Originally Posted by
NutLoose
I disagree, but you know that, a nuclear response is the only response.
Nutty, that was true in the bipolar world of the Cold War. We have been, since about 1990 or so, in a multipolar world, which requires a much more difficult to assess calculus of escalation.
For example, the nuclear dreams of Iran, and the nuclear reality of Pakistan and India, were not a part of the Cold War calculus that you and I grew up in, and that you and I served in, but each of them poses a massive threat to a great deal of the Northern Hemisphere even if they don't shoot at Europe. (For a reference,
see the study at Rutgers University done about the effects of a Pakistan vs India nuclear exchange).
Granted, if the submarines with the red star and the strategic missiles are launched, the response is as you say; and if you and I are alive after the mushroom clouds subside, life is still going to get a lot harder for a lot of people.
At that point PPRuNe no longer matters, and the UN will have failed much more badly than the League of Nations failed.
If I may return to aviation content, let us presume that one of those hypersonic missiles that the Russians have has been given a nuclear tip (per my discussion with @henra a few days ago). Consider two cases of a launch with the target being:
- Somewhere in Ukraine
- Somewhere else in Europe.
and let us suppose that efforts to intercept that missile fail.
I don't think that the NATO response is identical in those cases because Ukraine does not have Article V protection, while everyone else in NATO does.
I had begun to believe, back in the late 90's, as I left my NATO job, that at long last we'd put that whole "tactical nuke" to bed. (I helped in my own small way as a staff officer, to retire a few of the Contingency Plans for that but obviously not all of them).
Here it is a quarter of a century later and that damned genii still won't go back into the bottle.
