Google| Subject | Re: Republicanism still an offence in England? (wasRe: Queen mother |
| From | Raven |
| Date | 2002-05-21 (2002-05-21) |
| Message-ID | <kqeG8.1185$gr1.5192@news.get2net.dk> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | alt.fan.tolkien |
| Follows | |
| Followups | T.T. Arvind (41m) > Raven |
"Flame of the West" <jsolinasNoSpam@erols.com>skrev i en meddelelse news:3CE87FF3.364EF324@erols.com...
You can't use words like "nukes" indiscriminately if you want to discuss arms control and military strategy seriously. Please make a careful distinction between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. As in, "strategic nuclear weapons should be used only as a last resort against an enemy nuclear strike." Lumping two different classes of weapons together based on their internal mechanisms only confuses the issue.In this matter I don't distinguish between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Tactical nukes are nukes designed to be used on the battlefield. Strategic nukes are nukes designed to destroy parts of the enemy's infrastructure and population. Strategic nukes are generally bigger, and their delivery vehicles have longer range, but there is no fundamental difference. Certainly there is a sliding difference between "tactical" and "strategic". Striking an enemy "fleet" of tanks is tactical. Striking an enemy city or industrial complex is strategic. What of striking an enemy command-bunker? I know that NATO reserved the option to first-use tactical nukes in the cold war days, because our Warsaw Pact enemies had greater conventional forces in Europe. Perhaps this contributed to MAD, because the Kremlin knew that if they invaded Western Europe, there would be a nuclear war that would inevitably escalate into annihilation. Now, one use of a nuke on the battlefield will make it that more permissible for others to rattle their nukes. India and Pakistan, for instance. One use of a tactical nuke against an Iraqi bunker today may lead to a hundred million dead some distance east of Iraq tomorrow. They are blitheringly insane enough as it is in those two countries.
Jon L. Beck.
2002-05-21
