What's prevented the further use of nuclear weapons in modern warfare?

What's prevented the further use of nuclear weapons in modern warfare?

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> not using MAD
Can't believe (((whites))) are co cucked that they fear their own weapon.

They are very very very very very very deadly no matter how they are fired/dropped/detonated, and the impact of one will cause the launch of another and the launch of another until down the line you have something less akin to a war and more akin to the greatest genocide mankind has ever committed against itself.

It isn't something to be taken lightly in any kind of warfare, now that even North Korea is nuclear hot.

Dumb fucker poster

Fear of escalation.

No it's basically unitateral confirmed fact one nuke goes off, someone outside of the political intentions of the party involved will counter strike. Both countries get nuked. Millions are dead in each nation, nobody wins.But the allies of those nations will, indeed, also take advantage to support their ally militarily.

There is no other code or procedure for a nuclear weapon to be used by a nation for another not to react with extreme prejudice for killing so many of their own civilians.

It is an unprecedented population leveling situation.

Stigma of the after effects. They kill long after the war is already over and the thats bad.

I could see someone like Stalin or Mao just saying fuck it at the face of impending doom and just order an all out.

Do you fags actually believe that if the Americans dropped a single nuke in Afghanistan or Iraq tomorrow that everyone would actually start launching nukes?

Of course fucking not.

I don't think that Stalin ever really had access to long-range nuclear weapons. It was under Kruschev that the Soviets started to get ICBM's and long-range bombers that could strike the continental US. If the US leadership had been willing to accept the human cost, they probably would have won the war if they had attacked during Stalin's term.

>Do you fags actually believe that if the Americans dropped a single nuke in Afghanistan or Iraq tomorrow that everyone would actually start launching nukes?

It isn't that America would be nuked, it's that say North Korea, would react according to themselves with our ally, South Korea.

If South Korea is hit, South Korean allies must engage war with North Korea, which is nuclear hot with an unknown amount of detonation bombs, air drop bombs, or just missiles with nuclear capability.

China is one of them.

The risk of killing millions already, with the potential ramifications?

Are you an idiot? Is faggot your best argument? Where the hell did you learn launching a nuclear weapon is ever at all a good idea and not a last resort? Were you homeschooled?

No, but it would ruin them diplomatically.

Escalation is only a thing between two nuclear powers, but the US or someone else punching downward with a nuke would at best result in years of economic sanctions.

>Do you fags actually believe that if the Americans dropped a single nuke in Afghanistan or Iraq tomorrow that everyone would actually start launching nukes?

It wouldn't necessarily be the start of a war, but it would put everybody else on edge and increase the odds of a nuclear war in the future.

>economic sanctions
>against America

Yes. There would literally be no other choice for the UN to do but to put enormous economic sanctions on the United States regardless of the consequences. The consequences were made up when the responsibility was held and the launch codes confirmed.

>North Korea
>Attacking South Korea because of events in the Middle East

Kim is a crazy motherfucker, but not that crazy.

Why would he destroy his future because of something that happened that doesn't affect him?

Any nation putting economic sanctions in place against America would simply be hurting their own economy.

Well, the UN would probably write a very strongly worded letter about it. But generally speaking, "international law" is whatever the USA decides it to be.

But we are the UN™

>Kim is a crazy motherfucker, but not that crazy.
They are practicing drills of ballistic missiles that can carry their nukes near South Korea. They are looking for a reason to cause war with South Korea and have been since peace talks deteriorated years back.

A South Korean ally committing a humanitarian crisis would ultimately not be unreasonable. And China is, regardless, a North Korean ally.

So launching a nuke could also, disregarding the inevitable sanctions, destroy the American economy and kill enormous loads of innocent people.

>Any nation putting economic sanctions in place against America would simply be hurting their own economy.
>The consequences were made up when the responsibility was held and the launch codes confirmed.

>Any nation putting economic sanctions in place against America would simply be hurting their own economy.

Countries would be willing to harm their own economies for something that important.

Nukes are a very different level of rule breaking.

God damn UN preventing us from killing a million souls without consequences.

Human sanity.

No they wouldn't.

The ONLY thing that prevents the US from spamming nukes against anybody it doesn't like is fear of Russia retaliating.

Unless it was justified as a retaliatory attack for something equally devastating, even the US's closest trading partners would strongly condemn any use of nuclear weapons, which would result in economic sanctions as well as possibly even the dissolution of NATO.

That's why the US using a nuke for unprovoked reasons would be bad for EVERYONE. It would, indeed, hurt the world economy, but that's what would happen.

>The ONLY thing that prevents the US from spamming nukes against anybody it doesn't like is fear of Russia retaliating.
>the only

This is false

>Unless it was justified as a retaliatory attack

Only a state taking responsibility for firing a nuclear weapon on US soil could launching a nuke be ever justifiable in action.

Why are you arguing this? This is inarguable. It cannot be argued.

MAD

And to be quite honest, it would be the best thing for everyone if we could get rid of this silly "NO NUKES EVER" taboo. We're creating a scenario where ANY use of nuclear weapons leads to holocaust. Even if a tactical nuke is used in battle in some far off corner of the world, it would (in today's politcal situation) lead to nations launching their nukes for fear of being the last one to the ball. We need to destroy the taboo, make it possible for small nukes to be used without having to pull out the big boys.

That is just plain incorrect. Public opinion matters, and the PR nightmare that would result from nuke usage would ripple into the economy in devastating ways. That, and public opinion, are way stronger than "now the Russians have free license to nuke us," though as someone previous said, one bomb used in anger would certainly open the way for other countries to feel justified in using them.

Are you guys posting from the 80s or something?

>if we could get rid of this silly "NO NUKES EVER" taboo

They are population center decimating weapons hot all over the place ready to be launched on command

How the fuck do you get rid of that stigma?

You're more fucking retarded than the baby boomer politicians who were snorting up to getting them used and killing everyone you knew.

There hasn't been a major war since the invention of nukes.

All of the wars fought since the end of WWII have been fought for the sake of fighting, because of the domestic political effects of war. The goal was always to have a long war, not to end it in an instant. When WWIII finally happens, expect the bomb to drop.

There have been many occasions in the past few decades where the US could have used tactical nuclear weapons to make things easier for itself but chose not to specifically because of fear of escalation which might lead to retaliation.

>There have been many occasions in the past few decades where the US could have used tactical nuclear weapons to make things easier for itself

*kill millions of people and fuck themselves over royally on an international and geopolitical level

>They are population center decimating weapons hot all over the place ready to be launched on command

Exactly why a solution to destroy the taboo must be found, to allow for the mistake (Because there will one day be a mistake made by someone, somewhere in the world that causes a nuclear detonation) without said mistake leading to holocaust.

Define "Major War"

>Exactly why a solution to destroy the taboo must be found, to allow for the mistake

No there shouldn't be responsibility compromising code. You launch a one note genocide you pay for committing it, don't like it, don't commit it. You're stricter on drugs than you are existential threats

>Do you fags actually believe that if the Americans dropped a single nuke in Afghanistan or Iraq tomorrow that everyone would actually start launching nukes?
Actually, I'd bet good odds on the Russians dropping a tac nuke somewhere in Syria as a response.

There's very few jobs, in conventional warfare, that you can't do just as well with conventional weapons, as with a nuke. Provided you aren't trying to ruin a city or bust a bunker half a mile underground, nukes, despite all the effort to make it otherwise, are just not particularly useful in the sort of warfare we see today - and at the same time, are really, really scary.

No one's nuked anyone else for over 70 years, and those first two were rather unique. Dropping a nuke on people, even a tactical one, risks normalizing that activity. ...and folks want that about as much as they'd want to see nerve gas normalized again.

If the US had used nukes in Korea, I honestly don't think many people would have complained. Nukes also could have been used against North Vietnam. They also could have been used against Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. Hell, if not for the Soviet Union pledging retaliation, they might have just nuked Castro as well.

>If the US had used nukes in Korea, I honestly don't think many people would have complained

Are you fucking homeschooled

I meant some leader like them that given the context and opportunity would say fuck it and just drop the bombs.

Crazy homicidal, suicidal dictators are not rare...

>America drops tons of napalm on civilians
>No one bats an eye

>America drops a single nuke on enemy forces
>This is the line in the sand

Why?

My point is that the biggest deterrent to using nukes has always been fear of escalation. If you start throwing nukes at people, sooner or later somebody is going to start throwing nukes right back at you.

Homeschool-accusations are not arguments.

If the US had used nukes in Korea, I honestly don't think many people would have complained

Because even enough napalm could not meet the destructive potential of one nuclear bomb in a populated area. That, and I am sure the Soviets had nuclear capabilities of some kind and Korea was an ally.

It wasn't worth the risk so they didn't take it.

You think you're smarter than people who have their power to give launch codes. You are not.

>Homeschool-accusations are not argument

Yes, they are.

Wouldn't have helped in either Korea or Vietnam, since the goal was conversion, not genocide, and it woulda won the battle to lose the Cold War to boot, as it would have turned the entire world against the US. (Really, to do anything for Korea, you would had to nuke the shit out of all of China.)

There's similar issues with Castro - at least before the Russians started setting up nukes there, but nuking Havana back then would've resulted in a dead president (er, either another dead one, or one dead sooner.) No one in America would have put up with that travesty at the time, too many Americans, especially among those in charge, had their honeymoons there before the revolution.

Beating Saddam Hussein couldn't have possibly gone any smoother than it did (hell, it went much smoother than anyone expected), so I've no idea why you'd even suggest nukes. The only problem there was the aftermath, in which nukes wouldn't helped at all.

Total war, almost never happens, and there's few other situations where wiping out cities is at all advantageous. Remember, war is generally politics by other means. It's about achieving a goal, not just about killing more of them than they kill of you.

>as much as they'd want to see nerve gas normalized again
too bad it already has been in syria

Muh feel

...

>Because even enough napalm could not meet the destructive potential of one nuclear bomb in a populated area.

Are you fucking homeschooled?

Strategic Bombing has WORSE results on the targets than single nuclear bombs

>It has been estimated, for example, that the same fire ferocity and damage produced at Hiroshima by one 16-kiloton nuclear bomb from a single B-29 could have instead been produced by about 1,200 tons/1.2 kilotons of incendiary bombs from 220 B-29s distributed over the city.

fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/effects/eonw_7.pdf#zoom=100

anesi.com/ussbs01.htm

marshall.csu.edu.au/Marshalls/html/WWII/USSBS_Summary.html

I mean, technically speaking, the firebombings of Tokyo during WW2 killed more than both of the nukes combined and nobody gives a shit about those either.

I should clarify what I meant by that.

The US wouldn't have dropped the bombs in Korea. Instead, they would have dropped the bombs in China in the areas that I have circled in red here. That would have prevented China from sending soldiers to reinforce North Korea during the war.

Given the immediate response to that, which nearly lead to a US land invasion, and kinda put the whole civil war on pause while the inspectors went over it with a fine tooth comb, and resulted in the Syrian government returning their entire sarin supply to Britain, clearly it's not.

Suffice to say, nerve gas is much easier to produce, but it makes the world come down on you pretty hard, lest it was done with a superpower's approval, such as with Iraq->Iran and the kurds.

Though, if you look into the results of the UN investigation of the Syrian incident, there's some kind of interesting stuff...

Feel

Destruction made does not equate context later. Nobody would fire bomb for that reason, particularly in the conexf you want it to be.

Everyone disagrees with you, you lost the argument, nukes won't be on the table any time soon

Vaporizing a million innocent people shouldn't be considered

"""innocent"""

Yes

Common sense

...

>does not equate context later.

Srupidiry

>nukes won't be on the table any time soon

Both the US and Russia have begun complete overhauls of their nuclear triad systems. And Britain has elected to build a new line of nuclear missile launching submarines as well. Government's do not spend so much money on systems that they plan to never ever use. They might hope that they never have to use them, but if the moment ever came, they would.

>Government's do not spend so much money on systems that they plan to never ever use.
What is the Cold War...

It's called an arms race, it's, oddly, maintained to keep the peace. In that sense, I suppose it is used. When it comes to the military, governments build all sorts of shit they never intend to use.

They very much intend to use these systems. They HOPE that they don't have to, but if the day ever came, they would.

youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=ho9mfuxuI18

Yeeeah... Maybe you should look into just how dilapidated our nuclear launch system actually is, after a half-century of cold war.

Also ironic to be posting this on the internet. Originally a quarter-trillion dollar military data backup in case of MAD, that in the end, they had to find some other use for.

I'm not saying it's impossible that one day we'll be forced to use these things (and likely find they aren't working so well), but they are built specifically to prevent the other side from making their use necessary. They are first and foremost, a deterrent, and many of them have decayed into scary facades of their former selves.

Hillary not being president.

Tactical nuclear war makes conventional warfare almost completely redundant.
You nuke the enemy base, and your army advances, the enemy responds by nuking your army. You nuke their launch posts so that they can't nuke your armies, they respond by nuking your launch posts so that you can't destroy their nukes. Both sides start launching all their nukes to make sure their enemy doesn't prevent them from launching their own nukes.
That is nuclear war.

When you choose to build these machines, you implicitly accept the possibility that you may one day be called upon to use them.

If you have to use military equipment, then it's failed it's most important job.

internet would have been developed eventually anyway

Deterrence is based on the idea that the machines WILL be used if certain conditions are met.

>(and likely find they aren't working so well)
Which is why they're replacing and/or upgrading almost all nuclear weapon delivery systems.
armscontrol.org/factsheets/USNuclearModernization

Nukes are an instrument of diplomacy, not an instrument of war.

That applies to the entire military.

They're both

Nukes are a meme.

Firebombing is where it's at.

they're old and outdated

Ultimately it doesn't matter. You can bomb a country so thoroughly there are no cities left using either method.

There's actually been limited need, on top of the political issues. That's probably the main reason.

We just don't need to use nukes for the sort of wars we've had since WW2. Some talk was made about using them in Vietnam, but the way Vietnamese forces were laid out would've rendered nukes inefficient at killing them while justifying China or Russia slipping them a few backhandedly to retaliate with. (Which could have destroyed nearly all US forces in South Korea, since those were bunched together.)

>They are looking for a reason to cause war with South Korea and have been since peace talks deteriorated years back.
Unlikely. What's more likely is that they're making themselves un-attackable as a result of what we did to Saddam.

Why use nukes when you can use drones?

First it has to be proven that nuclear weapons actually exist.

what do you guys think of china's no-first-strike policy? do you think they would really stick to that if the west invades them?

What are the videos and films we have of nuclear explosions then?

Communists are liars of the highest order. Letting them enter the economic markets will be the doom of the western world.

ignore the deniers and flat earth society, they're trolls. We didn't land on the moon to them, either.

Sign should read:

Keep Calm
I have a
Tactical
Nuke
> inb4 grammar nazi; I'm a Grammar American

Nuclear radiation, if nukes were just kabooms there would be crater all over this planet.

The H-bomb had a big role in that. It was bigger and meaner than the atom bombs so either side in the Cold War had to stock up. But ironically both sides recognized they were too fucking powerful to have much practical military use. Their best use was as a mutual deterent.

Prior to that, a number of politicians and military personnel saw A-bombs as just another conventional weapon and seriously debated whether or not to introduce it to the battlefield. Of course, that would have normalized their use and made for much harsher wars.

This is a good point, in a round about way.

A Nuclear explosion has 3 components:
1. Explosion
2. Shockwave
3. Fallout.

If an army invades your country, and you nuke your own country to kill them, the cloud of radiation & fallout still might travel to another country. YOUR country is responsible for it. Granted, at that point you don't give a fuck since you were invaded, but you sure will later.
The collateral damage (for years after) is a huge liability. Generals don't give a shit about it, but politicians sure do.

Risk of escalation, Immediate and Future
- M.A.D., and if you use a nuke today it sets precedent for when a nuke can be used tomorrow. If we had nuked North Korea, China probably would nuked Vietnam in the 70's.

Lack of reasonable opportunities after the Korean War
-After the Korean war, there hasn't really been a conventional war of conquest by a nuclear state against a non-nuclear state that had the means to challenge or defeat the aggressor through conventional arms. The Soviets aren't going to waste a nuke on Khandahar, and the Americans aren't going to waste a nuke on North Vietnam if they wouldn't do so on North Korea. The closest we've come would be Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and even then it was threatened as a last resort.

Lack of Will
- The only time a nuclear power would nuke a non-nuclear power is in the case of being overrun, ala Israel, and in forcing subjugation by threat of extermination. Since the West was really the only imperialistic society at the time with far flung colonies, and they decided after World War 2 that they weren't in the genocide game any more, there isn't a use for nukes by their holders that their people are willing to accept that isn't a total war or near total war scenario.

Lack of Effect
- Unless you want to destroy a city, or can catch an unbuttoned armour / mechanised / infantry division by surprise a nuke doesn't actually kill much. Outside of use against whole cities or vulnerable massed troops there isn't a target worth their expenditure in materiel terms. Against modern troops in NBC protected armoured or mechanised formations nukes lose a lot of their effect. Only the fireball kills, so casualties are limited to about a mile or two in diameter, which isn't that big in a modern battlefield.

The only situation I can think of where a nuke could achieve some kind of success that isn't Armageddon incarnate is the Russian policy of nuclear de-escalation. Like firing a gun in the air during a street brawl.

If anything Stalin would use them in limited targeted fashion to save the situation and force enemy to retreat.
He was ruthless, not retarded.

How many countries, if attacked by another country with nukes, do you think would actually retaliate with their own? I don't get why they'd do that.
The whole point of threatening to retaliate is so that your enemies don't dare launch, but if they do anyway, what do you stand to gain from carrying out your threat? The only thing you'd accomplish is wrecking your opponent's country just like they wrecked yours, which I guess means they probably can't invade/occupy you afterwards, but isn't being occupied preferable to leaving the populace to fend for themselves and destroying even more of civilisation and the environment?

I suppose if your nukes hit some of the enemies, then you could spare your country some damage, and if it's a smaller nuclear exchange or it simply doesn't end the world because pop culture isn't reality, you can end any further threat your opponent poses and receive aid from other nations instead.
Anyway, what actually are the chances that a full-on nuclear holocaust would be the end of modern civilisation anyway? Is it just an exaggeration or could it actually happen?

The point of a retaliatory strike is to hit as many of the enemy's remaining warheads and prevent further strikes from happening. Even a full-scale nuclear exchange isn't going to see every single warhead deployed simultaneously, so the idea is to knock out as many of the other guy's warheads as possible (along with their ability to deploy those warheads) so that they can't keep killing you (or retaliate).

Plus, hitting strategic targets may not prevent your country from being fucked, but at the very least it can inflict enough damage to the enemy's infrastructure that they're unable to follow up on the damage they've done to your forces.

>what do you guys think of china's no-first-strike policy?

China doesn't have the capacity to mount a first strike in the first place. It's pretty easy to promise to not do something when you don't have the ability in the first place.

>How many countries, if attacked by another country with nukes, do you think would actually retaliate with their own?

Why wouldn't they retaliate? They wouldn't really even have a choice. Plus, there would be individual commanders in charge of submarines, destroyers, etc who would order retaliation even if the national government did not.

Are you implying China isn't a nuclear power? What? Even North Korea is capable of firing one off of a ballistic missile now WITH economic sanctions on them.

The only way they're not capable is the problem all states have from using nukes. Fucking why, exactly, should I fire a nuclear weapon?

They don't exist.

*xfiles theme playing softly*

youtube.com/watch?v=5gD_TL1BqFg