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Nuclear Strategy
Nuclear Strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies (plicy for the use of nuclear weapons) or the production and use of nuclear weapons.
Range of Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic
missiles and SS-5 intermediate-range ballistic
missiles, if launched from Cuba.
In the cold war, U.S. policy was for massive retaliation with Strategic Air Command bombers in the event of war with the USSR.
As a sub-branch of military strategy, Nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. Among the issues considered within nuclear strategy are:
1. under what conditions does it serve a nation's interest to develop nuclear weapons? 2. what types of nuclear weapons should be developed? 3. when and how should such weapons be used?
The cold war spawned a subculture of nuclear strategists who moved among jobs in academia, at think tanks and in government departments. Some (like Henry Kissinger and Herman Kahn) theorized on how to use nuclear weapons politically and militarily. They proposed various strategies for winning a nuclear war, including in sequence:
- managing escalation so that the weaker nation withdraws before a full exchange occurs;
- staging a massive first strike that preempts an effective response;
- launching a surgical first strike that destroys enemy leadership;
- a technological breakthrough that makes effective strategic defense possible.
Many strategists argue that nuclear strategy differs from other forms of military strategy because the immense and terrifying power of the weapons makes their use in seeking victory in a traditional military sense impossible. Perhaps counterintuitively, then, an important focus of nuclear strategy has been determining how to prevent (deter) their use.
Strategic Bombing and Tactical Bombing
- Strategic Bombing is a military strategy used in a total war style campaign that attempts to destroy the economic ability of a nation-state to wage war. It is a systematically organized and executed attack from the air. Strategic bombing missions usually attack targets such as factories, railroads, oil refineries and cities. The act of traveling to the target and dropping bombs, even if part of a strategic bombing campaign, is a tactical event. Strategic bombing aims to undermine a nation-state's ability to wage war, historically as a part of a total war strategy.
- Tactical Bombing is different from the tactical event of strategic bombing, which involves strategic bomber aircraft, cruise missiles, or fighter-bomber aircraft attacking targets determined during the organization of the strategic bombing campaign. Tactical bombers are mostly relatively small and tactical bombing missions attack targets such as troop concentrations, command and control facilities, airfields, and ammunition dumps. Tactical bombing aims to defeat individual enemy military forces while strategic bombing aims to undermine a nation-state's ability to wage war, historically as a part of a Total War strategy.
What's wrong
Opponents of Nuclear War have said the theory that Nuclear Explosions (depends how many and how power) could trigger a climatic disaster called "The Nuclear Winter". The Nuclear Winter may happen as a conseguence of the Stragegic Bombing. This theory holding that the smoke and dust produced by a large nuclear war would result in a prolonged period of cold on the earth. As result low temperatures and prolonged periods of darkness would obliterate plant life and seriously threaten the existence of the human species.
See: The Nuclear Winter, Carl Sagan, (1983)
Today
The end of the cold war eliminated the fear of a USSR - USA Military Nuclear confrontation. The danger now comes primarily from smaller and less stable nations in unstable areas of the world, they may develop or obtain nuclear weapons capabilities. Note that both the USA and Russia retain substantial forces...