China vs the United States (a war scenario) - Page 3

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.