
How Russia and China Could Strike the U.S. Air Force’s ‘Achilles Heel’ - _of
https://warisboring.com/how-russia-and-china-could-strike-the-u-s-air-forces-achilles-heel-e3d61d2a8f7e#.vm3zvwjpf
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DominikR
There will be no strike at anyones achilles heel, at least not if we are
talking about mayor world powers like the US, Russia and China.

The most any one of these powers will do (and all of them do it) is trying to
subvert and destroy weak governments that are friendly to the adversary.

There's not even a chance that one power might try to pit the two others
against each other (I'm talking about a real war) because all of them are
guaranteed to wipe out all of the others if the survival of their own state is
sufficiently threatened.

The reasoning for this goes something like this: If we are destroyed and only
one superpower survives this (because they didn't take part in it) they'd be
in a position to dominate all of what remains. Very cynical but that's how MAD
works.

Even Israel which is much weaker than any of those three has a similar
deterrence strategy. It entails striking the West, even if they were overrun
by Arabs, not Western powers.

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

I don't like how this all works (I'm not a Sociopath) but it seems to have
been very effective over the last decades because the actors were all
rational.

The reason why Muslim countries acquiring WMD's is so much more heavily
opposed is that many strategists do believe that their ideology could threaten
MAD. It is not inconceivable that some of these governments could launch an
all out attack if they had the capability believing that they will all go to
heaven for taking out what they perceive to be "the great Satan".

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ArkyBeagle
We don't "like" MAD because on the narrative plane, it's a disgusting concept.
Still, here we are.

This depends on whether or not you believe the ideology can travel past the
level of technological sophistication necessary to deploy nukes. The ideology
itself is pretty self-abnegating - it has many marques of a suicide cult.

This being said, there was this weekend ( from Aug 18th, 2016 ) a repeat of
Douglas Cohn's "WW4", in which one nightmare scenario is ISIS "invading"
Pakistan and becoming nuke-capable.

I imagine that'd get our collective attention if it looked like it was
forming. I hope somebody is paying attention...

Cohn also notes that, at least in the offensive role, one division of American
troops could dissipate ISIS in short order. After the offensive comes the "you
broke it, you bought it" part, which is why we don't just.

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DominikR
There is no definitive proof for US contingency plans but the US is so heavily
involved with Pakistan to secure these nuclear weapons and on top of that
there have been so many statements of top US officials (even from US
Presidents) regarding this issue that I'm 100% sure that there are plans to
swiftly take out or otherwise secure these nuclear weapons if something
dangerous develops there.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#U.S._security_assistance)

Note how the government of Pakistan responds to these allegations that the US
has these plans by reassuring everyone that the weapons are safe instead of
being outraged that a foreign government disregards their sovereignty in such
a way. That says a lot.

> This depends on whether or not you believe the ideology can travel past the
> level of technological sophistication necessary to deploy nukes. The
> ideology itself is pretty self-abnegating - it has many marques of a suicide
> cult.

Well ISIS is quite comfortable with using the latest technologies for their
purposes and countries like Iran have a truly remarkable scientific community
(considering their isolation), so I tend to believe that ideology alone will
not inhibit them sufficiently to not being able to achieve this goal if they
really want to.

Edit: Yes I agree, the US could take out ISIS in a few weeks, so could Russia.
What is missing is the will as there are serious repercussions if you try to
do it while other superpowers oppose it vigorously. (and on top of that you'd
have to use very blunt force in order to do it - many civilians on ISIS held
territory would die)

That's why I believe that Trump as a president would make it happen as he has
stated on multiple occasions that he would do it together with Putin in some
way.

If the US and Russia / China shared a common goal here they would destroy ISIS
very quickly.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
I agree - I didn't chunk the pieces of the ideology itself very well. It's a
dissonant mix and I can't always parse it well.

Iran is a... bicameral society with, as you say, a high degree of
sophistication coeexisting with fundamentalism. As the sting of 1953 fades, I
can't help but think we'll eventually achieve normal relations with them. I
don't, for example, see as much screaming about the Obama Administrations
attempts to thaw things out by the Rightist press as I used to. It's not a
stretch for present-day Americans to denounce Dulles-brothers style
adventurism.

This being said, I think of ISIS itself as an international attractor for
disaffected youth, with an apparently _explicit_ emphasis on martyrdom.

And yes - I expect we'll keep a very close watch on Pakistan. I just meant
that if Pakistan were to fall, it wouldn't be a huge military effort to ...
secure it. It would be a big logistical effort but I think of Gulf War I as
the model. Of course, then we'd stiffen the resolve of those who oppose
Westerners being there at all. I am also sure that we'd try to use the fig
leaf of the U.N.

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srhdmdndtjeyn
Yet another alarmist article that ignores the fact that China, Russia, and the
US could never engage each other in any meaningful capacity without sparking
global nuclear armageddon. No, we do not need to spend hundreds of billions of
dollars to fix this "problem."

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Varinius
Well, that's a bunch of ignorant baloney.

If Russia and China have these capabilities today, then opponents we DO engage
will have them tomorrow... unless, you know, someone fixes the problem.

Not to say that we have nuclear assurances against a direct conflict between
the US and Russia, we don't have such assurances for US proxies engaging
Russian or Chinese proxies. The US needs to have enough conventional
deterrence to prevent major proxy wars - which, by the way, destabilize the
world economy and make the world a crappier place for everyone, including the
"third-world-lives-don't-matter" isolationists such as yourself.

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Fej
"Could"

But they won't. MAD is alive and well, no matter how insane it is.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
For something so ...cognitively dissonant, it sure has been effective. I stick
with "the game theory of MAD is ironclad."

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johansch
... and if you only invest in this particular area (with a leading American
country giving jobs to Americans, where it counts) with 50 billion USD, you
could protect yourself! Would you like to learn more?

