Nuclear warfare

Nuclear war, or atomic war, is war involving combatants deploying nuclear weapons. The United States is the only nation to have actually used nuclear weapons in battle, having in 1945 dropped one on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki. However, the term is used mainly to discuss the thus-far hypothetical possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in a war involving two or more nuclear-armed parties.

During the Cold War the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) held that the large numbers of nuclear missiles held by the United States and its European allies, and Russia would maintain the peace. Such an exchange would have killed many millions of individuals directly and possibly induced a nuclear winter which could, in the worst-case scenario, have led to the death of a large portion of humanity and certainly the collapse of global civilization for decades if not centuries (see movie The Day After). The common fear that a full-scale nuclear war would have led to the extinction of humanity was fortunately not founded strongly in fact, however.

The idea that any nuclear conflict would escalate into massive destruction was a challenge for military strategists. This challenge was particularly severe for the United States and its NATO allies because it was believed until the 1970s that a Soviet tank invasion of Western Europe would quickly overwhelm NATO conventional forces, leading to the necessity of escalating to theater nuclear weapons.

A number of interesting concepts were developed. Early intercontinental ballistic missiles were inaccurate which lead to the concept of counter-city strikes - attacks directly on the enemy population leading to a collapse of the enemy will to fight, although it appears that this was the American interpretation of the Soviet stance while the Soviet strategy was never clearly anti-population. As missile technology improved the emphasis moved to counter-force strikes - attacking the enemy's means of waging war. This was the predominant doctrine from the late 1960s onwards. Additionally the development of warheads (certainly in the US) moved towards delivering a small explosive force more accurately and with a 'cleaner' blast (fewer long-lasting radioactive isotopes). In any conflict therefore, damage would have been initially limited to military targets, there may well have been 'witholds' for targets near civilian areas.

The argument was that the destruction of a city would be a military advantage to the attacked. The enemy had used up weapons and a threat in the destruction while the attacked was relieved of the need to defend the city and still had their entire military potential untouched.

Only if a nuclear conflict was extended into a number of 'spasm' strikes (followed by frenzied negotiations?) would direct strikes against civilians occur as the more accurate weapons would be expended early and if one side was 'losing' the potential for using less accurate submarine launched missiles would occur.

Of course, even "surgical" nuclear strikes against military targets were likely to cause death, destruction, and hardship on scales rarely approached in human history.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, conflict between the United States and Russia appears much less likely. Stockpiles of nuclear warheads are being reduced on both sides and tensions between them are much reduced. The the concern of political strategists have now shifted to other areas of the world.

Current fears of nuclear war are mainly centred around India (first test May 18, 1974, the "Smiling Buddha" test) and Pakistan (first test May 1998), two nations whose majority religions and histories, as well as a territorial dispute in Kashmir and mutual posession of substantial (though probably numbered in dozens rather than thousands) nuclear arsenals makes many extremely nervous. In the case of Pakistan, their unstable government and the threat of radical Islamists allied to Osama Bin Laden seizing power and thus control over the nuclear arsenal has raised additional fears, compunded by the fact that a senior member of the development program, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, is a strong Taliban sympathizer.

Another flashpoint which has analysts worried is a possible conflict between the United States and the People's Republic of China over Taiwan. Although economic forces have decreased the possibility of military conflict, there remains the worry that a move toward Taiwan independence could spin out of control.

In addition, there is the worry that so-called rogue states such as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea may acquire nuclear weapons or that nuclear terrorism by non-state organisations could well be more likely, as states posessing nuclear weapons are susceptible to retaliation in kind. Geographically-dispersed and mobile terrorist organisations are not so easy to discourage by the threat of retaliation. Furthermore, while the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War, it greatly increased the risk that former Soviet nuclear weapons might become available on the black market.

Glossary:

MIRV -- Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles, nuclear devices carried, usually ten or twelve at a time on a single ICBM, allowing a single launched missile to strike a handful of targets, and allowing a few missiles to strike several targets redundantly.
SALT I -- Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. A treaty signed by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in 1972, limiting the growth of US and Soviet missile arsenals.
SALT II -- A treaty designed to further limit the growth of US and Soviet missile arsenals.
START -- STrategic Arms Reductions Treaty -- A treaty proposed by Ronald Reagan to reduce the numbers of missiles and warheads.
INF -- Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987, which eliminated tactical ("battlefield") nuclear devices and GLCMs from Europe.
GLCM -- Ground Launched Cruise Missile.
ALCM -- Air Launched Cruise Missile.
SLCM -- Submarine Launched Cruise Missile.
SLBM -- Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile.
Ballistic Missile -- A missile using a ballistic trajectory involving a significant ascent and descent including suborbital and partial orbital trajectories.
Cruise Missile -- A missile using a low altitude trajectory intended to avoid detection by radar systems. Cruise missiles have shorter range and lower payloads than ballistic missiles, usually, and are not know to carry MIRVs.
MAD -- Mutual Assured Destruction. The doctrine of preventing nuclear war by creating a situation in which any use of nuclear weapons would result in the certain destruction of both the attacker and the defender.
ABM -- Anti-Ballistic Missile. Missiles designed to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles. Can also refer to the ABM treaty, signed by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, which halted the development and use of such systems due to fears that such systems could counter the MAD scenario and, thereby, increase the likelihood that an ABM protected country would use their nuclear weapons aggressively.
SDI -- Strategic Defense Initiative, more commonly known as Star Wars. A system proposed by Ronald Reagan to use space-based systems to detect, intercept and destroy ICBMs and MIRVs. Criticized for its costs, doubts that it would be effective, and concerns that it would violate the ABM treaty and offset MAD, it was not supported by the US Congress at that time.