posted
From the early 1950's to the late 1980's the US and the USSR avoided a hot war by use of a policy known as Mutual Assured Destruction--or MAD. In other words, if one country attacked they knew that the other would retaliate with such overwhelming force as to destroy each other completely.
If the Prime Minister of Isreal were to announce that, while he loathes war and cries for the children involved, if one nuclear weapon were to go off in Isreal--the grang and glorious history of Persia would be ended in a firestorm of unprecedented destruction. While they would apologize for the loss of life involved, especially those in neighboring countries who would be victimized by the nuclear fallout, remember it was not Isreal's decision to launch those miissiles. It is the decision of the Iranian leaders.
Would such a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction of the Iranian state be effective?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
The effectiveness of MAD decreases as the number of countries involved in it increases. It worked for the US and USSR because there were no other big power players. Right now, if Israel were to announce that policy, I have a feeling we would see something a lot like pre-WWI Europe emerge. Entangling alliances would likely occur which would in the end give one nuclear missile the power to destroy a rather large portion of the world. Just imagine a Dr. Strangelove-esque mishap occuring, except instead of simply the US and Russia getting obliterated, it would be the entire Middle East, most of Europe, almost assuredly the United States, and what the heck, throw in China and Russia for good measure. Man, now that I think about it, that's kinda scary. What would World War I have been like if nuclear weapons had been around?
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:What would World War I have been like if nuclear weapons had been around?
My guess is that it wouldn't have happened. Ideas of war were different then. A grab for land seems less attractive when the land is going to be radioactive waste land.
As for the initial question, my guess is no. Also, how likely is it that an Islamic nation would nuke Israel? I doubt that many Muslims would look kindly on nuclear explosions destroying their holy sites and killing the Palestinians.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Seatarsprayan: Ironically, MAD doesn't work with actual madmen.
Heh, I think this is closest to the mark.
MAD worked in many ways because the leaders of America and Russia, in their hearts, were often times trying as hard as possible to avert war. Or at least, the American president was (and often the Russian as well).
MAD would NOT work in the Middle East. Everyone over there is trigger happy. But more than that, it'll be a LOT easier for Iran to wipe Israel off the map than the other way around. Especially if Iran manages to smuggle nukes into Israel via terrorist smugglers that plant a nuke in every major Israeli city, and then near Israeli military sites... The majority of the Israeli population would be eradicated, and in a first strike measure, it might just kill their ability to strike back with any effectiveness. In essence, it wouldn't be mutually assured.
Israel is small, sometimes it comes down to a numbers game. It takes relatively few nukes to destroy Israeli in comparison to what it'd take for Israel to wipe out Iran, or especially the entire Middle East. They'd never be able to get that many nukes off all at once before they werew wiped off the map. Middle Eastern cities are too spread out geographically. Israel would need a HUGE silo site to have enough launch vehicles to kill everyone at once.
But quite frankly, the real reason why it wouldn't work is if Israel threatens to blow Iran off the face of the earth if they are ever nuked, then all an enemy of Iran has to do is nuke an Israeli city. One rogue Russian nuke in Tel Aviv means Iran gets blown to bits, at which point the entire Middle East mobilizes for war. Saudi Arabia's military is nothing to shake a stick at. They are well trained, and have billions in American made weapons that are at least equal to Israel's. After losing one of their major cities, I have to imagine they'll feel twitchy, and anyone who tries to invade them will get nuked.
It's game over at that point. I'm wondering how Russia and China come into play here. If Israel nukes Iran, China loses a huge chunk of it's oil. It's not as if they will absorb Iran or anything, most likely, the Kurdish west will break away, and Pakistan and Iraq would split the difference. Russia sees itself as the new Middle East peace power player, leaning towards the side of the Arabs. I'm wondering what they would do in retaliation.
In summary from this long post (much longer with more rambling than I originally intended): Alliances are already formed. I think MAD is a horrible policy for Israel to undertake. It gives an overwhelming advantage to Arab nations.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
God, my mind just reels to imagine anyone reaching a point, given what we know about nuclear weapons and fallout etc., that they would consider 'pressing the button' over something so idiotic as land or religion or sheer pigheadedness.
It makes me furious.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Luckily it will be some decades before Iran would have sufficient nuclear weapons to create a MAD situation with even a small state like Israel.
For this reason, I think it important Israel create a credible threat to annihilate much of Iran in response to any nuclear attack using an Iranian-sourced weapon, by diplomatic statement and detonation of a thermonuclear device (to emphasize technical superiority).
This would, sadly, have significant internation repercussions for Israel, but I feel the current period is the time when those international repercussions would be among the least. The best time would likely be after the next President has had time to settle himself in office, and the US should be kept fully informed.
It is necessary to keep the perceived costs to Iran much higher than the perceived benefits, which are unfortunately quite high. The US's nuclear capability has long since become irrelevant to their considerations; it is nearly inconceivable we would use a nuclear weapon in response to a single nuclear detonation in a third party state not indicative of a broader offensive. Our retaliation would be massive, but it would not be nuclear. In some ways this is a wonderful thing as it saves the world from destruction, but it also removes the credible threat we long used to contain aggressor states.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
"Russia sees itself as the new Middle East peace power player...I'm wondering what they would do in retaliation."
Same thing as Exxon: chortle with the glee of a Goldfinger after successfully nuking FortKnox when the world was still on the gold standard and the US held most of the reserves. With SaudiArabia, Iran, Kuwait, UnitedArabEmirates, Iraq, and Qatar out of the oil export business, GazProm would gain an effective monopoly on oil.
Russia currently exports a bit more than a sixth of the supplies provided by the 14 largest oil-exporting nations. And with nearly half of the oil exports from those combined nations taken off the market, Russia would control a third of the oil provided by those remaining nations which export more than a million barrels of oil per day. GazProm wouldn't even hafta squeeze to make oil importers bid up the market well past even Exxon's most avaricious dreams.
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"""""""If the Prime Minister of Isreal were to announce that, while he loathes war and cries for the children involved, if one nuclear weapon were to go off in Isreal--the grang and glorious history of Persia would be ended in a firestorm of unprecedented destruction. While they would apologize for the loss of life involved, especially those in neighboring countries who would be victimized by the nuclear fallout, remember it was not Isreal's decision to launch those miissiles. It is the decision of the Iranian leaders."""""
If one nuclear weapon went off in israel, there wouldn;t be enough of israel left to destroy anything. The majority of the country would be a dust cloud.
Posts: 242 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
MAD wouldn't work because of terrorism. It's not enough to prevent countries from attacking one another, when individuals or other organizations can do the job themselves. You can't assure the destruction of a shadowy organization like Al Qaeda no matter how many nukes you have.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:What reason WOULDN'T be idiotic for pushing the button?
I knew someone was going to say this as soon as I wrote the post. The answer is, of course, there is no good reason: since most wars are land, religion (or ideology) or sheer pigheadedness, I intended to cover the bases with those. Nuclear weapons are stunningly irrational. But then I suppose the technology begets the relevent weaponry and Humans, being humans, define themselves by their weapons and tools. (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age...)
quote:Same thing as Exxon: chuckle with the glee of a Goldfinger after successfully nuking Fort Knox when the world was still on the gold standard and the US held most of the reserves.
I don't think many people would be chuckling with glee about a nuclear war, regardless of the benefits. The moral implications aside (if you can put them aside), the cleanup costs, the damage to the environments, the disruption of the way the world works right now... anger, retaliation, illness- I think that any economic rewards of a nuclear war would look rather puny compared with the costs.
quote:You can't assure the destruction of a shadowy organization like Al Qaeda no matter how many nukes you have.
There's no return address, therefore no deterrent. No, using nuclear weapons on terrorism is impossible, which might be why people have started to use it more and more.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Teshi & Tres: there is deterrence, because terrorist organizations are incapable of separately making nuclear weapons, and nuclear material (even post explosion) can be traced to its source reactor. The deterrence is not agains the terrorist organizations, but against the potential supplier states.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
If you're gonna pretend that any ol' body can buy a nuke and sneak it into any ol' place that they please, Tresopax, ya might as well give up on the idea of having any future.
"If one nuclear weapon went off in Israel, there wouldn't be enough of Israel left to destroy anything.
Not quite: making megaton warheads is a lot more difficult than making kiloton bombs; and one would still need more than a single megaton-range explosion. But your statement is still close enough to being true in practical considerations that an Israeli policy of retaliatory strikes would have to have the default mode of launch-on-detection of incoming missiles.
The distance between Jerusalem and Tehran is ~962miles/1548kilometres. If you zoom out this map using the 3rd zoom button from the bottom, you'll notice that the red star (in the lake between Aqabah and Balad in Iraq) is at the midpoint between Jerusalem and Tehran. Zoom in with the 4th zoom button from the bottom, and you'll see that Kermanshah,Iran is ~100miles/161kilometers from the Iran-Iraq border (nearly)on the direct flightpath between Tehran and Jeruselum. Kermanshah is ~713miles/1147kilometres from Jerusalem; so the distance between Iran and Israel is ~613miles/986kilometres.
For MediumRangeBallisticMissiles having terminal*velocity of Mach6 or **4200milesperhour/7100kilometersperhour, the flight-time of an MRBM between Iran and Israel would be ~0.146hours. Since Israel isn't big enough to await confirmation of a nuclear explosion on Israeli soil should probable MRBMs appear on their warning systems, Israel would have less than 8minutes45seconds to decide on whether to launch a retaliatory strike; at least for all practical purposes.
A MiddleEast MAD policy would almost guarantee that any detection error on the part of nuclear powers in the the region would cause a "retaliatory"strike even when there had been no first-strike launched. ie A MiddleEast MAD policy would far far far more likely cause a regional nuclear war than prevent a war.
* Couldn't readily find maximum flight-speed. So my guesstimated flight-time is highly likely to be an over-estimate, even considering the time it would take to accelerate an MRBM to top speed during the boost phase.
** Using a Mach1 of ~700mph/1183kph. The speed of Mach1 changes with altitude. I'm assuming a mid-stratospheric Mach1 speed purely for simplicity cuz I haven't a clue as to what the actual flight path would be other than mostly stratospheric or higher.
posted
aspectre is quite correct; a nuke of small size, as is all a country like Iran will be able to assemble for decades, would of course be devastating to Israel, but would leave most of the country intact.
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I'm wondering how hard it would really be to steal or buy a larger bomb from either Russia, or one of the -stans that still have sizeable stores of them.
One Tsar Bomba should be enough to knock out, or at least pacify most of Israel. It was a 50MT nuclear bomb, whose mushroom cloud was 40 kilometers wide, whose blast damage could be felt as far away as 1,000 kilometers (breaking windows and such from atmospheric pressure), and could even cause third degree burns 100 kilometers away.
It's too unwieldly to ever be practically used by a terrorist organization or Arab state really, but one bomb is enough to wipe out a nation as small as Israel, just depends on which bomb you use.
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quote:Teshi & Tres: there is deterrence, because terrorist organizations are incapable of separately making nuclear weapons, and nuclear material (even post explosion) can be traced to its source reactor. The deterrence is not agains the terrorist organizations, but against the potential supplier states.
Yes, but terrorists don't need nuclear weapons to attack people, as 9/11 showed.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Since you were talking about MAD, you were talking about nukes. Furthermore, I'm quite happy with the fact that deterrence does work to prevent terrorist organizations from getting nukes, because the alternative is that terrorists are able to get nukes.
While 9/11 was horrific, it barely registered on the scale of potential damage.
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posted
I've always had a theory that MAD worked before because of the predominant religious thinking in the US and the Soviet Union.
Bear with me for a moment. The US, as a predominantly Christian nation, understands that mutual destruction means that a lot of us will go to meet our maker and have A LOT of explaining to do. The Soviet Union espoused atheism as its religion. By that belief, assured destruction means blammo, everything is over, no bonus rounds, no reward, no anything.
What scares me about some of the more fundamental Islamic countries getting the Bomb is the idea that a person killed in war or Jihad against the infidels goes straight to Paradise and is rewarded with a flock of virgins and eternal pleasure. MAD to them may mean death to their enemies and eternal reward for the martyred Muslims.
So, no, I don't think that MAD is a deterrent in the Middle East.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Since you were talking about MAD, you were talking about nukes.
I don't think the idea behind MAD is just to stop nuclear attacks. I think the purpose of MAD is to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent to stop war in general between two powers. And while it might prevent states from fighting directly, MAD in the Middle East is not going to stop terrorists from waging a war. It would not stop the Palestinians from attacking Israel, for instance. Or the insurgency in Iraq. Or Iran from supporting either of those, unless someone is prepared to nuke Iran over supporting terrorists, and also receive a nuclear response from Iran.
MAD would mainly just make stopping these terrorists more difficult, because the risk of triggering a nuclear armaggedon for all parties would be around every corner for any state trying to fight terror.
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posted
Even under MAD states strongly considered a "salami slicing" approach: attacks too small to warrant nuclear response.
And of course, there's the huge tradition of proxy war, oddly similar to the substate battles in the middle east but fought between the USA and USSR on a much grander scale. While there was a minor conventional component, nobody labored under the delusion that MAD somehow stopped conventional warfare. This would have been difficult since proxy warfare with conventional weapons was proceeding literally all the time!
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posted
I believe, when it comes to many countries in the Middle East, a proxy war is already being fought. Now, with US presence in two Islamic states, we're direct, day-to-day, targets in it as well.
Lyr, you're right, but the guys in the Kremlin were the ones with their fingers on the button. Culturally, the Russians have always had a bittersweet, yet grim, view on life, but they've always held that even a bitter candy could be enjoyed.
I'm not so sure that some of the Muslim countries, or particularly their leaderships, have that same stake in the game of life.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote: While 9/11 was horrific, it barely registered on the scale of potential damage.
I hate to agree with that statement, but honestly on the grand scale, what's 2000 lives for a society who has nearly 300,000,000?
But on topic of this thread, MAD only worked in the cold war because both counties had the ability to completely destroy each other a few times over. The weapons that were made during the cold war (and would be the best grade of weapons that the middle east could get their hands on at this point) only detonated about 65% of the time (depending on which report your reading). Due to the likelihood of a weapon malfunction in order for MAD to be an effective theory, the two nations in question would both have to be armed well enough to destroy each other almost twice. To the best of my knowledge Israel and Iran are that well armed.
quote: I think the purpose of MAD is to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent to stop war in general between two powers.
MAD has nothing to do with anything except nuclear confrontation. MAD only works when the threat is in place were BOTH sides have the ability to instantly wipe the other side out if they wished to. It won't work with conventional or guerilla wars.
Posts: 1094 | Registered: Mar 2004
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1) Do not overestimate the maddness of Iran's president. Sure he foams at the mouth talking about the destruction of Isreal, and he is practically begging a US bombing of its facilities.
What would such a bombing result in? This rabid anti-isrealite would turn Iran into a military state capable of definding itself from the massive US and Isreali armies. He would demand powers to save his country, powers now held not by an elected congress, but by the religious leaders of his country. By being more zealous than the zealots, he will be able to do something his liberal predessor couldn't--break free of the Mullah's control. If he is able to walk the line between destruction and capitulation, his insanity may be the best thing for a secular, or relgiously free Iran.
2)Do not underestimate the pride Iranians have in their history. Sure, death may lead to heaven, but the loss of Persia and its history is something few Iranians would agree to. The loss of their own lives, and the lives of their enemies would be acceptable, but the guaranteed loss of their wives and children, fathers and mothers, would not be acceptable.
3) MAD is a policy not of fact but of perception. The general perception by most mid-Easterners is that the Massad and Isreali Army is very powerful and very good. Many believe that they were capable of causing 9/11 and blaming the poor Arabs. Those people would have no trouble believing that they could nuke all of Iran from some secret launch sites.
4) MAD is not a protection from terrorism, but from state launched nuclear annihilation.
5) Isreal has no reason to launch nuclear weapons against Iran. As such Iran needs no nuclear deterence from Isreal. So we are really talking about a 1/2MAD arrangement.
6) Here is the real question: The only way to make this work is if two nuclear superpowers agreed to automatically officiate the MAD doctrine. In other words, an agreement between Russia and the US (or CHINA and the US, or even RUSSIA and CHINA). Russia will attack Isreal if Iran is nuked by Isreal, and the US will level Iran if Isreal is nuked by Iran.
The only way this will get approve in the US is if the Christian Too-Far-Right realized that the end of the world could begin with a nuclear bomb going off on the literal plains of Armagedon.
And you were worried that Islamic Extremists would be the problem.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Russia and Iran would both fall on Iran's side. It'd be done to America almost alone to help Israel, and I can't imagine the American people are going to agree to a suicide pact.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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The more that Iranian President Ahmadinejad threatens and the more threatening he can make Iran appear, the more oil prices rise. Similarly, Dubya's campaign then decision to invade Iraq while continuing his "Axis of Evil" threats against Iran and NorthKorea bumped up oil prices ~50%.
And that Exxon executive ain't the only one chortling with delight at his reward. Nearly all of the rise between $35to$75 per barrel of oil is driven by speculators working for commercial banks and investment funds. The more belligerent Ahmadinejad and Dubya become with their threatening rhetoric, the more money those speculators make. Do you honestly think any of those speculators would care about killing millions of people? when they don't care about all the deaths from cold and starvation made possible by their overpricing of the fossil fuel feedstock needed to make energy/fertilizer/etc?
It ain't as if Russia's Gazprom or SaudiArabia's Aramco is gonna say, "Hey, $35 per barrel of crude is more than fair payment. So we're just gonna sell it at that price to refiners so they can sell their products at affordable prices. And you speculators can just stick your $75-per-barrel offers up where the sun don't shine."
Nope, they're all just gonna laugh all the way to the bank. No matter how many millions die, they'll shed only crocodile tears.
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