Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
Since the Second World War, we've had several major conflicts that easily dwarf some of the greatest human conflicts in human history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan
I would argue that all nuclear power did was give sovereign powers more incentive to conduct highly-destructive and costly proxy wars.
Not to mention, that the existence of nuclear weapons creates the first and only conditions in human history for absolute war where every individual, civilian or soldier, is essentially on the front lines of combat.
Now that we have them, things like M.A.D. and other game theory calculations are useful and necessary. Doesn't mean that I don't think we should dismantle the globe's arsenal entirely. The problem with technology though is that once the cat is out of the bag, it's out to stay, so to speak. We can't undo this great and horrific mistake of the past, unfortunately. |
I'll give you desert storm and the Gulf War.
But I would argue that the presence of a strong Soviet Nuclear deterrence by the Soviets and American's in Korea kept that war from rapidly spirally out of control.
Without Nuclear deterence Douglas MaCarthur and Curtis LeMay would have rapidly escalated the war into China itself by using conventional bombing to disrupt Chinese troop buildup. The American's might not have been all that interested in stopping at the Yalu River and tried to create a buffer zone into China. Without Nuclear detterence we would have seen more Soviet "Volunteers" entering the Korean conflict.
In Vietnam without Soviet deterence the American's would have intensified that war especially in the end phase of the war because they wouldn't have worried about drawing the Soviets into the conflict. The logical American response to the war would have been to destroy every piece of North Vietnam infrastructure since they were incapable of destroying the North Vietnamese logistics and supply system once supplies left the main hubs.
Without nuclear deterrence I firmly believe we would have seen a Soviet armored push into Germany to counter Kennedy's naval blockade of Cuba. The Russians would have attempted to seize NATO territory to trade with the American's for a more favorable Soviet settlement.
While the American's and Nato were militarily strong, they counted on nuclear deterence to counter the 7-1 Soviet advantage in infantry, armour and artillary in the European region.