🚀 go-pugleaf

Excerpts from netnews.sci.space.policy: 7-Jun-95 Re: Ballistic Missile
Defen.. by David Birdsey@cais3.cais 
> Yes, there is that assumption, although I'd be interested in what sources
> you have on defining such leaders as "irrational."  But to be "rational"
> in this sense only requires that the actor involved wishes to continue in
> existence.  Faced with a choice between tweaking the U.S. on the one hand
> by perhaps destroying a city and the end of national existence on the
> other hand from U.S. retailiation, I doubt even Qaddafi (or whatever the
> current spelling is) or young Kim would opt for a strike. 

  I wonder, even if some power nuked a large US city, if we would then 
launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against them....  The more that I 
think about it, the less likely it seems.  Nuclear weapons are mainly 
good at killing massive numbers of civilians, which would not be the goal
of a retaliatory strike...   I would guess either a limited nuclear 
attack on strategic military facilities, or maybe a large-scale conventional
attack on those same facilities, probably with an intent to kill the head
of state; sort of like the air war against Iraq; but on a more serious scale;
maybe a tactical nuclear strike with B-1's and B-2's, the whole "blow a 
SAM-Free corridor with SRAM's and nuke the shit out of military targets" thing.

    Certainly not an end-of-country-as-it-is-currently-known massive 
strategic nuclear strike.  The point of all of this is that an enemy
head of state might be able to convince themselves that they could 
weather the likely US response.  They might even be right.


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| Small towns in western Germany are |  Jake McGuire   |
| usually about ten kilotons apart   | mcguire@cmu.edu |
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