
Nuclear deterrence is limited by geography - robszumski
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1204122/nuclear-deterrence-the-revenge-of-geography/
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cameldrv
Jeffrey Lewis often has smart things to say, but sometimes his articles make
no sense, at least from a technical, on their face, perspective. If nukes
really do fly, whether they fly over Russia or not is totally irrelevant. At a
minimum, given only a heading, Russia would see that only the far east could
be conceivably attacked, which is not a threat to the Russian nation, or its
nuclear deterrent, and would not be the action of a power trying to attack
Russia. In reality, satellites and radars would also be able to measure
velocity, and this, even only with satellite and without radar, would make it
clear that the target was NK. Russia might lodge a protest about its airspace
being violated, but this would be comically minor compared to the rest of the
diplomatic issues to be resolved after an actual nuclear attack.

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KGIII
Would the missile be in the atmosphere at the time it passes over Russia, or
would it still be in space? I hit up Google and it wasn't helpful in answering
this question.

If it is still in space, I'm not sure that Russia really has much ground to
stand in, with regards to complaining.

~~~
olympus
This really has nothing to do with the altitude of the missile. Any ICBM that
the US sends over Russia without talking with them first would be an extreme
provocation, and would give Russia justification to do whatever they wanted
(hopefully WWIII wouldn't result, but lots of other bad things could happen).
This is not the same scale as North Korea test firing a missile over Japan
(and look how nervous Japan got). Pre-coordinating a strike with Russia
removes the time advantage that ICBMs have over bombers, and it would be a
rare situation where Russia would give permission to let an American nuke
overfly its territory.

Similarly, if Russia shot an ICBM over US territory at any altitude, the US
would freak out and be justified in sanctioning the crap out of Russia.
Unfortunately, the US is not in the way of any of Russia's targets (unless the
target is the US), so it's mostly a one-way consideration.

~~~
KGIII
I'm sure they'd be upset, but the USSR was the first country to overfly other
nations with a man made object in space. I doubt they'd do anything other than
yell about it? It's not like they could effectively sanction the US.

I am not an expert in these matters but, if I understand correctly, they can
tell velocity and direction to see that it's not going to hit then. I'm not
sure that it enters their airspace, however.

Are there any treaties or international laws regarding this? Again, Google is
not being helpful.

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pidge
Incidentally, there’s actually a map projection where all “great circle”
routes (shortest paths on a sphere, ie missile paths) are straight lines. It’s
called the gnomonic projection, and it could have been used to illustrate the
Russian-overflight issue more clearly.

Although it’s limited to only showing half of a sphere at a time, so it
doesn’t solve the problem of illustrating a southern around-the-world route.
An azimuthal equidistant projection centered at the launch site or target
would work for that.

~~~
cousin_it
The existence of the gnomonic projection isn't very surprising, as it's just
the perspective projection used by all artists to go from a spherical field of
view to a flat plane. That way it's also easy to understand why it can't
handle more than half of the sphere.

~~~
jacobolus
To the grandparent poster: A gnomonic projection is not the most useful for
these particular maps, because the distances are so long that distortion
starts getting out of control.

Better would be some kind of azimuthal projection centered on North Korea
(azimuthal equidistant perhaps), with other segments (those not including NK
as an endpoint) drawn as the appropriate great circle arcs.

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NamTaf
The big unmentioned thing here is that what would Russia do to respond to an
ICBM flying over them _from the South_? If they have an engage-on-detection
doctrine, is that only pointed north towards the US or would it still apply
from something originating from NK?

In essence, does Russia become a similar defensive blanket for the US?

~~~
olympus
No, one of the first things that is considered when deciding if an unknown
missile is hostile is to look at its point of origin (comically abbreviated
POO). If a missile originates from NK, then Russia would first assume it is
headed for the US. They would need to gather trajectory information indicating
that the missile was heading for a Russian target before they did anything.
They would be pissed at North Korea for starting WWIII, but would probably
just let the missile fly overhead and try to take advantage of the political
situation later.

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pluma
Can someone explain in simple language why we still think nuclear deterrence
is a good idea? Is any nation on Earth myopic enough to think that responding
to a nuclear attack with a nuclear escalation is a viable strategy?

Making North Korea easier to hit by US nukes won't make them step down. North
Korea is scared senseless and backed into a corner (they've been at war with
the US for the better part of a century and preparing for an invasion by an
enemy that is several times their size), trying to scare them further won't
prevent them from doing anything stupid.

Maybe I'm missing something but this sounds like it's only concerned with
maintaining American military dominance rather than guaranteeing peaceful
coexistence or at least the continued existence of the human race. Nuclear
weapons are neither necessary nor sufficient to win a war against North Korea.
If the conflict were to ever go nuclear, nuking North Korea won't make the
country back down -- it will only alienate China, South Korea (or what's left
of it) and Japan. Not to mention the entire International Community.

~~~
planteen
Nuclear deterrence has been a controversial topic for 50 years. There have
always been arguments for nuclear disarmament instead.

I took the point of this article to be that the ICBM portion of the US triad
does not work on NK since a missile must overfly China or Russia.

I personally don't think there is much risk of war with NK. NK has everything
to lose and nothing to gain by starting any sort of war.

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vtange
Since we have Trump on board, the post might be even more interesting with a
slide 10: let South Korea/Japan go nuclear, in face of the political issues.

~~~
olympus
The US doctrine on nuclear stuff is (paraphrasing here) "if you want something
done right, you have to do it yourself." There are very few countries that we
trust enough to hand over a job as important as nuclear deterrent. Australia
would be a much better choice from an allied perspective but their military is
much too small to be a real deterrent against China. Combining Australia,
Japan, and South Korea might be an effective deterrent, but we still don't
trust Japan and China will never let a nuclear South Korea happen.

Letting Japan have nuclear weapons is many decades in the future. The US
monitors/controls the development of the JSDF very closely. They were only
recently [1] allowed to have an "aircraft carrier." (edit 2: This presupposes
that Japan even wants nuclear weapons. They, of all countries, would think
twice about something that has destroyed two of their cities- also the
"peaceful" application of nuclear power has devastated the area around
Fukushima. New Zealand has a strong anti-nuke sentiment and they were only
used as a test site.)

South Korea is so close to China that their defensive reaction time is
effectively zero. The same goes for China's reaction time from a South Korean
missile. China would be extremely upset (to the point of sabotaging missile
installations) if we were to allow South Korea to develop nuclear weapons.
Imagine if China allied with Mexico and started helping them with a nuclear
program. The US would go apeshit. (edit: Rather than make up a hypothetical,
just look at the Cuban Missile Crisis to figure out how crazy it could be. Why
did I not just use that example in the first place?)

The US wants to control its own nuclear weapons and would rather lease bases
from allies than to let the allies have their own weapons. This increases the
perceived security of the weapons (from being stolen), as most military
commanders believe that their own base is a much more secure place to keep
nukes than someone else's base. Whether or not this is true is up for debate.
Manning your own defenses instead of an ally also increases your perceived
defensive readiness. Most commanders also believe that their own troops are
better prepared than someone else's troops. Whether or not this is true is
also up for debate.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hy%C5%ABga-
class_helicopter_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hy%C5%ABga-
class_helicopter_destroyer)

~~~
QAPereo
_and China will never let a nuclear South Korea happen._

It’s possible, although highly unlikely that the RoK could go nuclear in a
manner similar to Israel, and in essence, China wouldn’t have a say. Never say
never, just based on the strength of opposition.

~~~
yongjik
Israel can do that because it always has the US at its back and it doesn't
really care what Iran or Egypt think.

South Korea, on the other hand, cannot hope to enjoy that kind of support (can
you name one prominent Korean-American politician?), and China is its biggest
trade partner.

That is, South Korea has little to gain and a lot to lose by developing nukes.

~~~
QAPereo
They have the same thing which any country has to gain from a nuclear arsenal;
a near guarantee against outright invasion. As for Israel they did it, like
Pakistan and India, because they could, and once they had no one could stop
them. That’s pretty much why the DPRK wants them, although they’d probably
sell the tech too.

~~~
yongjik
North Korea wants nuke because (1) they're genuinely afraid of American
invasion, and (2) they're already an international pariah so additional
sanctions mean little. They have something to gain from nukes, and not much to
lose.

As for South Korea, it can bulldoze over North Korea with conventional
weapons. It doesn't need nukes to defend against North Korea. On the other
hand, China has so much firepower that having a few nukes won't tip the
balance much, so nukes are not much useful against China either.

Now consider that South Korea is practically an island country, heavily
dependent on trade. Almost all its neighbors will vehemently protest a nuclear
program, and its economy will suffer greatly. AND it will increase tension in
East Asia. And probably provoke Japan into its own nuclear program. Just what
we need.

Frankly, as a South Korean, I cannot think of a single desirable outcome that
can follow a nuclear program. If we're serious about national defense, what we
really need now is not nukes but a powerful navy that can secure our trade
routes.

~~~
QAPereo
_As for South Korea, it can bulldoze over North Korea with conventional
weapons. It doesn 't need nukes to defend against North Korea. On the other
hand, China has so much firepower that having a few nukes won't tip the
balance much, so nukes are not much useful against China either._

Sure, but they’d have turned Seoul into a series of shallow craters however,
and you should assume that China would use the DPRK as a proxy in another
shooting war. Meanwhile having the credible ability to destroy a few major
Chinese metropolitan centers probably has more of a deterrent effect than you
are admitting.

~~~
yongjik
We don't need nukes to deter China (or any other country) from an all-out
invasion. We already deter them by being a small, heavily populated and
industrially developed, largely monocultural, and largely mountainous country,
which has half a million soldiers and is only accessible via sea or through
one of the world's most heavily fortified border. Invading South Korea will
cost any country more than Invading Iraq cost America. It's simply not worth
it.

That's not saying South Korea is invincible, or there aren't any ways China
can apply military pressure.

A much more realistic scenario is like this: some Chinese patrol ships
suddenly find a need to "protect" Chinese fishing boats from being "harassed"
by South Korean coast guards patrolling its EEZ. In such a case, nukes won't
help, because what are you going to do with them, bomb Beijing? Can you
imagine what would happen to KOSPI index if a South Korean politician so much
as made a joke about using nukes?

I still fail to see the utility of nukes. Any national leader has to be
batshit insane to consider invading South Korea, and if they are already that
insane, I don't see how having a few nukes will suddenly cause them to back
down. (Don't be fooled by North Korea: they're carefully cultivating the
_image_ of a batshit insane trigger-happy country because it benefits them.)

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petermcneeley
Surely I am missing something. Nuclear subs and Space deployments make these
slides moot.

~~~
shangxiao
Space deployments are banned by the Outer Space Treaty [1]. Slide 3 mentions
Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) which was not banned by the Outer
Space Treaty but subsequently by SALT II. Interestingly enough the US never
ratified SALT II [2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System#The_FOBS_and_SALT_II)

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andy_ppp
Brilliant slides and explanations. I really hope that President Trump
understand the nuance here. Sigh.

