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A comment on The Heart of Deterrence (2012). Parent comment

Re:The Heart of Deterrence (2012) by mdpopescu on Saturday April 23, 2016 @12:47PM (#11556268)
This is the second time I've seen this statement (the president won't launch nuclear missiles without being attacked first). Given that this is demonstrably false in the case of the US, I'm wondering what you're basing this on.

(The US has never been bombed by any other nation but it has bombed a couple dozens. In the case of nukes, it is the only nation that has used them against another country.)

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Re:The Heart of Deterrence (2012) by GunboatDiplomat on Saturday April 23, 2016 @04:15PM (#11557228)
The US has never been bombed? That's patently false. The American Philippines? Pearl Harbor? The balloon bombs? Attu & Kiska? None of that rings a bell?

At the time of their introduction, nuclear weapons were not yet understood as qualitatively different from an equally powerful amount of conventional weapons. The qualitative difference observed after Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped establish this qualitative difference in the minds of people.

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