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Originally Posted by Sea Demon
As I said above, and as Aramike also contends, it's not just significantly greater proportions of nuclear weapons as a means to destroy the same targets 10 times over. The reality is we currently carry 192 warheads on each of our SSBN's alone. If any potential enemy can trail and destroy just 2 of our SSBN's, they have successfully eliminated very close to 40% of our entire fielded strategic arsenal using the Obama numbers. That puts a chill up my spine.
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Isn't 60% enough?
Have you considered the alternate solution of
dispersing? For example, you can have 96 warheads per sub and twice as many subs. As a bonus, the SLBM would fly a little farther, or have more room for anti-ABM decoys?
And I thought the US was so confident its SSBNs are invulnerable...
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Sorry Bewolf. I don't mean any insult to you. It's just that me and you went back and forth on this stuff just a few weeks ago, and we pretty much just came to different conclusions about any merits of deterrence. We simply disagree. I didn't say your opinion didn't matter. I'm just simply not going to argue too much about it with anybody that does not have any say in US policy as a voter. You simply don't have any power or say in American nuclear policy, and I already understand your POV. Therefore, I won't waste too much effort trying to influence your opinion. You have been clear where you stand. And while I respect your opinion, I highly disagree. I don't mind discussing this topic with you, but we've gone around in circles too many times on it. And you're simply not going to change this American's mind about how I expect our policy makers to act on this issue with our deterrent forces.
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Quite frankly, you are not in that much better a position than Beowulf or any other foreign national. We've got zero, true. But unless you are some kind of nuclear planner, it isn't like you've got more than about 1 in 100 million (or whatever is the number of egligible voters in the US these days). When you count in everything, such as how a voter can only affect any policy (nuclear, economic or otherwise) VERY indirectly, you've got even less than that, but you get my point. I'll call that a pretty insignificant difference.
The only chance you can beat that is if you persuade some other American. For example, if your posts somehow convinces 10 Americans, then you've increased your influence to 10 in 100 million. Yet any foreigner would, by that logic, have almost as much power as you to influence American nuclear policy - your advantage is but 1 in 100 million, nothing that a winning argument in front of an audience might not cover
As for "proven principles", I must really wonder. Admittedly, the choices that happened weren't proven to be a failure, in that no nuclear war occurred, so far. That's the best that can be said about deterrence.
As an aside, if we go by "proven principles" (read the policies used in the Cold War), then ABM itself is non-justifiable. They were so fearful to go outside MAD that they even signed a ABM Treaty in 1972. America's decision to go ahead with its ABM plans is, in itself, a deviation from what worked (or didn't fail) in the past, and we are in untried territory already.