“I thought “city busters” were smaller bombs and that the big multi-MT bombs were intended as counterforce weapons against hardened targets such as buried missiles and command facilities.”

Depends on who you ask and when you asked them.

In the early nuclear era 1945-1970, nuclear payloads where delivered by bombers or ballistic missiles that were only accurate enough to hit the general area of a city. Attacking small targets like a specific military base or bunker wasn’t really an option. Bigger was better in that era because the goal was to produce the biggest possible ariel burst to destroy the widest area.

When accuracy of missiles improved in the 70′s to were planners could begin to think in terms of hitting within a kilometer of a specific point then the doctrine changed to one of using smaller warheads overall. This is when the idea of a “limited” nuclear war arose, one in which only military targets got destroyed and the cities would not be directly targeted.

Large bombs also presented the problem of fratricide. When a nuke goes of it throws a lot of debris into the air along with a radiation flash that fills a cone going up into space that covers something like 10% of the planet. Both effects could destroy or blind subsequent warheads. (This problem was so bad that I read one estimate that in full scale empty the silos exchange fewer than 10% of the weapons would actually reach their targets even if both side launched at the same time)

I think psychology and culture played a role as well. For the WWII generation who had burned entire cities to the ground with conventional weapons, the idea of nuking them didn’t seem much of a moral stretch. As the silent generation and the boomers came up they resisted the idea of destroying cities directly. They created the doctrine of using small nukes partly for those reasons.

A very fair point, but…

IF we commit to not using little nukes because they might lead to big nukes…
AND we commit to not using big nukes because, well, they’re big nukes…
THEN we have committed to never using any nukes ever in the GWOT.

We have given away — unilaterally, one is tempted to say, but in any case without a corresponding concession from the enemy — our biggest, scariest game piece.

Even if they don’t know much about game theory, the Islamic terrorists, Dear Leaders, and other rogues who may arise in the future will know that they can sleep peacefully at night. We won’t nuke ‘em. We can’t nuke ‘em. Somewhere they’re safe from our wrath.

I see some benefit in allowing ourselves the choice — yes, and the corresponding temptation — rather than just peremptorily removing that option forever.

“I think people worry because of the threshold issue…”

I agree completely, and that should be what the political debate should be about. You can argue very convincingly that a small nuke would take out, for example, a large, buried cache of biological agent with much less “collateral damage” in the form of civilian casualties than any conventional smart bunker buster. I have also heard the argument that we must have smaller and more precise nukes because we want to insure that our enemies will never assume that we won’t use them. I think these can be very convincing arguments if you forget about the kind of “slippery slope” argument that Michael brings up, not to mention the massive political cost that would come with any first use of nuclear weapons, no matter how small and precise. These are essentially political questions that must be answered politically, that is, by the nation as a whole. We cannot afford to leave the decision to, as Harry Truman put it, “some dashing lieutenant colonel.” There should most definitely be a national debate about this matter. I think that, in the new situation that has arisen since the end of the cold war, such a debate is critical. We simply can’t afford to leave it to either the military or some obscure bureaucrats in government agencies that most people know virtually nothing about. That is why Kerry’s rhetoric, in the form of red meat to his core about non-existent hundreds of millions and delusions about the development of new weapons, is so damaging. It pits the “usual suspects” from the old “ban the bomb” days against the rest of us, obfuscating the real issues. You can see this by going to Instapundit and checking the reaction to Kerry’s remarks from some very smart and articulate bloggers. Kerry has succeeded in forcing an essential debate about a critical matter that affects every one of us into the form of an ideological confrontation with the lunatic fringe “ban the bombers” as if we were back in the 60′s. Unfortunately, in this case the critical nature of the issues that must be decided make it extremely dangerous to cast them into the form of a black and white ideological debate between left and right.

There were a million experts watching the Soviet Union under a microscope and not one predicted the swift, complete end to the empire without outside intervention. Then as now no one can predict the future.

No president can state publicly that America must maintain its nuclear deterrent because sometime in the future there might be a regime change in Russia hostile to America and ready to throw its weight around, at least regionally. But the military planners have to take this in consideration; not just terrorism.

Bush is going to stay the course. Where does Kerry stand? Who knows? Meanwhile back at the ranch, Russia is also staying the course, maintaining its nuclear capability.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/10/01/nuclearparity.shtml

Do we really want to go down that path? I don’t think so.

Actually he will have the tools, it’s just that he won’t have very good tools. Think flyswatter vs. sledgehammer.

America can bust any bunker with existing nukes — the 9-megaton B53 would do the job just fine. But it would release 9MT of energy doing so. [link]

A cute little B61-11 would bust that bunker with only 0.3-300 kilotons energy — that’s 30 to 30,000 times less nuclear explosive power.

What hawkish environmentalist wouldn’t prefer the B61?

I provided a link to this post to Hugh Hewitt and he used it in his virtual symposium. the virtual symposium is an interesting idea.

I expect the Democrats will turn on Kerry after he loses, just as they did on Dukakis & Mondale. Bush is adequate but vulnerable, and if the Democrats can’t capitalize on this opportunity, they will blame the candidate. After all, they settled on him rather than their first choice, Dean, because Kerry was allegedly more electable. They should consider that perhaps their message was received and rejected by the voters. Kerry’s failing is his ineffectual effort to obscure the Democrat/tranzi program from the voters. It will never occur to them that perhaps their program, in the light of day, is repugnant to a majority in the US.

I don’t think even Kerry expects to win. After all, he hasn’t given up his safe Senate seat.

This cannot be acceptable to any large segment of the American people. We are the good guys. We can be trusted with nuclear weapons. Our possesion of nuclear weapons is an assurance to the rest of the world that they can live in peace, not a reason or excuse for them to so arm themselves. Kerry is adopting the position of the tinpot dictator. If the United States has nuclear weapons, I should have them also, so I can protect myelf from American Imperialism. If I were the RNC I would have a major national ad campaign playing this up.

Treaty vs. conflict; summit meetings vs. weapons development; ‘global test’ vs. national soverignty; judicial activism vs. rule of law – it’s no mystery why he’s most comfortable with the neo-communists and authoritarians among the Europeans. His policy proposals merely reflect his covert belief system and, unlike Tony Blair, he’s unable to face a post-9/11 reality.

Good point. It does say a lot about Kerry’s model that liberal democracies must be restricted to the same options of totalitarian states.

I think that Leftist intellectuals like Kerry don’t really conceive of themselves as being a part of a distinct polity like a nation state. Rather, they think of themselves an international class like the aristocrats of old. For Kerry, everybody outside his class, no matter how grouped, is a peasant in desperate need of his guidance. America and North Korea are both peasant-ruled entities so the nobility must intercede to separate them in their squabbles. It’s not fair that America has nukes and NK does not just like it’s not fair that one child has a cookie and another does not.