I rode subs for awhile and your question is a fair question. Subs with nuke missiles are an insurance policy. They are a deterrent, insuring no country can attack the U.S. - no matter how successful - and not expect a massive and devastating counter-attack. Run silent, run deep.

That argument is flawed. You can destroy each other, so what? Everybody loses. We know that some countries have their weapons ready to go at the will of a single person or very few. What if that leader becomes crazy or incapable of reasoning? Your subs you't protect you in that scenario.

There are so many other ways you can prevent such attacks. Diplomacy, commerce, keeping good relations, etc. The threat of an axe on your neck makes it hard to look like you have good intentions in the first place.

That strategy demonstrably worked -- we got through the Cold War.

The problem is you can't always assume that the other guy has good intentions. If they're rational, then mutually assured destruction keeps everyone rational. If they're crazy, then that certainly is a problem, which is why there is enormous effort put into preventing proliferation and containing the capabilities of countries like North Korea and Iran.

You think mutually assured destruction is going to keep an Islamic extremist group rational?

Islamic extremists are not the only security threat to the USA. We continue to exist in a relativel tense peace with China, Russia, and other nation-states.

The ability to drop a bunch of nukes on someone on short notice is not to deter terrorists, it's to deter nation states - anywhere between North Korea through Pakistan.

The existence of nukes and the submarines that carry them is almost entirely orthogonal to the (relatively new) thread of terrorism.

No, that's what the NSA and CIA is for. :P

I realize it's a circular argument, but MAD is for other nuclear nations (or future nuclear nations).

Because the threat of force is the only real deterrent for some sorts of people / threats. Wishing it was different doesn't make it so.

That's why it was called M.A.D. - Mutual Assured Destruction - with dark humor. Nobody chose it, the world just evolved that way until it became codified.

In his book, "Star Wars," Lt. Bowman makes the case that the Strategic Defence Initiative (and similar missile defence systems) are bad ideas specifically because they disrupt MAD. His argument is that as long as we KNOW we are not being under attack, then we can all sleep at night. There is a point to this.

MAD wasn't just about deterrence, but also about ensuring mutual access to early warning information. The combination of the two is actually not a bad thing. "I know you can destroy me if I attack you, and I know you can see me if I start to do so" is not a bad set of factors. Unfortunately things like anti-satellite missiles and weapons in space really endanger that because if a small piece of space junk collides with a satellite over the other guy's territory, you may not know for sure that this is not the prelude to an attack.

So the actual MAD strategies as they developed through the Ford years were actually quite sophisticated and stabilizing. But what happens when your threat is a nuclear weapon in a twenty-foot container instead of an ICBM (because some country like North Korea knows we can have 747's with lasers shoot down launching missiles if we launch a first strike)?

I'm curious why we need both a nuclear deterrent and a standing army of 1,127,801 people. Seems like more of an XOR.

So, when some large military power cuts off shipping lanes in the Pacific, we'd, what, threaten to nuke them? That's a better state affairs than what we have today?

Conversely: what goes does a standing army of 1,127,801 people do you if your adversary has nuclear weapons?

I'm not a military strategist, and I know this isn't really an area where logic wins, but I like thinking of these scenarios at a top level anyway.

OK. Assume China cuts off shipping lanes in the Pacific. They position their naval fleets in some aggressive formation over major lines (likely blockading Taiwan or something). Assumedly, they have to sink a ship or at least fire shots and take one captive. The U.S. and Japan respond by moving their forces into aggressive positions threatening China. The situation either A. ends when China or the U.S. back down or B. accelerates into military conflict. The conflict is either small, likely involving only SEALs, drone/tactical strikes, or another group of special forces, or full scale, involving (initially) a Pacific strike group fleet. The only logical progression of a full scale military conflict between two nuclear powers is nuclear warfare, at which point it won't matter how big either standing army is. Again, some assumptions, but not unreasonable.

The same scenario without a large standing army has no "standoff." The "standoff" is MAD from nuclear weapons, and understanding on all sides that military action that threatens any nation's "security" will quickly go from tactical to nuclear.

I suppose I just see the massive standing army (special forces not included) like I see air superiority fighters. There's really no scenario where they are necessary for the defense of any modern nation.

> The conflict is either small, likely involving only SEALs, drone/tactical strikes, or another group of special forces, or full scale, involving (initially) a Pacific strike group fleet. The only logical progression of a full scale military conflict between two nuclear powers is nuclear warfare ...

It's not quite as black-and-white as that, as illustrated by the history of the second half of the 20th century: The U.S. and USSR engaged in several proxy wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, arguably Central America), but never came close to nuclear war.

(Neither the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis nor the 1983 Able Archer scare involved a war, and the Korean War of 1950-53 was apparently started on Kim Il Sung's own initiative to the surprise of the USSR, although there have been reports that Russian pilots flew North Korean MIGs in air-to-air combat with U.S. planes; when China came into the war in November 1950 it wasn't yet a nuclear power.)

> there have been reports that Russian pilots flew North Korean MIGs in air-to-air combat with U.S. planes

Stalin was careful enough to enlist pilots as "volunteers", suspending their official service in Soviet Army for the duration of mission.

The adversary has nuclear weapons because you (assuming you are a citizen od the US of A) have nuclear weapons.

I wish this was a picture so I could submit it to Cute Overload...

Because it is cute or because you find my comment ridiculous?

Because we subsidize world peace (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-22/india...). Maybe it's a business we need to get out of, but at the moment, the reason Europe, etc, get away with spending so little on defense is that they can count on NATO, and the U.S. basically carries NATO.

NATO's record to keep the world safe and peaceful is nothing short of a disaster. Arriving too late with too little is often how NATO's interventions can be described. Laughable at best, and in return people end up hating NATO for their lack of timely action to save lives.

The purpose of NATO isn't to keep the world safe. The purpose of NATO is for Europe to outsource its collective defense to the U.S., specifically to protect Europe from the Soviet Union. It worked, at tremendous cost to the U.S.

China and Russia.

Perhaps on paper. But being a global power gives the US a special relationship with friendly countries as well. The dependency on US military protection subverts the sovereignty of allied nations causing them to harmonise laws on intellectual property, drugs, share intelligence including information about businesses in competition with US ones amongst other things. It is a very advantageous situation for the USA and I think it is wrong to think the only point of being a global superpower is to keep the Russians and Chinese in line. It is as much about maintaining the Empire and keeping the client states in line. Hail Caeser!

Are those really not dealt with via ICBMs? Why do we need the capacity to destroy them 20x over within 25 minutes when 1x with 3 hours notice would suffice? It seems like the downside risk of rogue actors or accidents causing a nuclear holocaust far outweighs the benefits of additional weapons at the margin.

Do you want the information relating to the ICBM's to be public knowledge?

ICBMs don't move around... so they are easily targeted themselves.

Two countries that have never used nuclear weapons against their enemies.

On the other hand, they've both killed tens of millions of their own citizens. Each.

And the U.S. killed more people using conventional ordnance in a single night in Tokyo than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined from the atomic bombings, so what is it that you're actually upset about? Because it's obviously not the number of Japanese killed.

I wasn't commenting on total number of people killed by each government. We were talking about nuclear weapons (specifically nuclear subs).

Yes, but you say that as if being killed by a nuclear weapon is somehow more traumatic than being burned alive in a city-sized Holocaust incited by incendiary weaponry. Or even that being blown to bits by conventional weaponry is somehow better.

Think about it: Germany never used nuclear weapons on the U.S.S.R., were they somehow more moble?

Nuclear submarines typically refer to submarines that are nuclear powered, not submarines that carry nuclear missiles. Although some submarines do carry ICBMs.

If anything, China and Russia are more interested in the locations of the SSNs than the SSBNs, at any given time in the modern age.

MAD works.

But only when combining deterrence with early warning and an agreement not to develop weapons to target early warning systems. Otherwise it is a recipe for "oops, I guess we weren't really being attacked. Sorry for the nuclear war."

Really? All evidence to the contrary.