In an 1980s nuclear war how many would refuse to launch?

[Dunning Kruger]

Were Paul Tibbets, Truman, men who flew raids on Dresden and Japanese cities, Charles Sweeney all murderers? Or were they people giving very difficult orders and/or carrying out missions that look horrible but probably saved many more lives in the long run?

Robert McNamera, as one of those who planned the bombing missions over Japan effectively admitted that by most definitions he was a war criminal for this. And by his account, his companions all, on some level, knew and agreed with this.

Many people seem to look poorly on this. I have a different take. Its a big sacrifice to do something that might objectively be looked upon as wrong but do it anyway because you are doing it for your country, family etc. Sacrifices come in many forms beyond the obvious physical ones.

On the same vein, there's an anecdote I heard where, sometime after the war, Oppenheimer met with Truman and discussed the morality of using the bomb. Oppenheimer expressed his guilt and that he had "blood on his hands". Truman supposedly replied with something to the effect that he was the one who had to live with giving the order. Given he later called Oppenheimer a cry baby scientist, I suspect Truman had his own guilt to live with thereafter.

I'll defer to higher beings on matters such as these.

 

[sloreck]

@DValdron : In the Talmud it is said that he who saves a single life it is as if he has saved the entire world. The Talmud also says that if a man is coming to attack you, it is right for you to attack him first. I can be pretty sure the men and women who actually are involved in the delivery of the weapons will "own it" more than those at the very top who send the orders, and have set the conditions for this horror.

If you wish to claim being an absolute pacifist, who would not kill even one other no matter what I respect your moral position. What you have not done is say, were you in charge, what you would do if another country threatened or attacked yours with nuclear weapons at any level - would you surrender, say nothing but not respond, only respond with conventional weapons? Would you have had the USA forego nuclear weapons completely, and then the USSR developed them simply submit rather than the admittedly crazy balance of terror we had.

 

[Veiovis]

Kaluga Oblast, where those missile fields I mentioned are located, is roughly the size of Maryland with a pop. of 1 million, though the area proper has maybe 50,000 in the immediate area.

The same area of Moscow has your millions

any halfway decent counterforce strike will kill tens of millions. your silo may be in bumfuck nowhere,many airbased,harbours,C&C facilities aren't. In a pure counterforce attack,moscow would be turned into ash.

 

[Wallet]

Not enough

 

[DValdron]

@DValdron : In the Talmud it is said that he who saves a single life it is as if he has saved the entire world. The Talmud also says that if a man is coming to attack you, it is right for you to attack him first. I can be pretty sure the men and women who actually are involved in the delivery of the weapons will "own it" more than those at the very top who send the orders, and have set the conditions for this horror.

If you wish to claim being an absolute pacifist, who would not kill even one other no matter what I respect your moral position. What you have not done is say, were you in charge, what you would do if another country threatened or attacked yours with nuclear weapons at any level - would you surrender, say nothing but not respond, only respond with conventional weapons? Would you have had the USA forego nuclear weapons completely, and then the USSR developed them simply submit rather than the admittedly crazy balance of terror we had.

I'm not a good person, and I don't claim to be. I have done terrible things, and I have to accept that the things I have done were terrible, regardless of the reason that they were done, whether they were justified, whether good or ill came from them. I own the responsibility for my acts, no one else. And I cannot pretend that these acts were anything but acts. You cannot begin to establish anything like a moral framework without first acknowledging the responsibility for your acts.

I simply say that you have to own what you do. If you kill a man in self defense, then you have killed a man. You have made a corpse. There is no difference between a man killed by murder and a man killed by self defense. They are equally dead. A man killed morally or a man killed immorally is still dead regardless.

You say 'Well, what about the threat! What about self defense!'

I say 'What about them?'

You say 'Well, can't I kill in self defense?'

I say 'You can kill for any reason you want.'

But you need to own it. You need to accept the responsibility for the act.

Otherwise, it's just lying. You want to go swimming without getting wet, you want to be fed without having to consume.

 

[DValdron]

I belong to a generation that spent the first decades of its life living under Damocles Sword. Every morning I woke up, I faced the prospect that I, that everyone I knew, that the cities and towns and people, that millions and hundreds of millions of people could all die in the course of a few hours.

There's an immediacy to that knowledge, that awareness of mortality, which makes all the blathering irrelevant.

There's nothing special or noble about a chain of command and indoctrination that guarantees that someone will push a button and kill a million people. Our people, their people, doesn't matter. Communism, capitalism, doesn't matter.

In the end, everyone gets dead, the world is made into a ruin of corpses stretching off in every direction. Explain to the corpses how it was the right thing, and if they are prepared to grant absolution.... well, I'm good with that. But I think we would just hear silence.

 

[Derek Pullem]

The greater moral dilemma, in my opinion, comes after an exchange where knowing many of the facts causes the commanding officer to question the order etc. Regardless of your opinion of the situation, I think Clancy had this in one of his books (the ending of the Sum of All Fears?). But I can imagine a highly ranked military officer acting similarly if they deemed circumstances warranting.

That was slightly different as there was no valid order without the second "key". The chain of command explicitly required both (not either) of the "key" holder to concur so for that split second the president was not C-in-C but one among equals.

 

[Marc]

Then as you all probably know, there is the man who saved the world:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...petrov-the-man-who-saved-the-world-dies-at-77

 

[GDIS Pathe]

Then as you all probably know, there is the man who saved the world:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...petrov-the-man-who-saved-the-world-dies-at-77

And then we presume Petrovs superiors will not come to the exact same conclusion and also realize the americans beginning nuclear war with 2 missiles makes no sense and won't also think its a bug?

 

[sloreck]

I lived under that same sword for 51 years, until the end of the Cold War. At one point I was trained in the use and targeting or nuclear weapons, as well as conventional weapons. Believe I knew the consequences. eventually I went in to medicine as a surgeon, and more or less daily had people's lives in my hands, only me no chain of command. I know about owning your actions, especially when if things go wrong others suffer but you do not. I have been a surgeon in combat, and seen the destruction it visits on human beings - this brings it home very personally.

I would often tell my patients, "there is no smiley face solution to your problem, only a variety of more or less frowny face ones" (any surgery is frowny). Plato said that only the dead have seen the end of war, so until we somehow eliminate war, we are faced with the moral issue of killing.

 

[Blue cat]

And then we presume Petrovs superiors will not come to the exact same conclusion and also realize the americans beginning nuclear war with exactly missiles makes no sense and won't also think its a bug?

I've often thought that this is probably the most vulnerable and un predictable part of the decision making / order following chain for a country that is subject to a nuclear attack.

In the event of a real or perceived strategic nuclear attack a small number of people could be under immense pressure to quickly figure out what was actually happening while knowing that the consequences of making a mistake could be huge.

 

[marathag]

Then as you all probably know, there is the man who saved the world:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...petrov-the-man-who-saved-the-world-dies-at-77

Zbigniew Brzezinski did the same for the USA, on Nov. 9th, 1979, after an incoming attack tape went live at NORAD, where it looked like a full scale Soviet attack had been launched.

 

[GDIS Pathe]

I've often thought that this is probably the most vulnerable and un predictable part of the decision making / order following chain for a country that is subject to a nuclear attack.

In the event of a real or perceived strategic nuclear attack a small number of people could be under immense pressure to quickly figure out what was actually happening while knowing that the consequences of making a mistake could be huge.

And then when your satellites aren't showing any missile launches the SRBMs in WG are still on their pads and no Tridents are erupting from the sea you are going to launch because why?

 

[Blue cat]

And then when your satellites aren't showing any missile launches the SRBMs in WG are still on their pads and no Tridents are erupting from the sea you are going to launch because why?

As I understand things Petrov wasn't the one who would have ordered the missile launches, but he did make a choice not to immediately pass on what subsequently proved to be an errenous indication of a small US launch.

 

[fscott]

Own what you do. Make someone dead, own it, don't justify it, don't excuse it.

Do you pay taxes to a country that has nuclear weapons. If you do you're as guilty as the people who push the button.

 

[Blue cat]

And then we presume Petrovs superiors will not come to the exact same conclusion and also realize the americans beginning nuclear war with 2 missiles makes no sense and won't also think its a bug?

My understanding there was an indication of 5 ICBM launches. Given the time frame there might have been up to 15 war heads in bound if the launch had been real ?

 

[Tal Shiar]

It would be very sad world to live in, if men who promised to protect the people, would take part in the unleashing the greatest horror humanity ever seen. On both sides.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

The Soviets had some concerns about this. Their response was to install remote-firing systems so that the High Command could fire launch-ready missiles without input from the rocket regiment crews. The crews were still necessary to bring the missiles to launch-ready state, however.

In the US there was enough trust in the subordinate commands, and in the psychological systems surrounding the screening of crews, that this wasn't regarded as an issue.

 

[cpip]

Surprised we've gotten this far without mentioning Harold Hering, who as a Minuteman commander asked the very question, "How do I know that the order to launch came from a sane President?"

When he did not receive an answer to his satisfaction, he requested a transfer.

Instead, he got a discharge.

That about says it all right there.

 

[FlyingSquirrel]

Surprised we've gotten this far without mentioning Harold Hering, who as a Minuteman commander asked the very question, "How do I know that the order to launch came from a sane President?"

When he did not receive an answer to his satisfaction, he requested a transfer.

Instead, he got a discharge.

That about says it all right there.

Is the built-in assumption essentially that a non-sane President would have already been restrained somehow or removed from office by the Cabinet or the Congress?