Ladas wrote:
Diamondeye wrote:
That's not going to happen. It's "at an appropriate time" and there's never going to be a time when the U.S. and Russia aren't the top tier of nuclear powers. Neither side is going to open their systems up to intrusion from the other.
I agree, and I was a bit surprised he even made this comment. But I was just going with if it happened.
If it happens that the U.S. and Russia link their systems somehow, turing it over to "the U.N." still probably wouldn't happen since Russia and the U.S. both have vetos. Neither country is going to want its own deterrent subject to someone else's control.
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I don't know... wouldn't you be concerned about the potential for failure on their system (since they aren't open to us, we have no quality control), intentional neglect to respond, or some other "oversight" that would cause us to not fire waiting on their response? Wouldn't the solution then be to pretend they don't exist in terms of where we position our defenses, which defeats the point of sectors? Maybe I'm over thinking this.
I don't think any of those would be real problems. While Russian quality control isn't impressive in general, I suspect that any ABM system is generally much better in that regard, and if it doesn't work when we need it, ot doesn't work when the missile is aimed at them, either. I also don't think intentional failure to fire is a serious worry; if they can't or don't fire that doesn't mean we cn't fire just because it wasn't in our sector; it just means we have to engage in a less-optimal geometric condition. I doubt very much that such a thing is likely to be a serious problem, however, since any likely rogue attack won't have enough missiles to saturate our defense. Finally, they want us to fire in their defense, and it really serves no purpose of theirs to have us thinking we can't rely on them to hold up their end of the bargain. If someone sneaks a missile through and they don't fire and we miss, now they need to own up to why they didn't fire. That one missile, or even four or five, isn't going to seriously degrade our ability to retaliate (barring
extreme luck, since any rogue missile attack will be from a state that lacks the accuracy of U.S./French/U.K./Russian/Chinese weapons).
I sort of oversimplified what I meant by sectors anyhow, since the technical aspects would probably be more complex than simply drawing lines on a map and saying "we shoot here, you shoot there."
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There's a possibility, however that this could antagonize the Chinese
That was honestly the thing that leaped out to me upon first reading. He singled out the entire Asian continent in listing areas of potential threat.
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Well, I don't think the Chinese care much about being included as a possible threat; if they aren't a threat they have no deterrent (meaning threat in the sense of ability, not in the sense of intention). However, once it steps beyond words, then yes, what you say is accurate. China has pursued a policy of limited deterrent; just enough weapons to make the possibility of attack unattractive to us or the Russians since catching up interms of numebrs would be expensive. It's similar to the French policy in that regard.
The upshot of this, however, is that if you take steps to neutralize that (and since China has little in the way of a strategic bomber force any ABM system does, and a coordinated defense plan does even more) now you start increasing them nmbers of missiles and warheads they need to make that policy effective.
This is where the anti-nuclear nuts always screw up. Stability is not really related to numbers of weapons. In fact, with no defense system, more weapons means increased stability since you make it harder and harder for either side to assure itself of wiping out enough enemy systems in a first strike to make it feasible. Start reducing the numbers of weapons, and stability, perversely, decreases, because now you have fewer targets to hit, and even if you knock out the same percentage of enemy systems in an attack, the absolute number that survives is much lower while your ability to absorb damage is the same.
Now insert defensive systems. If you add one, now your ability to absorb attack has gone up since of the number of enemy systems that survive to attack, a certain number will be destryoed by the defense (That's a certain absolute number, not a certain percentage. If you can fire 100 interceptors with an 80% hit rate, for example, you can intercept 80 targets whether you're getting attacked by 80 or 8,000.) In order to counter this, the opponent must either create his own system, thus rebalancing the overall expected number of hits, or increase the number of systems, thus accomplishing the same thing.
That's where the argument comes from that ABMs are "destabilizing". In the short term, that's true, but no one can field an ABM system fast enough to feel they can attack with impunity before the opposition can counter with its own or by adding more systems. In this way, the opposition adding more missiles or warheads actually
increases stability, because now the overall balance is returning to where each side feels it is deterring the other, and by inreasing warheads, the amount of absolute damage each side can inflict increases, thus decreasing the attractiveness of a first strike by making the retaliation more significant.
If we did link in this way, China might either field its own ABM system, increase its warheads, or both. Stability would actually return, although you'd hear libs the world over that don't understand anything beyong "nukes are bad mmmkay" screaming about "balance of terror" and the silly "armageddon clock" or whatever that they use for fearmongering, while they dance around with their blue hair and lip piercings in downtown Berlin as if anyone else should give a ****.
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