eastern and African jihadists considering they are still actively torturing, imprisoning, and shipping them to other countries to be tortured. A country that's assassinated democratically elected leaders, propped up dictatorships, and supplied weapons to genocidal regimes does not have any moral authority. One thing I consistently don't understand is how people can give moral authority to any state or government at all. People have morals, because they are capable of making moral decisions. States, like corporations, are not programmed to have morals at all. States pursue interests for the welfare of their citizens; corporations pursue profits for the benefit of their shareholders. From a moral standpoint, they are no different from computers programmed to do certain tasks. Furthermore, given how the world, viewed from the standpoint of these large institutions, is an anarchy, then nations/corps that stray from the programmed objectives are quickly eliminated. Over time, only the nations that can best play this game survive. Sad, but true. Hence, it is incorrect, as citizens, to expect our governments to behave in a moral fashion. The most we can hope for is that our governments uphold our interests, in whatever manner is most efficient. If that means adopting a veneer of morality to engender soft power, then so be it; however, we must not mistake that pursuit of morality as anything more than a means to the ends the greater national interest.
Great analysis of realpolitik. Got to admit, I've quite enjoyed everything you've written on this site so far.
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On August 11 2012 03:42 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 03:22 zalz wrote: 1) Central-Africa 2) Central-Asia 3) Eastern Russia 4) Western China 5) Heartland-America Rural Australia, Oceania, South America, Central America? I would argue anything Asia, Europe, or NA would be a bad idea for chances of fallout and billions of people seeking refuge from fallout. To enforce the point that major cities would be leveled: Receiving multiple hits doesn't mean several single nukes on Manhatten. Major cities would be targeted by MRVs / MIRVs, meaning that the entire area would be leveled by a dozen or more nukes. It would not look like Nagasaki. There would be literally nothing left but nuclear desert for miles and miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle
Carpet nuking, as you state, is the correct way to perform a counter-value strike. But most (about 90%) of global nuclear arsenals, are, comfortingly, aimed at each other as counter-force options. For example, worst hit area in America would probably be Cheyenne Mountain, followed by the Vandenburg, Whiteman, Malmstrom, Minot, Warren, Offut, and Barksdale Air Force Bases.
For example, the standard assumption is that Russia has between two hundred to five hundred nuclear warheads aimed at Cheyenne Mountain alone. Each warhead is between 220kt to 3MT of yield, for a total tonnage of 40MT to 1.5GT in yield, delivered within what is likely a two hour window. That means that, on average, in those 2 hours, Cheyenne Mountain will be hit with about one nuke every thirty seconds, with each nuke being at least 10 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb.
A glassing of NYC would not even come close to the absolute moonscaping that will occur to most of Colorado.
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One physicist in the 80s remarked that the Russian plan for dealing with Cheyenne Mountain would be literally to melt the entire granite mountain into radioactive glass.
We can probably assume that the United States has similar plans for dealing with Russia's Mount Yamantau and China's Taihang Mountains.
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Currently the US has a large technical lead on China, however, with decreased military spending in the US and increased spending in China, plus their ability to reverse engineer our innovations, they are catching up.
The US has gained the lead they have now by pursuing large military advancements meant to give the US a leg up so large that another army could not approach a valid way to counter it, such as the B-2 bomber, or the modern F-22 program.
The next generation of USA military strategy will revolve around smaller, incredibly fast innovations, keeping us always an advantage on our competition, regardless on the differences of resources invester. We are currently building our infrastructure to support this kind of strategy.
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On August 10 2012 19:10 Skilledblob wrote: pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs
A-bombs don't mean anything. In this case at least I trust Baudrillard.
You mean pointless post when the destruction of either country by the other would not only sink the aggressor's economy, but also drive the world into a fatal depression that would probably make the one right now look like a tea party.
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I don't understand this whole concept of worldwide depression. That seems like a really retarded concept to me. It's not like the world would suddenly just becomes a whole lot poorer because two countries went to war and stopped trading. It's more like the powers that be would shit around and just be like yeah, instead of giving people stuff for free, we'll let them starve and suffer because that's the rules of our system.
When in reality every economic system is a contrived artifice developed to give a thin veneer of equality and arbitration to the distribution of resources. If the human race really wanted to not be fucking hungry and poor, we could easily make it happen. But no, we'll just sit around following a stupid economic system that tells us because X and Y number have gone down, now we will suffer Z amount. Market system so stupid when it's driven by confidence and fear.
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Zurich15241 Posts
On August 11 2012 07:24 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 03:42 zatic wrote:On August 11 2012 03:22 zalz wrote: 1) Central-Africa 2) Central-Asia 3) Eastern Russia 4) Western China 5) Heartland-America Rural Australia, Oceania, South America, Central America? I would argue anything Asia, Europe, or NA would be a bad idea for chances of fallout and billions of people seeking refuge from fallout. To enforce the point that major cities would be leveled: Receiving multiple hits doesn't mean several single nukes on Manhatten. Major cities would be targeted by MRVs / MIRVs, meaning that the entire area would be leveled by a dozen or more nukes. It would not look like Nagasaki. There would be literally nothing left but nuclear desert for miles and miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle Carpet nuking, as you state, is the correct way to perform a counter-value strike. But most (about 90%) of global nuclear arsenals, are, comfortingly, aimed at each other as counter-force options. For example, worst hit area in America would probably be Cheyenne Mountain, followed by the Vandenburg, Whiteman, Malmstrom, Minot, Warren, Offut, and Barksdale Air Force Bases. For example, the standard assumption is that Russia has between two hundred to five hundred nuclear warheads aimed at Cheyenne Mountain alone. Each warhead is between 220kt to 3MT of yield, for a total tonnage of 40MT to 1.5GT in yield, delivered within what is likely a two hour window. That means that, on average, in those 2 hours, Cheyenne Mountain will be hit with about one nuke every thirty seconds, with each nuke being at least 10 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. A glassing of NYC would not even come close to the absolute moonscaping that will occur to most of Wyoming. I was always wondering about that. Given a time frame of about 8 minutes before MAD, how many nukes can potentially hit a single target in continuous succession? I mean the fireball of the first nuke would be still there for minutes - I would imagine it is very uncertain if a second (or third, etc) missile fired into the raging plasma already there would even detonate. Igniting nuclear weapons is a rather complicated business after all. I find it hard to believe that an terminal entry vehicle would even work properly when it enters an ongoing nuclear explosion.
But I guess that's one of the things you just can't test properly. On the other hand I wouldn't have put it past the soviets to chain-nuke some strip in the arctic just for the heck of it.
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On August 11 2012 07:17 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 03:00 StorkHwaiting wrote:On August 11 2012 02:09 zalz wrote:On August 11 2012 01:16 rei wrote:dude, rights are not real, rights are made up by a group of owners so that they can own the rest of the people in their country. Take USA for example, somehow slavery is left out? oh wait that's not a surprise since the founding fathers of the USA are slave owners, they just wanted to keep on owning after they fought for freedom against the British oppressor. If you think your country will uphold it's rights when it matters to most look no further than The japanese Americans during WW2USA calling anyone else in the world lacking of human rights is the biggest hypocrisy of all time in a global magnitude. Might it be a small difference that the US regrets the internment whilst other nations, like North-Korea just to name one, continues to this day to imprison, torture, and murder its own citizens for crimes such as: Being the child of someone that owns a radio able to receive South-Korean transmissions? The US has has the moral authority to demand that other nations step up their human rights record. There are people rotting away in prisons for no crime other than expressing an opinion. You make light of human right violations across the world when you attempt to portray their plight as similar to the US. It's easy to claim the US regrets the internment half a century after the fact when Japan is a staunch US ally. They obviously don't regret the torture and internment of many Middle Eastern and African jihadists considering they are still actively torturing, imprisoning, and shipping them to other countries to be tortured. A country that's assassinated democratically elected leaders, propped up dictatorships, and supplied weapons to genocidal regimes does not have any moral authority. One thing I consistently don't understand is how people can give moral authority to any state or government at all. People have morals, because they are capable of making moral decisions. States, like corporations, are not programmed to have morals at all. States pursue interests for the welfare of their citizens; corporations pursue profits for the benefit of their shareholders. From a moral standpoint, they are no different from computers programmed to do certain tasks. Furthermore, given how the world, viewed from the standpoint of these large institutions, is an anarchy, then nations/corps that stray from the programmed objectives are quickly eliminated. Over time, only the nations that can best play this game survive. Sad, but true. Hence, it is incorrect, as citizens, to expect our governments to behave in a moral fashion. The most we can hope for is that our governments uphold our interests, in whatever manner is most efficient. If that means adopting a veneer of morality to engender soft power, then so be it; however, we must not mistake that pursuit of morality as anything more than a means to the ends the greater national interest.
But the people who run governments and corporations are people too, surely they have morals? I understand that they may be heavily influenced by those who vote them into power, and many may change their stances on various issues in an effort to appeal to the most people, or find ways to make concessions. But fundamentally they have their own beliefs, and many are entrenched in them enough that they do not change just because the people disapprove of some of their policies (Ron Paul Revolution!!!! :D). I would think that they would also have to prove it well by giving examples from their past history working with other people or organizations, or showing what motions he/she has supported as a lawmaker.
Also you can't program a leader with the information needed to respond to every potential event in a president's term (it would probably be impossible to predict). That's why it makes a lot more sense that people simply try to ensure that their leader is the embodiment of moral values that they approve of, so that when he/she is forced to react to unexpected circumstances in his/her term, they can trust that such independent decisions will be made on a sound basis.
But even if they our leaders were like computers, and they didn't have any moral standards or values (or perhaps the influence of the people is so strong that it overrides their personal convictions) - I don't see how it follows that people shouldn't expect their governments to behave morally. Like if that's one of the main interests of the people - that the impoverished are helped, that disaster victims are given relief, that countries being bombed by crazed dictators are being given support (that is, supporting the rebels ), then its just like any other election issue that they expect to be fulfilled. Why can't having certain moral values be part of "government upholding our interests"?
Unless you're talking about a very abstract notion of state or government, as a concept. But your usage implies that you are talking about how its generally perceived in reality, i.e. complete with leaders and other representatives and officials.
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On August 11 2012 08:46 RoyGBiv_13 wrote: Currently the US has a large technical lead on China, however, with decreased military spending in the US and increased spending in China, plus their ability to reverse engineer our innovations, they are catching up.
The US has gained the lead they have now by pursuing large military advancements meant to give the US a leg up so large that another army could not approach a valid way to counter it, such as the B-2 bomber, or the modern F-22 program.
The next generation of USA military strategy will revolve around smaller, incredibly fast innovations, keeping us always an advantage on our competition, regardless on the differences of resources invester. We are currently building our infrastructure to support this kind of strategy.
Do you have any articles to support the idea that the next generation of US military strategy revolves around these smaller, incredibly fast innovations?
Last I've heard the US has been building up into a massive military-industrial complex that is only getting larger, not smaller. During the early Bush administration Rumsfeld (IIRC, not completely certain) wanted to push for a reduction in spending and a focus on R&D, to skip the mass manufacture of the current generation of weapons and focus on developing the next generation before going into manufacture. But the military lobbyists were too strong and forced the US government to mass produce the current generation of weapons such as the F-22 (now no longer being produced) and the F-35, thus maintaining the current (and massive) level of military spending.
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I don't know the technical term for it, but there's a phenomenon where people who are divorced from the ground-level details of something can have a great deal of emotional and moral detachment when making decisions, which leads to really inhumane policies/actions. Sort of like pilots who carpet bomb cities then go home to get a good night's sleep. Doesn't bother them too badly if they don't think about it because they didn't actually see the people dying. They just flipped a switch and pressed a button.
There are also people who just flat out have a high capacity for evil.
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On August 11 2012 09:27 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 07:24 Shady Sands wrote:On August 11 2012 03:42 zatic wrote:On August 11 2012 03:22 zalz wrote: 1) Central-Africa 2) Central-Asia 3) Eastern Russia 4) Western China 5) Heartland-America Rural Australia, Oceania, South America, Central America? I would argue anything Asia, Europe, or NA would be a bad idea for chances of fallout and billions of people seeking refuge from fallout. To enforce the point that major cities would be leveled: Receiving multiple hits doesn't mean several single nukes on Manhatten. Major cities would be targeted by MRVs / MIRVs, meaning that the entire area would be leveled by a dozen or more nukes. It would not look like Nagasaki. There would be literally nothing left but nuclear desert for miles and miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle Carpet nuking, as you state, is the correct way to perform a counter-value strike. But most (about 90%) of global nuclear arsenals, are, comfortingly, aimed at each other as counter-force options. For example, worst hit area in America would probably be Cheyenne Mountain, followed by the Vandenburg, Whiteman, Malmstrom, Minot, Warren, Offut, and Barksdale Air Force Bases. For example, the standard assumption is that Russia has between two hundred to five hundred nuclear warheads aimed at Cheyenne Mountain alone. Each warhead is between 220kt to 3MT of yield, for a total tonnage of 40MT to 1.5GT in yield, delivered within what is likely a two hour window. That means that, on average, in those 2 hours, Cheyenne Mountain will be hit with about one nuke every thirty seconds, with each nuke being at least 10 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. A glassing of NYC would not even come close to the absolute moonscaping that will occur to most of Wyoming. I was always wondering about that. Given a time frame of about 8 minutes before MAD, how many nukes can potentially hit a single target in continuous succession? I mean the fireball of the first nuke would be still there for minutes - I would imagine it is very uncertain if a second (or third, etc) missile fired into the raging plasma already there would even detonate. Igniting nuclear weapons is a rather complicated business after all. I find it hard to believe that an terminal entry vehicle would even work properly when it enters an ongoing nuclear explosion. But I guess that's one of the things you just can't test properly. On the other hand I wouldn't have put it past the soviets to chain-nuke some strip in the arctic just for the heck of it.
Actually, both the US and Russia tested this out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_Pack
+ Show Spoiler [Wiki article] +According to the Dense Pack strategy, a series of ten to twelve hardened silos would be grouped closely together in a line. This line of silos would generally run north-to-south, as the primary flight path for Soviet inbound nuclear missiles would be expected to come from the north over the North Pole. The rationale for this thinking went like this: As the first inbound warhead detonates over its target silo, it would throw a large cloud of debris over the entire missile field. Every other warhead targeted on that missile field would have to travel through that debris cloud to reach its target, and it was theorized that the act of traveling through that debris cloud would "trash" the warhead before it could detonate. Every successful explosion over the missile field would throw more debris up into the air, increasing the chances that each successive warhead would be destroyed before it could trigger. Due to the hardened nature of the missile silos, the military believed that the silos could be destroyed only by a direct hit from a nuclear warhead; warhead air bursts were believed to be ineffective to the task of penetrating the armored silos, as were any "near-miss" ground bursts that might occur from an inaccurate ballistic trajectory.
The proposed Dense Pack initiative met with strong criticism in the media and in the government, and the idea was never implemented. Detractors of the Dense Pack strategy pointed out a number of flaws. First, the advent of Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles, or MIRV, negated the concept due to their ability to conduct a time-on-target barrage. Simply put, a single missile could deliver a volley of three to twelve warheads to the target where they could each detonate at approximately the same time, thus dispensing with the disruptive debris cloud that Dense Pack relies upon for protection. Secondly, there were widespread doubts at the time that the hardened nature of the armored missile silos were as robust as the military claimed, leading to worries that a single warhead could in fact destroy an entire Dense Pack missile field. Finally, Dense Pack was perceived by some to be a provocative, if not overtly hostile measure at a time when nuclear warfare seemed to be a distinct possibility.
Relevant part bolded for emphasis.
What is far more likely would be clusters of warheads arriving in waves. So, in the Cheyenne Mountain example, the first wave might be 100 warheads, spaced out in 30km/30km grid, all detonating high in the atmosphere, to blanket the sky with EM radiation and degrade any wireless comms. Second wave, 100 warheads, spaced out in a 5km/5km grid, all detonating within 3-5 seconds of each other to scrub the surface of the mountain with overpressure and heat. The third wave might come about 10 minutes later, and be 100 warheads programmed for ground detonation in a slightly rolling pattern, using the principle of acoustic resonance to generate the seismic waves necessary to collapse the underground bunkers. The fourth and fifth waves are purely optional, but if I was doing the targetting, they would include bunker-busting munitions aimed at the underground water reservoir, and cobalt munitions to induce long-term surface radioactivity and trap the survivors within the mountain for years.
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By detonating 100 nuclear warheads in a resonance frequency pattern, a localized earthquake can be induced.
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Overall, what will happen is that the surface of the mountain will be glassed, the interior of the mountain will have collapsed inward, and then the whole area will be given a light dusting of cobalt-60, which produces lethal amounts of surface radiation for 8-10 years after the strike. Everything up to six or seven hundred miles downwind of Cheyenne Mountain, and within a 50 mile radius, will likely die. This would include significant chunks of Colorado and Kansas.
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Zurich15241 Posts
Well what I get from this is that they actually didn't test it out and that it's all theorycrafting.
So nobody really knows how reliable an additional nuke would be on an already nuked area. But yeah, in almost all cases MRVs deliver such ridiculous destruction that there is just nothing left at all. Just a second strike on the same area wouldn't necessarily detonate - but in almost all cases it wouldn't be needed.
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On August 11 2012 07:17 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 03:00 StorkHwaiting wrote:On August 11 2012 02:09 zalz wrote:On August 11 2012 01:16 rei wrote:dude, rights are not real, rights are made up by a group of owners so that they can own the rest of the people in their country. Take USA for example, somehow slavery is left out? oh wait that's not a surprise since the founding fathers of the USA are slave owners, they just wanted to keep on owning after they fought for freedom against the British oppressor. If you think your country will uphold it's rights when it matters to most look no further than The japanese Americans during WW2USA calling anyone else in the world lacking of human rights is the biggest hypocrisy of all time in a global magnitude. Might it be a small difference that the US regrets the internment whilst other nations, like North-Korea just to name one, continues to this day to imprison, torture, and murder its own citizens for crimes such as: Being the child of someone that owns a radio able to receive South-Korean transmissions? The US has has the moral authority to demand that other nations step up their human rights record. There are people rotting away in prisons for no crime other than expressing an opinion. You make light of human right violations across the world when you attempt to portray their plight as similar to the US. It's easy to claim the US regrets the internment half a century after the fact when Japan is a staunch US ally. They obviously don't regret the torture and internment of many Middle Eastern and African jihadists considering they are still actively torturing, imprisoning, and shipping them to other countries to be tortured. A country that's assassinated democratically elected leaders, propped up dictatorships, and supplied weapons to genocidal regimes does not have any moral authority. One thing I consistently don't understand is how people can give moral authority to any state or government at all. People have morals, because they are capable of making moral decisions. States, like corporations, are not programmed to have morals at all. States pursue interests for the welfare of their citizens; corporations pursue profits for the benefit of their shareholders. From a moral standpoint, they are no different from computers programmed to do certain tasks. Furthermore, given how the world, viewed from the standpoint of these large institutions, is an anarchy, then nations/corps that stray from the programmed objectives are quickly eliminated. Over time, only the nations that can best play this game survive. Sad, but true. Hence, it is incorrect, as citizens, to expect our governments to behave in a moral fashion. The most we can hope for is that our governments uphold our interests, in whatever manner is most efficient. If that means adopting a veneer of morality to engender soft power, then so be it; however, we must not mistake that pursuit of morality as anything more than a means to the ends the greater national interest.
While your analysis is already good, it lacks one major point: Large organisations of any type of unit that work together (e.g. an ant- or beehive, corporations, gouvernments, religious institutions) do NOT care about their individual units (e.g. citizens or shareholders) in the first place.
Once a certain structure between units becomes complex enough its entirety shows signs of "life" that surpass that of the individual by far. (Think of the movement of bird swarms for example.)
What this means in practice is that the first and foremost goal of any corporation or state is not the well-being of its members but self-preservation. Nothing stands above that. That's also why it's completely viable to anaylze a states actions due to their moral character. However, that endeavour is as promising as looking for moral value in the decisions of a bee- or anthive: Morally "correct" actions of a state or corperation are either cooincidental or beneficial for their self-preservation in the long run (this CAN mean that they showcase the morality of the majority of their individual units). They aren't performed because of their moral alignement in the first place.
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On August 11 2012 03:22 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 02:31 Rice wrote: Im a bit uneducated on military happenings... but, hypothetically, what is the process behind actually nuking a country? Like does Obama just order some high ranking general to press a big red button? Would it be voted on by a military council? Congress? What would be the process? + Show Spoiler +It isn't exactly clear how each country has its own chain of command, but the US president has acces to the nuclear launch codes at all time, reffered to as the nuclear football.
In theory, the US president could call a nuclear strike, though in practice it is highly unlikely that a US president would order a first-strike.
There is actually a school of thought that revolves around nuclear warfare and how a large scale nuclear exchange would work in practice. Most people agree that MAD is the only outcome, but some people argue that there are first-strike scenarios where the counter-attack can be limited.
The problem is mostly in escalation.
Some nuclear exchange scenarios can be expected to remain regional, like North/South-Korea, India/Pakistan, Israel/middle-east, whilst others are global nuclear exchanges like Russia/America.
Whilst it is true that there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire earth, a realistic scenario would most likely spare regions that are of little strategical or economical value. This is pretty much limited to areas with a low people/square mile.
It is possible to target every part of the world, but in practice, it would not be an effective way to use nuclear weapons.
For example, a nuclear weapon at the heart of NY city would not only kill millions of people, it would also inflict infrastructural damage, kill an extreme amount of important people, and break moral. The loss of New York alone would send America in an economical crisis that it would not recover from for decades.
Now, to cover every part of the earth, you need to spread the nukes out evenly, but that isn't a smart move to do, because you don't know:
1) Which nukes will fail 2) Which nukes are taken out before they can be deployed
Adding onto this uncertainty is the fact that not all nuclear strikes are of equal value.
A nuclear strike on the Trinity nuclear testing grounds would not inflict any damage on the US, nor would many heartland strikes.
Regions have numerical values based on various factors like economical, strategical or number of citizens. Taking out major cities or infrastructures can make relief impossible, thus contributing to more deaths and destruction.
As such, it is unlikely that the entire would would ever be destroyed in a nuclear war. High-value targets like New York would most likely receive multiple strikes, whereas areas of low value might not be targetted at all, simply because they would not survive the aftermath anyway.
Regional values are different depending on first strike, reactionary strike, or simultanious strike.
For example, high value first-strike targets are enemy nuclear bases, crippling the possibility of a counter-attack, whilst reactionairy strikes are aimed at destroying the enemies country altogether, because your own loss is already unavoidable, thus prioritising governmental and economic hubs, like Washington.
Further down the list of priorities are capitals of nations that are thoroughly aligned with the target nation, so for example in a Russia/America exchange, Tokyo would undoubtedly be attacked.
The largest threat in a full nuclear exchange is the escalation. During the period in which the nuclear missiles are in the air, the realization will occur to either parties that once the strikes are finished, neither side will be a super, or even regional power.
Long-term planning, of the machivallian kind, shows that firing on unrelated super powers is a smart move. After all, if America and Russia exchanged nuclear strikes, but avoided China, the winner of that war would undoubtedly be China.
Thus, the biggest fear is the involvement of other super and regional powers, which will trigger even more nuclear strikes on more or less all major nations, purely in the hope of assuring a strong post-nuclear world position.
If you want to avoid the nuclear holocaust, you would be best off living in the following regions, going from best to worst: 1) Central-Africa 2) Central-Asia 3) Eastern Russia 4) Western China 5) Heartland-America Europe would most likely suffer the highest number of casualties %-wise, largely due to most of the population living in urban regions, the total living space being very small, and the close proximity to Russia, which not only makes the impact-time short, but also makes it a crucial target for destruction for the post-nuclear world. Which government has the best chance of survival, that remains to be seen. The question mostly comes down to whether any nation will be able to rally the forces in time to keep people from "seceding" from their respective nations.
LOL what about every part of Canada outside of capital cities and southern Ontario? I don't see them wasting the 1000's of nukes it would take to destroy everything up here. Unless they're going to spread out nukes evenly across the globe, but that has already been mentioned as unlikely.
This is an interesting topic though.
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On August 11 2012 09:18 ymir233 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:10 Skilledblob wrote: pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs A-bombs don't mean anything. In this case at least I trust Baudrillard. You mean pointless post when the destruction of either country by the other would not only sink the aggressor's economy, but also drive the world into a fatal depression that would probably make the one right now look like a tea party.
no this discussion is pointless. the defence shields are not gonna work end of story.
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On August 10 2012 19:10 Skilledblob wrote: pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs Interesting blog to read, but I myself did a similar report for my American foreign policy ass almost a year ago, so I can't help but chime in on this one.
America has a HUGE nuke arsenal that could be used to decimate 90% of china's population while conversely losing at most 50% of its own. Why do I say this?
Because china only has 20 ICBMs (and only 18 that are capable of striking the USA), conversely, America has about 475 nuclear warheads that simply need to be redirected from Russia to china all without a single foot on Chinese soil.
Also, there is dissent among those whom speak English and are well educated in china. It's not like they will willingly be drafted into the Chinese military, and while the Chinese army, navy, and air force is larger than ours, it is only by a mere 400,000 and most soldiers are poorly trained. Mass mobilizations and drafts would FAIL epically (just as they did during the Maoist era). Most of their technology is dated, their army has no experience with foreign wars, their marine corps is only 10,000 compared to our bolstering 242,000.
And how do I know all of this? My major is Chinese and my minor is International Security Studies.
My stand is that this will not escalate beyond a form of cold war. This is after all, TvT were talking about. Being the first to attack is always a bad idea... Unless you can win the engagement.
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On August 11 2012 23:13 Enders116 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:10 Skilledblob wrote: pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs Because china only has 20 ICBMs (and only 18 that are capable of striking the USA), conversely, America has about 475 nuclear warheads that simply need to be redirected from Russia to china all without a single foot on Chinese soil. Also, there is dissent among those whom speak English and are well educated in china. It's not like they will willingly be drafted into the Chinese military, and while the Chinese army, navy, and air force is larger than ours, it is only by a mere 400,000 and most soldiers are poorly trained. Mass mobilizations and drafts would FAIL epically (just as they did during the Maoist era). Most of their technology is dated, their army has no experience with foreign wars, their marine corps is only 10,000 compared to our bolstering 242,000.
even if China would be invaded the US would be unable to conquer it. And after the Vietnam war everybody should know that these number games dont mean anything.
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On August 11 2012 23:13 Enders116 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:10 Skilledblob wrote: pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs Interesting blog to read, but I myself did a similar report for my American foreign policy ass almost a year ago, so I can't help but chime in on this one. America has a HUGE nuke arsenal that could be used to decimate 90% of china's population while conversely losing at most 50% of its own. Why do I say this? Because china only has 20 ICBMs (and only 18 that are capable of striking the USA), conversely, America has about 475 nuclear warheads that simply need to be redirected from Russia to china all without a single foot on Chinese soil. Also, there is dissent among those whom speak English and are well educated in china. It's not like they will willingly be drafted into the Chinese military, and while the Chinese army, navy, and air force is larger than ours, it is only by a mere 400,000 and most soldiers are poorly trained. Mass mobilizations and drafts would FAIL epically (just as they did during the Maoist era). Most of their technology is dated, their army has no experience with foreign wars, their marine corps is only 10,000 compared to our bolstering 242,000. And how do I know all of this? My major is Chinese and my minor is International Security Studies. My stand is that this will not escalate beyond a form of cold war. This is after all, TvT were talking about. Being the first to attack is always a bad idea... Unless you can win the engagement.
I dont understand how "being the first to attack" could ever be a bad thing in a nuclear war. (I'm talking if both countries were guaranteed to use nukes anyways) Could you perhaps enlighten us?(not trying to be pretentious or anything, im genuinely curious as to how it could be disadvantageous to strike first in a nuclear scenario)
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On August 12 2012 02:07 Skilledblob wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 23:13 Enders116 wrote:On August 10 2012 19:10 Skilledblob wrote: pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs Because china only has 20 ICBMs (and only 18 that are capable of striking the USA), conversely, America has about 475 nuclear warheads that simply need to be redirected from Russia to china all without a single foot on Chinese soil. Also, there is dissent among those whom speak English and are well educated in china. It's not like they will willingly be drafted into the Chinese military, and while the Chinese army, navy, and air force is larger than ours, it is only by a mere 400,000 and most soldiers are poorly trained. Mass mobilizations and drafts would FAIL epically (just as they did during the Maoist era). Most of their technology is dated, their army has no experience with foreign wars, their marine corps is only 10,000 compared to our bolstering 242,000. even if China would be invaded the US would be unable to conquer it. And after the Vietnam war everybody should know that these number games dont mean anything. Vietnam was different. The commies were safely behind their own lines for more than half of its duration, and smuggled in insurgents through thick jungles.
Something else to keep in mind: just because china is communist doesn't mean that it's like a police state, so as it is now, there will be people happily ready to give up their so called leaders in exchange for real change. Currently, less than .1% of china's population is willing to actually serve their country. America's military population is somewhere between .5-.9% (guestimation), based on a population of 300 million citizens and 2.4 million active/reserve duty servicemen and women.
As stated before, neither side of the pacific would be stupid or maniacal enough to start the war.
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On August 12 2012 09:26 Enders116 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2012 02:07 Skilledblob wrote:On August 11 2012 23:13 Enders116 wrote:On August 10 2012 19:10 Skilledblob wrote: pointless post when both countries have lots of a-bombs Because china only has 20 ICBMs (and only 18 that are capable of striking the USA), conversely, America has about 475 nuclear warheads that simply need to be redirected from Russia to china all without a single foot on Chinese soil. Also, there is dissent among those whom speak English and are well educated in china. It's not like they will willingly be drafted into the Chinese military, and while the Chinese army, navy, and air force is larger than ours, it is only by a mere 400,000 and most soldiers are poorly trained. Mass mobilizations and drafts would FAIL epically (just as they did during the Maoist era). Most of their technology is dated, their army has no experience with foreign wars, their marine corps is only 10,000 compared to our bolstering 242,000. even if China would be invaded the US would be unable to conquer it. And after the Vietnam war everybody should know that these number games dont mean anything. Vietnam was different. The commies were safely behind their own lines for more than half of its duration, and smuggled in insurgents through thick jungles. Something else to keep in mind: just because china is communist doesn't mean that it's like a police state, so as it is now, there will be people happily ready to give up their so called leaders in exchange for real change. Currently, less than .1% of china's population is willing to actually serve their country. America's military population is somewhere between .5-.9% (guestimation), based on a population of 300 million citizens and 2.4 million active/reserve duty servicemen and women. As stated before, neither side of the pacific would be stupid or maniacal enough to start the war.
Why do you assume war between China and the US have to go on until one government or the other is gone?
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I dont understand all this debate about A-bombs, there are other ways to win 'wars' without starting a 'war':
eg China sends swarms of hot asian chicks to seduce all American men generation after generation, and dilute the gene pool until all American men literally become Chinese etc etc.
rofl
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On August 10 2012 19:37 zalz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:22 Aelonius wrote:On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote: On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's 1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have. In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales. China's industry in this regard is often vastly overrated. The US is not some pure service-based economy. It is still an extremely industrial nation with plenty of factories running just fine. China's larger labour force is not an advantage, it is a disadvantage. The Western Chinese are not going to enjoy being drafted to the other end of the country, leaving their farms behind so they can work for people that have, so far, done little to "share the wealth." Building factories in western China, given its infrastructure, is also begging for a disaster. America on the other hand doesn't have such a gigantic blindspot. America can very easily scale up its industrial output in case of war. Contrary to popular belief, they do still have a production industry. Very much this. China employs far more people than the US in manufacturing, but for the most part that is a ridiculous comparison, as most of US's manufacturing is completely automated.
http://www.shopfloor.org/2011/03/u-s-manufacturing-remains-worlds-largest/18756 http://io9.com/5837667/will-manufacturing-automation-finally-eliminate-the-need-for-any-human-workers http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/bg2476.pdf
The US is kicking more and more manufacturing butt every day, almost getting to the point where we might soon see more production shift back to the US as it will be cheaper for even very expensive robots to build stuff than even Chinese sweatshops. As someone who works a lot with automation and manufacturing myself, it's only getting easier and easier to program and use a lot of the newer equipment and programs. US manufacturing is HUGE, and only going to get bigger.
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On August 12 2012 13:28 YODA_ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 19:37 zalz wrote:On August 10 2012 19:22 Aelonius wrote:On August 10 2012 19:17 zalz wrote: On an economic level, China needs America more than vice versa. America can produce its own goods, China can't buy its own goods. It wouldn't be good for the world economy, but China would suffer a great deal more instability than America would.
I disagree. China is currently the factory of the world. A vast majority of parts in the world are made in Chinese factories. While the USA has the capability to generate their own production, it would be facing two major issue's 1. The Chinese will have a much larger labour force by definition 2. The USA hasn't got many factories for parts, seeing they build in China. This means they first need to build new factories while China is just using those they have. In the time that a war would break out, the natural reserves of China, combined with the labourforce and the production capabilities would make the difference. They shift to production for war efforts and they haven't got to worry about product sales. China's industry in this regard is often vastly overrated. The US is not some pure service-based economy. It is still an extremely industrial nation with plenty of factories running just fine. China's larger labour force is not an advantage, it is a disadvantage. The Western Chinese are not going to enjoy being drafted to the other end of the country, leaving their farms behind so they can work for people that have, so far, done little to "share the wealth." Building factories in western China, given its infrastructure, is also begging for a disaster. America on the other hand doesn't have such a gigantic blindspot. America can very easily scale up its industrial output in case of war. Contrary to popular belief, they do still have a production industry. Very much this. China employs far more people than the US in manufacturing, but for the most part that is a ridiculous comparison, as most of US's manufacturing is completely automated. http://www.shopfloor.org/2011/03/u-s-manufacturing-remains-worlds-largest/18756http://io9.com/5837667/will-manufacturing-automation-finally-eliminate-the-need-for-any-human-workershttp://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/bg2476.pdfThe US is kicking more and more manufacturing butt every day, almost getting to the point where we might soon see more production shift back to the US as it will be cheaper for even very expensive robots to build stuff than even Chinese sweatshops. As someone who works a lot with automation and manufacturing myself, it's only getting easier and easier to program and use a lot of the newer equipment and programs. US manufacturing is HUGE, and only going to get bigger.
Again, these comparisons don't make sense in the type of warfare we're talking about.
Manufacturing capability only factors into military strength when the nation faces protracted large-scale warfare. In short-duration, high-intensity wars, even the largest manufacturing bases will have difficulty keeping the army in the field fully supplied and operational. (The US, for example, ran out of GPS guidance systems for smart bombs barely 4 weeks into bombing Iraq. For a country with C4ISR systems and an A2AD network at least 10x bigger and more advanced, like China, the US would burn through its stockpile of advanced weapons in a matter of days--and the same would happen for the Chinese side.)
What's more, if a war between advanced nations ever gets to the stage where nations have to replenish their precision munitions while desperately fighting on, there will literally be no incentive not to go nuclear, or to sue for peace. So basically, it's not the strength of a manufacturing base that determines military strength. The things that will matter the most are:
1) The strength of the national communications network and infrastructure 2) Leadership capability and response time 3) Troop training 4) Targeting and identification systems, on both sides 5) Long-range precision strike capabilities
Those are the only things that will matter. Manufacturing capability is not an important arbiter of national strength under a short-duration high-intensity war.
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I feel considerably smarter/better-learned after reading through this thread. It's like general but with only intelligent and well-articulated opinions for the most part. Some posts I do disagree with, but overall really interesting thread
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Zurich15241 Posts
On August 11 2012 07:01 Shady Sands wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2012 21:24 zatic wrote:On August 10 2012 21:01 Shady Sands wrote: To recap: the argument here is that the new US naval warfare plan relies upon blinding the entire Chinese land-based command network even if the Chinese haven't launched a single nuclear weapon, meaning that the Chinese will have an incentive to launch their nukes in the event of conventional war with the US, as they will lose the capability to launch nukes at all, or detect a US launch, if the US blinding effort is successful. I am not entirely sure what you want to discuss. As the linked article prominently features, the "blinding" part of the AirSea strategy is at this point entirely hypothetical (outside of the use of nuclear weapons), and would require, to quote the article, "disproportionately costly (and vulnerable)" investments, and further: "[..] the cost of AirSea Battle is likely to be prohibitive. [..] it remains a largely notional concept". The idea of an conventional anti naval access denial system is ludicrous and as realistic as SDI was in the 80s. I understand your argument of a risk of escalation into nuclear use. However the reasoning appears to be way too complicated. Rather than a hypothetical, ridiculously sophisticated conventional anti denial system, a comparatively much cheaper nuclear strike in space is more likely to escalate a possible conventional war. Paradoxically, nuclear attacks in space are actually the least likely nuclear action for escalation, because most rockets have limited fueled ranges, which means that if you launch a rocket on any trajectory that doesn't fly on an optimal path towards the other country, it's very easy to see (within 20-30 seconds of launch, in fact) that the strike is not directed at the other country. I didn't mean it would trigger a full out second strike. But both China and the US could consider a nuclear strike in space against the other communication infrastructure. Which would then lower the restraint against surface strikes, for example for area denial in little / not populated ares, or warning shots. I was talking more about gradual escalation from a conventional into a nuclear war, not instant MAD.
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On August 14 2012 17:16 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 07:01 Shady Sands wrote:On August 10 2012 21:24 zatic wrote:On August 10 2012 21:01 Shady Sands wrote: To recap: the argument here is that the new US naval warfare plan relies upon blinding the entire Chinese land-based command network even if the Chinese haven't launched a single nuclear weapon, meaning that the Chinese will have an incentive to launch their nukes in the event of conventional war with the US, as they will lose the capability to launch nukes at all, or detect a US launch, if the US blinding effort is successful. I am not entirely sure what you want to discuss. As the linked article prominently features, the "blinding" part of the AirSea strategy is at this point entirely hypothetical (outside of the use of nuclear weapons), and would require, to quote the article, "disproportionately costly (and vulnerable)" investments, and further: "[..] the cost of AirSea Battle is likely to be prohibitive. [..] it remains a largely notional concept". The idea of an conventional anti naval access denial system is ludicrous and as realistic as SDI was in the 80s. I understand your argument of a risk of escalation into nuclear use. However the reasoning appears to be way too complicated. Rather than a hypothetical, ridiculously sophisticated conventional anti denial system, a comparatively much cheaper nuclear strike in space is more likely to escalate a possible conventional war. Paradoxically, nuclear attacks in space are actually the least likely nuclear action for escalation, because most rockets have limited fueled ranges, which means that if you launch a rocket on any trajectory that doesn't fly on an optimal path towards the other country, it's very easy to see (within 20-30 seconds of launch, in fact) that the strike is not directed at the other country. I didn't mean it would trigger a full out second strike. But both China and the US could consider a nuclear strike in space against the other communication infrastructure. Which would then lower the restraint against surface strikes, for example for area denial in little / not populated ares, or warning shots. I was talking more about gradual escalation from a conventional into a nuclear war, not instant MAD.
That's a good point, but generally speaking, reaching towards nuclear strikes in space is less likely than conventional strikes against the other nation's communications infrastructure. It's those sorts of conventional strikes that we should be worried about.
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On August 14 2012 17:02 Aerisky wrote:I feel considerably smarter/better-learned after reading through this thread. It's like general but with only intelligent and well-articulated opinions for the most part. Some posts I do disagree with, but overall really interesting thread
Thanks!
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A full on war will probably not happen between USA and China. It will be more of an economic war, war of attrition and war on geopolitical dominance. A war involving the military will probably favor the US because China's military technology is not nearly as advanced as the US.
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Wouldn't China just need to ask for the money that USA owes? That would instantly win a war. US bankrupt, gg
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