Talk:First strike

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[edit] worth a mention? it's what we all think..

is it worth mentioning that when the US was the only power to poses nuclear weapons it used them. And in the MAD era that followed, nobody used them. Which is probably why the US is finding it difficult to get people to disarm now?

I deleted peacekeeper as a counter first strike weapon, because it is really silly putting it as counter first strike considering it would not have survived first strike by SS-18 if one would be executed by USSR. Trident though is a good example, I don't know about Pershing, it is land based system too, with range of 1800 km, there is great doubt whether it would survive first strike by 5000 km range of SS-20 Pioneer. Some of the numbers are also wrong, CEPS in particular, for soviet system and for american. Also, what does Russel's opinion has to do with all these issues, especially considering his ignorant "west victory anyway" comments, Russell probably never talked to american CIA military analysts, who would disagree with his optimism and had no clue of what Red Army was. 99.231.59.7 23:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)Pavel. October 9, 2007.

Poorly written article, presents only western point of view. USSR's SS-18 was a perfect fisrst strike weapon, 8 warheads, each with 1.2 MT was more than capable of destroying Minuteman silos with one or two warheads. USSR's silos, SS-18's silos in particular, were fortified to withstand a direct nuclear strike. 74.98.216.68 02:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)Pavel Golikov. July 2, 2007.

It's worth mentioning that the last time nuclear weapons were used was during a world war. Quite likely the soviet union would have found uses for nuclear weapons in a world war as well.Zebulin (talk) 09:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 'Wild Speculation"

"In response, President Bush cited Hersh's reportage as "wild speculation"[4] but did not deny its veracity." - Is labelling something as 'wild speculation' not questioning its veracity?

[edit] POV in History section

A paragraph in the History section reads:

"In the 1940s the US enjoyed a monopoly of nuclear forces, while in the late 1950s and early 1960s Khrushchev incautiously and inaccurately boasted of a Soviet superiority in missile forces. The arrival of Soviet missiles in Cuba was meant to weaken the US as it exposed the homeland to attack almost without warning, but instead exposed Khrushchev to personal humiliation as the "Cuban Missile Crisis" resulted in him backing down rather than risking war. During the crisis, Fidel Castro wrote Nikita Khrushchev a letter about the prospect that the US might follow an invasion of Cuba with a first strike against the USSR. The following quotation from the letter suggests to some writers that Castro was calling for a Soviet first strike against the US."

1. If it's going to say that Khrushchev was "inaccurately" boasting of Soviet missile superiority, then it must be referenced. Anyway, this claim is questionable -- there's considerable debate and until everything is declassified, we won't know for sure.

2. The line "instead exposed Khrushchev to personal humiliation" is at least POV; it's probably also an exaggeration. There was a bigger context to the Soviet placement of weapons in Cuba (not least, the American deployment of short range nuclear missiles in Turkey). This line should be removed or changed. --Rhombus 05:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I've altered that line to a somewhat more balanced view of what happened. I think part of the problem here is that the Soviets gave up their missiles in public, while the American agreement to remove missiles from Turkey was kept somewhat more secret, so it was perceived that the USSR backed down when in reality they were both giving up some of their bargaining chips.

[edit] Other comments

Bertrand Russell said "better red than dead" and it got reversed by some American commentators during the Cold War.

Interestingly, before the Soviets obtained atomic weapons, Bertrand Russell publically advocated a first strike on the USSR during a speech he gave to Westminster School (a famous educational establishment between Parliament and Westminster Abbey). His argument was that if both sides of the cold war had nuclear weapons the apocalypse was certain to come, whereas if one side destroyed the other utterly (which America theoretically had the chance to do, when it was the only nuclear power) then it would be a holocaust but not an apocalypse. This speech was witnessed by many pupils who went on to become prominent figures, including Nigel Lawson, who became the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) under Margaret Thatcher. I can cite sources for these, and in fact I'm going to add this to the article right now. Okay, I've added it, I've tried to keep it as balanced as possible because it's not totally clear whether Russell advocated actual First Strike, or just the public advocacy of First Strike as a diplomatic tool to force the Soviets to back down from Eastern Europe.


Also, first strike and assured destruction and madness of mad are so similar as to be hard topics to distinguish. Madness of mad was not just resource use but also the probability of error, communications or equipment failure, and other things that had nothing to do with intent to destroy each other - film War Games was a nice demonstration of this.

Linking the death penalty debate, terrorism debate, nuclear arms debate, as I did in assured destruction, is difficult, so the illustration of all three in advance of my next edit would probably improve "assured destruction" a lot - I would be summarizing rather than introducing the topic, with three examples...

Okay, but bear in mind that we are trying to create an encyclopedia here -- not just giving our own opinions about things.

Except for uncontroversial and generally accepted information, it's better to provide a source. Such as

  • the Green Party believes that global warming is one of the biggest problems facing the world today.

or

  • the WWF supports the Kyoto Treaty because a scientist reported a rising temperature trend in a recent scientific paper (please specify).

The goal is that a reader who disagrees with the position advocated will nevertheless agree that the article is correct because it accurately reports that X believes Y about Z. A reader might disagree about whether Y is true, so the article shouldn't say "Y is true" but rather "X believs Y is true".

User:Ed Poor

"NATO later explicitly ruled out a first-strike posture - a pledge not matched by the Soviets."

Completely untrue. The "no first strike" posture was first ever taken by the USSR in 1982 at special session of General Assembly of UN. This has not been matched by NATO throughout the Cold War (not sure about later, though.)

Egor.

[edit] Castro letter

  • I said that if the second variant took place and the imperialists -- this was a very common word at that time -- invaded Cuba with the aim of occupying it, the Soviet Union must never allow a situation to develop in which the imperialists would launch the first nuclear strike. This was literally what I said, because I was absolutely convinced that if they invaded our country, this would create the grave risk for the Soviet Union of the U.S. taking the second step of carrying out a nuclear air strike against the Soviet Union. That's why I raised this question with Khrushchev as delicately as I could, saying that the Soviet Union must never allow a situation to develop in which the imperialists could launch the first nuclear strike -- because I was sure that after [an invasion], the second step would be for the Americans to launch a first nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. -- March 1998 interview with Castro [1]

There is clearly nothing in there to suggest that Castro was promoting a first strike by the Soviet Union. Any mention of a nuclear first strike in that paragraph is linked with his justifiable fear that the Americans would be insane enough to do such a thing. In the same interview he goes on to say

"I dictated this letter to the [Soviet] ambassador. I wrote the letter on the basis of the notes that I had, and the ambassador did not even speak good Spanish, and we had no interpreters. Who knows what the ambassador actually sent over there, but apparently he did convey something of this idea, perhaps not very clearly."

It is impossible to be sure of what Castro was saying without seeing the original Spanish version, as well as the Russian translation that was presented to Khrushchev. To impute these intentions to Castro is a grossly speculative distortion of historical facts. Eclecticology 21:27, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC)

Yes Ed, your changes are a definite improvement. I'll be wanting to look at the earlier paragraphs. This is a situation where, perhaps because of multiple edits, I had to read it several times to make sense of it, and it even seems that some of it ends up with the opposite sides mixed up. Eclecticology 22:57, 2004 Apr 23 (UTC)

I don't at all understand how that quote from Castro could be construed to say he is recommending first strike against the USA. He's saying that the USA must never be able to get first strike cability on the Communist bloc -- which is no more damning that Robert McNamara saying that the USA would take first strike capability if it had the chance, or that it would be unacceptable for the USA to let the USSR have first strike capability against it. There are many ways to prevent another country from getting first strike capability without advocating nuclear war (for example, the arms race). --Fastfission 22:40, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] merge in "First-strike attack"

I don't have the time to research the history of nuclear war strategy, so I haven't completed the merge. In general, my thoughts are:

  • the introduction, headings, links, and categorization of this article is better than that of the "First-strike attack" article.
  • the history from the "First-strike attack" article is interesting, and should be folded into this article - it'd be nice if the editor had a solid knowledge of the history or time to research it, and I don't have either.

Asmendel 23:10, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)