This assumes that the US is waiting for China to use tactical nuclear weapons first so that it feels permitted to use its own. I'm sure you're familiar with the criminal record the US calls a history, when did it ever hesitate to do something it felt was in its interest and it could get away with it? When China reaches the point in its military development when its regional conventional overmatch is clear, the US will equip its submarines and bombers will tactical nuclear weapons and use them at will.
We don't even have to go that far. Trump had a proposal to equip SSBNs with new tactical nuclear missiles. Biden recently defunded it but that's just back-and-forth haggling. It's going to get adopted eventually without a single iota of the hesitation you display. The US seems fine with threatening China with tactical nuclear weapons - I feel fine as well and want to threaten them right back in exactly the same way.
The US also had a policy of using tactical nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union in the early Cold War (The First Offset). Once again, where's the hesitation?
You misunderstood me, I don't advocate the use of tactical nuclear weapons against US treaty allies like Japan if their territory is used to launch attacks against the Chinese homeland, I advocate their total obliteration. The US, being armed with strategic nuclear weapons, can't be attacked in this way; Japan can. The US can huff and puff all it wants about treaties and nuclear umbrellas, but will it go through with it on the day? Will it retaliate when it knows that doing so will lead to its destruction? No.
My proposals, quite aside from the risks they entail, are barbaric and evil - but that's what one must be when one has an enemy like the US. These people need to understand that Chinese territory is inviolable and what the consequences of messing with it are.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the US would adopt a posture like mine without hesitation. The moment America feels sure China would defeat it in a conventional conflict in the western Pacific is the moment the US deploys tactical nuclear weapons on every platform that can host them. No hesitation.
Finally, having conventional overmatch and a potent strategic deterrence that is primarily counter value in nature is having an escalation ladder with missing rungs. There should be parity between China and the US at the strategic level at minimum. Counter value or counter force is just a detail to be worked out later. More importantly, if the US has an overmatch at the tactical nuclear level then it has escalation dominance since it can drag the conflict up into levels where China would have no response.
This has to be addressed whether or not you like my ideas about tactical nuclear weapons on enemy homelands. That's just a detail, ceding a critical part of the escalation ladder isn't.
No, absolutely not. The geography and basing of US forces is exactly what we're trying to change, not an immutable given. As I said, if China has the conventional capacity to rout the US quickly enough that it suffers marginal damage, then all's well that ends well. But it's never going to be that clean because the US won't hesitate to use nuclear weapons if it faces conventional defeat. What then?
If China pushes the US back to Hawaii and the US can still generate inordinate force from Hawaii, then Hawaii has to get handled. China must seize the US's Pacific holdings and use them to project force against the US homeland if the US is doing the same to China. Only perfect symmetry is an acceptable state of affairs. If the US has n submarines and m stealth bombers conducting x attacks against China, then China better have n submarines and m stealth bombers conducting x attacks against the US.
Only those assets near China and its SLOCs are relevant. US troops in Europe are meaningless militarily, at best they can be used to exert political pressure on European countries to sanction China. That would be a hit in the pocketbook, but the war we're considering is long past that and China in the future won't require any critical technological inputs from Europe or anywhere else. If anything, those US troops are pinned in Europe since their withdrawal leaves the field open to Russia.
For SLOC protection, I have in mind that China would be able to base assets in the Indian Ocean and into the Mediterranean.
No, I just need China to be a comprehensive peer of the US and I think that's eminently achievable. I think China's going to be much more than just a US peer, but peer will do for the purposes of this discussion.
This is disconcerting to read. You’re very much approaching this from one and only one side of the equation. Chinese soil may well be inviolable, big whoop. Not much Chinese soil left to violate anyways if Chinese overreaction and callous, wanton nuclear weapon employment results (and it will) in strategic nuclear exchange.
The US does not want to get in a nuclear war. I’m more than happy to attest to that on behalf of the entire IC and the entire military OA field here. Absolute *nobody* thinks nuclear war is a good idea, short of literal suicidal people and abjectly delusional madmen. The reason why the US would not use nuclear weapons first is simple: doing so would obviously prompt an equivalent or greater reaction from the PRC. If the US decides to try its hand at nuking an SCS island, well the PLA certainly wouldn’t have any restraint from doing the very same to Guam or to much of Okinawa. This duality, the notion that “if we both get into a strategic nuclear exchange, neither of us will be better off, so we should avoid it as much as we possibly can” forms the absolute bedrock upon which all nuclear strategy rests on.
You can call your notional nuclear war fighting an “evil” or “barbaric” idea all you want. You won’t find me having moral qualms with anything to do with war. After all, my entire career is to create analytically, mathematically “optimal” force employment schema that kill as many human beings and destroy as much valuable fruit of human labor as possible in as short of a period of time as possible. All of war is abhorrent. My critique lies in that your proposal is downright **bad**. To “obliterate” Japan should it host strike aircraft would **immediately** alienate the entire world, result in gargantuan effort to destroy China (far beyond anything resembling what would happen in a non nuclear scenario), and would prompt nuclear release from US forces due to the PRC clearly being willing and able to existentially threaten US partners as well as the US itself with nuclear annihilation.
To give an example of what it would be like, imagine if the United States were to initiate hostilities by blowing the 3 gorges dam, threatened to nuke North Korea if it hampered USAF-K operations, and then actually did so, eviscerating the entire country, when North Korea ignored the warning. ***Obviously*** China would be forced into a position where nuclear retaliation is the only option. Just as much as you feel that “uoooh our soil is untouchable guys we’re super serious,” the United States feels the *exact same way*. Just as China would not let itself be cowed by threats of tactical nuclear strikes by the US if it were to move on Taiwan, so too would the US absolutely never consider allowing it’s policy to be dictated by threats from a nation actively nuking the US homeland.
I think your fundamental misconception here is one of empathy. You’re unable to see the US as anything other than big scary mean angry country which will be valiantly made to stand down in the face of overwhelming and resolute PRC commitment to total territorial integrity. However, while we’re certainly not sunshine and rainbows, you simply *must* stop and actually consider the other side when you’re considering these things. Again, no matter how much the PRC seeks to “teach consequences” or how much you wish to approach this from a “values” centric position, it won’t change the fact that the US will undoubtedly and overwhelmingly respond to nuclear weapon usage on US soil with nukes of their own.
The US will not begin to haphazardly start playing atomic frisbee with Chinese military assets because it is losing. We know that just as we would respond to nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons, so too would China respond to nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons. The moment one side reaches into that box, both will continue digging deeper and deeper until the total capability of both are employed, which is in no way in either side’s interest. For all their greed and corruption, US politicians are very much self interested, and seek to retain wealth and power. Condemning the entire world to nuclear Armageddon does not a good time make, least of all for the elites.
