The point is maximize tactical impact while minimizing emotional attachment? Biggest hit you can do without motivating nuclear escalation?
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
When nukes start to fly, the only thing that matters is Israeli’s favourite words: escalation dominance.
Not for the nuclear ladder. There’s no such thing as escalation dominance for MAD, just like how you can’t divide by 0. Your own existential erasure for the other side’s is infinite negative payoff. Discussing in those terms doesn’t even make any sense. Why pursue maximal odds of MAD escalation spiral when a much more selective tactical response essentially ends the ability for the other side to fight.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Any nuke use between nuclear armed powers inevitably lead to MAD if allowed to escalate proportionally.
Nobody wants MAD, but if one side has achieved the kind of mental retardation needed to think they can use nukes without triggering MAD, then rationality and proportionality simply will not work on them, because in that scenario being rational and proportional will simply reinforcement their idiotic notion that they can somehow ‘win’ a nuclear exchange and live to brag about it, and thus encourage them to use nukes more.
The only chance to stop MAD after the nuclear threshold has been breached is to present the other side with such overwhelming evidence that they cannot possibly conclude anything other than to realise that even the smallest step forwards on the nuclear escalation ladder means MAD.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the ‘game’ and objective if you think nuclear retaliation is about ‘winning’. If the other side has used nukes first, the overriding objective for China is to stop any further climbing of the nuclear escalation ladder. The only remotely possible chance of doing that is to nuke the ladder and make it impossible for the other side to mistake the fact that the next step, however small, is MAD.
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You fundamentally misunderstand the difference between tactical and strategic nuclear escalation. You are not signaling that the next step is MAD if you go for Hawaii. Going for Hawaii itself is already a MAD trigger.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
No, you are falling into the logical fallacy of western ‘tactic’ nuclear bullshitary where they arbitrarily draw a line on what kind of nuclear retaliation is ‘acceptable’.
China has never signed onto that idiocy and never will. As far as China is concerned, nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons. There is no distinction between tactical or strategic weapons. You use nukes against China and China will nuke you right back. It doesn’t matter if you use puny tactical yield weapons, you are still eating megaton Chinese strategic nukes back in response.
This is why China has to nuke unquestionably American soil as a first response, to shatter all the logical fallacies western strategists and leaders have surrounded themselves with. Otherwise American leaders will continue to cling onto those fallacies and order more escalatory strikes against China thinking there is some magic threshold China will not dare to cross. That’s how you stumble into MAD.
And glassing Hawaii will not trigger MAD. You think America is going to see a handful of ICBMs heading to Hawaii and press the ‘reply all’ button? No. They are going to wait until those missiles land to make a decision because they can afford to wait and see before acting since their second strike capabilities are not at risk.
It’s when you see hundreds or even thousands of incomings that you are forced to respond before you can know the nature of the attack because if all those incomings are nuclear, you don’t get to strike back. That’s precisely the predicament China will be facing if the US crosses the nuclear threshold in any way. It’s one thing to deal with thousands of incoming US conventional cruise missiles, but how can China trust that all or even any of them are conventional if the US already used nukes?
The problem is that China currently doesn't have enough nukes to ensure the annihilation of CONUS. Should be sprinting to parity ASAP.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
China doesn't care for "tactical" or "strategic" nukes. There is no definition that divides the two. A nuke is a nuke, a nuke of any kind used against China will get a nuke is in return, it could 1000x bigger, it could be 100x bigger. A state capitol of significance needs to be glassed to make a point.
China is unlikely to restart the civil war till she has enough nukes for MAD.