In a Third World War, would "limited" nuclear exchange be possible?

IIRC there was a strategy to ‘make an example’ of some nonnuclear armed 3rd party ie. the US obliterates Cuba or the Russians work over New Zealand. The idea being a warning of what we’re really talking about if this is to go further.

Escalation would be avoided by wiping out an innocent population?!
 
Because we in the UK are going to survive that aren't we?

Pretty much and this applies to 'because we're in Western Europe', only the USA, USSR and China basically have the strategic depth and widespread cities etc to actually take a nuke or three and not be made into a mess. If the Soviets nuked the Nato HQ in Brussles then that's the whole city gone.
 
What was soviet doctrine over the decades? Did they have limited nuclear war doctrines and the weapons to put them into practice?
 
Could European NATO strategy have developed in a way that even if they face massive civilian losses, they wouldn't murder noncombatants within enemy borders via countervalue strikes?
No real ability for FR or UK to withstand a soviet strike. The only way to survive therefore is to deter the soviets from launching hence not even a fig leaf attempt to claim counterforce. Given the number of FR and UK warheads even combined, the only way to make soviet losses unacceptable was countervalue.
As stated earlier, both FR and UK saw flexible response as a way for the US to stay safe rather than any other military value. Now they would probably not launch themselves on the USSR if tactical warheads detonated in Germany, reserving their weapons to deter against strikes on home soil.Hence the possibility of a limited tactical exchange scenario as long as it excluded the territory of FR and UK.

All other scenarios would mean the European allies have either abandoned their own nukes or lead to devastating strikes on the USSR which would trigger a general exchange. The great fear of FR and UK was the US and USSR fighting a proxy war and devastating their European allies whilst being in no danger themselves. This is why both built and maintained nuclear deterrents, the risk of the USSR thinking it could fight a limited nuclear war without suffering major damage was seen as making WWIII too likely to contemplate.
 
I remember France and West Germany sharing nukes before De Gaulle stopped it. If that continued, wouldn't the "You hit Portsmouth, we hit Moscow" strategy apply to West Germany as well conducting that same strategy?

(I also think had France not fallen in WWII and Italy joined the Allies this would've been implemented by Italy as well.)
 
Pretty much and this applies to 'because we're in Western Europe', only the USA, USSR and China basically have the strategic depth and widespread cities etc to actually take a nuke or three and not be made into a mess. If the Soviets nuked the Nato HQ in Brussles then that's the whole city gone.

What other countries have strategic depth? India and Pakistan do.

Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia all don't have that strategic depth, save perhaps for Indonesia as it's large. Even my native Philippines doesn't have strategic depth as the cities and military bases here are too close to the cities: heck, our Department of National Defense HQ is located in the heart of Metro Manila, and Subic Naval Base (formerly handled by the Americans until right after Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991) is located near our third largest city, Clark!

So if ever such countries were attacked and had nukes, just like Western Europe, we would have no choice but to launch countervalue strikes as well.

Australia and New Zealand all have strategic depth. The African countries do so as well.

About countervalue strikes, could there have been a scenario in which the UK and France, instead of targeting Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, and other large cities immediately, they instead go for the smaller ones first like Smolensk, Stalingrad, Perm, etc.?
 
You're still asking a country to go "Oh well, there goes a few million people." Which ain't going to happen. Once you start nuking cities, then to quote Kosh, the avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote'.
 

Vuu

Banned
No

But on the other hand, people still believe that it would like send us back to the stone age, shit wouldn't probably even be much worse than the year without a summer
 
Why isn’t Barrow in Furness on that Soviet target map? I thought that was one of the primary UK targets due to the submarine building. It eats a groundbust in the P&S timelines on here.
 
Why isn’t Barrow in Furness on that Soviet target map? I thought that was one of the primary UK targets due to the submarine building. It eats a groundbust in the P&S timelines on here.

probably because the telegraph ( or times) didn't know where Barrow was ;-)

PS i reckon William Webb Ellis land is a gonner. The Rugby Radio Station must be a target.
 
probably because the telegraph ( or times) didn't know where Barrow was ;-)

PS i reckon William Webb Ellis land is a gonner. The Rugby Radio Station must be a target.
Yes the radio station was I believe on the target list, it’s now been decommissioned and there’s a lot of new housing being built on the site. It was a good few miles out of town so whether the centre of Rugby would have been destroyed is another matter.
 
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