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“But the … whole point of the doomsday machine … is lost … if you keep it a secret!
But the Perimeter system was meant to remove what might present an additional pressure on Soviet commanders in Moscow to launch on warning if the warning signals seemed correct:
The Dead Hand, reported in a tribute to him on his
stupidity to keep the Dead Hand secret; such a retaliatory system was useful as a deterrent only if your adversary knew about it.
single Hiroshima-type fission weapon exploding on either Washington or Moscow—whether deliberate or the result of a mistaken attack (as in Fail Safe or Dr. Strangelove) or as a result of an independent terrorist action—would lead to the end of human civilization (and most other species).
Because each side does in fact delegate, hopes for decapitation are totally unfounded. But for the duration of the Cold War,
“Yes, the ‘Perimeter’ system exists.250 The system is on alert.
The system assesses the situation in the country and gives a command to strike a retaliatory blow on the enemy automatically. Thus, the enemy will not be able to attack Russia and stay alive.”
There is every likelihood that, for comparable reasons, similar secret delegation or Dead Hand systems or
arrangements exist in every other nuclear weapons state—China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea—meaning
The notion common to nearly all Americans that “no nuclear weapons have been used since Nagasaki” is mistaken.
As I noted earlier, they have been used in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation,
Moreover, the United States has demanded that NATO continue to legitimize first-use threats by basing its own strategy on them, even after the USSR and the Warsaw Pact had dissolved (and most of the former Pact members had joined NATO).
It declares in its preamble: “Any doctrine allowing the first use of nuclear weapons and any actions pushing the world toward a catastrophe are incompatible with human moral standards and the lofty ideals of the UN.”
SAC’s only mission in that initial period—which included the formation of NATO—was to threaten or carry out a U.S. first strike against the Soviet Union (possibly to protect Middle East oil, as well as Berlin and Western Europe).
keeping options on the table was in specific response to questions about tactical nuclear weapons.
the simple, widespread ignorance of the reality that Trump was taking the same position of every president since Truman, and of every major candidate in that long period,
beyond question
But in contrast, most Americans have never recognized as “terrorist” in precisely the same sense the firestorms caused deliberately by U.S. firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden or Hamburg or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Thus, virtually any threat of first use of a nuclear weapon is a terrorist threat.
is not merely a moral danger but a moral catastrophe that both Russia and America (with its NATO allies) are still threatening, deploying tactical nuclear weapons, carrying out exercises to execute first-use nuclear attacks against an opposing nuclear superpower “if necessary,” and implying readiness to impose on the rest of humanity a near-certainty of escalation to nuclear winter and omnicide.
because we as a people and our government recognize that nuclear first use would be a murderous, criminal action, not a legitimate “option” for the United States, Russia, or for any other country under any circumstances.
Here is what we know now: the United States and Russia each have an actual Doomsday Machine.
They would kill billions of humans, perhaps ending complex life on earth. This is true even though the Cold War that rationalized their existence and hair-trigger status—and their supposed necessity to national security—ended thirty years ago.
giving up certain infeasible aims and illusory capabilities of our nuclear forces: in particular, the notion that it is possible to limit damage to the United States (or Russia) by means of a preemptive first strike, targeted on the adversary’s land-based missiles, its command and control centers and communications, its leadership (“decapitation”), all other military targets and war-supporting resources, including urban-industrial centers, transportation, and energy.
It should be commonly recognized that no stake whatever, no cause, no principle, no consideration of honor or obligation or prestige or maintaining leadership in current alliances—still less, no concern for remaining in office, or maintaining a particular power structure, or sustaining jobs, profits, votes—can justify maintaining any risk whatever of causing the near extinction of human and other animal life on this planet.
recognition that what is being discussed is dizzyingly insane and immoral:
“There is such a thing as being too late.” In challenging us on April 4, 1967, to recognize “the fierce urgency of now”
We must move past indecision to action.… If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
