Will the next conflict between major powers go nuclear?
- Thread starter legoboy
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Apparently legoboy you've not read the rules.
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bd popeye super moderator
http://www.sinodefenceforum.com/ann...-before-posting-important-please-read-20.html
Try again to present your facts and ideas about this subject before you post again.
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escobar
Brigadier
since nuclear era major power don't go to war against each other.
you can have proxy war (like in vietnam and afghanistan) but never direct war.
it is impossible to have a strategical winner (may be tactically winner) between 2 major power with nuclear weapons in a war because everybody is so bled that the objectives of the war are unachievables.
that is why people talking about war between china and US are ignorant.
Like Ronald Reagan said about pentagon officials who thought they can win a nuclear war against URSS, "i think they are fool and mad"
you can have proxy war (like in vietnam and afghanistan) but never direct war.
it is impossible to have a strategical winner (may be tactically winner) between 2 major power with nuclear weapons in a war because everybody is so bled that the objectives of the war are unachievables.
that is why people talking about war between china and US are ignorant.
Like Ronald Reagan said about pentagon officials who thought they can win a nuclear war against URSS, "i think they are fool and mad"
Kurt
Junior Member
You can fight a war without nukes, just like WWII was fought without chemical weapons (mostly). India and China for example have both a second strike doctrine.
For US, China and Russia it's possible to fight for example a naval war where nuclear warheads are of little value. Brazil, Japan and Germany don't have nukes, but are on an economic level compareable with current great and nuclear powers, including France and Britain. If they are for example attacked with nuclear weapons, they are entitled to develop and strike back with own nuclear weapons.
It seems a consensus that they are capable to develop and produce nuclear devices in a short time. But you don't even need nukes, most of the effects of nuclear weapons aren't the blastwaves, but the poisoning of large areas with nuclear waste. From a technological perspective it's no problem for developed non-nuclear countries to dissipate their nuclear waste over another country.
A strategic second strike capability in case of nuclear attacks is widespread and I would argue that we are now on a trajectory towards effective second strike doctrines worldwide (de facto elimination of first strike by clear boundaries).
The Cold War pretty much showed that you have limited possibilities to win a showdown without a direct fight. So the move will likely be towards more agility in solving problems, including direct military confrontations (as in the Korean War) because war will always be a means of politics.
For US, China and Russia it's possible to fight for example a naval war where nuclear warheads are of little value. Brazil, Japan and Germany don't have nukes, but are on an economic level compareable with current great and nuclear powers, including France and Britain. If they are for example attacked with nuclear weapons, they are entitled to develop and strike back with own nuclear weapons.
It seems a consensus that they are capable to develop and produce nuclear devices in a short time. But you don't even need nukes, most of the effects of nuclear weapons aren't the blastwaves, but the poisoning of large areas with nuclear waste. From a technological perspective it's no problem for developed non-nuclear countries to dissipate their nuclear waste over another country.
A strategic second strike capability in case of nuclear attacks is widespread and I would argue that we are now on a trajectory towards effective second strike doctrines worldwide (de facto elimination of first strike by clear boundaries).
The Cold War pretty much showed that you have limited possibilities to win a showdown without a direct fight. So the move will likely be towards more agility in solving problems, including direct military confrontations (as in the Korean War) because war will always be a means of politics.
escobar
Brigadier
Limited war between US, China or Russia is very difficult to define.
if in a naval war china destroy and sink a US carrier with 5000 sailors what would be the US responses? do you really think USN would just destroy a PLAN future carrier and stop here? (or reversly)
it will be difficult to control the war escalability between major power when things like that happens.
the US response to the destruction of a asset like SSN or SSBN or LPD or LHD or DDG or LCS or Carrier will not be the same.
in china nuclear doctrine when china soil is violated then china NFU became caduc.
but can we say a single JDAM destroying a cible in china violate china soil so that the NFU policy became caduc???? nobody knows even US. that is why china has successifully made his use of nuclear weapons very elusive.
That is why even a "limited" war between major power is dangerous
if in a naval war china destroy and sink a US carrier with 5000 sailors what would be the US responses? do you really think USN would just destroy a PLAN future carrier and stop here? (or reversly)
it will be difficult to control the war escalability between major power when things like that happens.
the US response to the destruction of a asset like SSN or SSBN or LPD or LHD or DDG or LCS or Carrier will not be the same.
in china nuclear doctrine when china soil is violated then china NFU became caduc.
but can we say a single JDAM destroying a cible in china violate china soil so that the NFU policy became caduc???? nobody knows even US. that is why china has successifully made his use of nuclear weapons very elusive.
That is why even a "limited" war between major power is dangerous
Kurt
Junior Member
There's too much hubub about destroying aircraft carriers. This happens in war, but I consider it unlikely to happen in a naval conflict without a great part of the blame resting on the commander who mismanaged his carrier.
You seem to forget that the world is full of dangerous weapons, but the biggest problem is to target anything with these. We have no idea how resilent the Chinese targeting complex is in comparison to US abilities. As long as we don't have news about massive stalking of American naval vessels by Chinese naval vessels, it seems that the whole thing is still a limited experiment in high tech. From a naval warfare perspective it makes very little sense to develop these missiles for shore defense and the Russians already tried it with similar ship based designs. Unlike some propaganda claims, the Americans consider themselves to have plenty of experience with that kind of threat and are far from afraid.
Why do you consider the US would feel the urge to retaliate nuclear?
There are a lot of options that would show off, that's what the counterstrike is really about and getting nuked in return is uncool.
You could use conventional EMP shocks on high-tech clusters, attack linear structures (pipelines and important railways) and destroy whole lengths to make repairs time consuming and if you need a bodycount, blow up some naval bases with missiles launched from guided missile submarines, plus clutter the littorals with naval mines so that the Chinese can't go even fishing.
A very important effect is that this way you can show that the US has the better high tech arsenal and the Chinese are very much inferior in technology. Haven't you listened to the US propaganda on the latest wars and new toys?
You seem to forget that the world is full of dangerous weapons, but the biggest problem is to target anything with these. We have no idea how resilent the Chinese targeting complex is in comparison to US abilities. As long as we don't have news about massive stalking of American naval vessels by Chinese naval vessels, it seems that the whole thing is still a limited experiment in high tech. From a naval warfare perspective it makes very little sense to develop these missiles for shore defense and the Russians already tried it with similar ship based designs. Unlike some propaganda claims, the Americans consider themselves to have plenty of experience with that kind of threat and are far from afraid.
Why do you consider the US would feel the urge to retaliate nuclear?
There are a lot of options that would show off, that's what the counterstrike is really about and getting nuked in return is uncool.
You could use conventional EMP shocks on high-tech clusters, attack linear structures (pipelines and important railways) and destroy whole lengths to make repairs time consuming and if you need a bodycount, blow up some naval bases with missiles launched from guided missile submarines, plus clutter the littorals with naval mines so that the Chinese can't go even fishing.
A very important effect is that this way you can show that the US has the better high tech arsenal and the Chinese are very much inferior in technology. Haven't you listened to the US propaganda on the latest wars and new toys?
escobar
Brigadier
not necessarily
exactly and only major power have them
if you don't have no idea of china targeting resilience why are you suggesting that it is still limited?
sorry what are talking about
where did i said that?? i said US responses will vary
you are just throwing tactical military movement. i can counter by throwing china tactical possibilities. but we could get trapped. let that to fan boy
Just because US has better high tech arsenal than China does not necessary lead to a US tactical victory.it is too simplistic.
if you want a good disccusion you have to pick up an exanple of limited war between the two. you have to define parameters like the place, the objectives of each one etc...
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Excellent. Country didn't get rich by occupying another country but they get rich by selling them good an service. Invading and occupying another country doesn't make sense anymore Here is an excellent article by Gwynne Dyer. He is Canadian and serve in US marine left and become a military writer
Defense budgets and cavemen
By Gwynne Dyer
If you’re not allowed to enslave people any more, or even loot their resources, then what is the point of being a traditional great power?
The United States kept an army of over 100,000 soldiers in Iraq for eight years, at a cost that will probably end up around $1 trillion. Yet it didn’t enslave a single Iraqi (though it killed quite a lot), and throughout the occupation it paid full market price for Iraqi oil. So what American purpose did the entire enterprise serve?
Oh, silly me. I forgot. It was about “security.” And here it comes again, on an even bigger scale.
On Jan. 6, at the Pentagon, President Barack Obama unveiled America’s new “defense strategy.” But it wasn’t actually about stopping anybody from invading the United States. That cannot happen. It was about reshaping the U.S. military in a way that “preserves American global leadership, maintains our military superiority,” as Obama put it.
Curiously, President Obama was not wearing animal skins and wielding a stone ax when he made this announcement, although his logic came straight out of the Stone Age. Back when land was the only thing of value, it made sense to go heavily armed, because somebody else might try to take it away from you.
It doesn’t make sense any more. China is not getting rich by sending armies to conquer other Asian countries. It’s getting rich by selling them (and the United States) goods and services that it can produce cheaply at home, and buying things that are made more cheaply elsewhere. It hasn’t actually made economic sense to conquer other countries for at least a century now ― but old attitudes die hard.
If you analyze Obama’s rhetoric, he’s clearly torn between the old thinking and the new. The new U.S. strategy is all about China, but is it about China as an emerging trade partner (and rival), or is it about China as the emerging military superpower that threatens the United States just by being strong? A bit of both, actually.
“Our two countries have a strong stake in peace and stability in East Asia and an interest in building a cooperative bilateral relationship,” said Obama. “But the growth of China's military power must be accompanied by a greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.”
Would it help if China were to promise that it has no intention of attacking anybody? Of course not; it already does that. “Clarity about its strategic intentions” is code for not developing military capabilities that could challenge the very large U.S. military presence in Asia. After all, as the Pentagon implicitly argues, everybody knows that the U.S. forces are there solely for defense and deterrence and would never be used aggressively.
Well, actually, the Chinese do not know that. They see the U.S. maintaining close military ties with practically all the countries on China’s eastern and southern frontiers, from Japan and South Korea to Thailand and India. They see the U.S. 7th Fleet operating right off the Chinese coast on a regular basis. And they do not say to themselves: “That’s ok. The Americans are just deterring us.”
Would Americans say that about China if Chinese troops were based in Canada and Mexico, and if Chinese carrier fleets were operating just off the U.S. west coast all the time? No. They’d be just as paranoid as the Chinese are. Indeed, they are pretty paranoid about the rise of China even though the shoe is on the other foot.
For the first time in history, no great power is planning to attack any other great power. War between great powers became economic nonsense more than a century ago, and sheer suicide after the invention of nuclear weapons. Yet the military establishments in every major power still have a powerful hold on the popular imagination.
In effect, the new U.S. defense strategy says that for the United States to be safe, everybody else must be weaker. This displays a profound ignorance of human psychology ― unless, of course, it is just a cynical device to convince the American public to spend a lot on “defense.”
The armed forces are the biggest single vested interest in the United States, and indeed in most other countries. To keep their budgets large, the generals must frighten the tax-paying public with plausible threats even if they don’t really exist. The Pentagon will accept some cuts in Army and Marine Corps manpower, and even a hundred billion dollars or so off the defense budget for a while, but it will defend its core interests to the death.
Obama goes along with this because it would be political suicide not to. Beijing has its own powerful military lobby, which regularly stresses the American “military threat,” and the Chinese regime goes along with that, too. We left the caves some time ago, but in our imaginations and our fears we still live there.
Kurt
Junior Member
Thanks for this contribution. The author clearly highlights that there's not much sense to fight the old territorial wars of continental powers (although Russia for example did it quite a lot recently).
How about naval warfare? Does it work according to different rules?
Naval warfare has traditionally been about achieving contracts and access in order to increase the economic clout of the maritime power.
Seeing things from this perspective both the Iraq and Afghanistan war served as door openers. But if it was just about trade of resources, it was far too expensive to install democracy, Pinochet II would have been perfect. I guess the US had plans to turn these places into save areas by installing a seemingly stable political system (end of history theory, everybody lives in a democracy) that's incompatible with the political systems of their enemies. The costs weren't about oil and slavery, rather about geostrategic positions for future operations (a very old trick).
US and China, the Chinese get richer, but is that enrichment due to sucking the economic life out of the US or is it due to the Chinese building up their country and offering other nations goods at a lower price, thus making them profit by increased economic efficiency? From my perspective it hasn't been highlighted enough how much the US profits from China and how much China depends on US goodwill and regulations for running their export industry.
So the US by her naval power can pretty much control global trade and trade agreements, notice that Russia still wants to become a WTO member and both China and Russia have problems buying Japanese(!!!) military high tech because of US regulations.
I don't see the US in the stone age, rather the US is a naval power that shaped the world into a dependant, or even junky, on her naval power. Slavery, plundering and resource stealing, the old ways of land based powers, have been outlawed and attract more wrath than the mean trade agreements engineered by the traditional naval powers such as the US (Who delivers the technology for Iraq at what price and with what longterm costs because of being fixed to a certain technology system?).
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