The President and the Bomb, Part IV
This whole narrative just seems like fear mongering to me. For starters, there’s no evidence that military personnel would follow even a lawful order to launch nuclear weapons, especially if there was no evidence of an existential crisis taking place. The only example I can think of in history is the Soviet submarine that was given orders to launch nukes, if it was engaged by the US, during the Cuban middle crisis. Well it was engaged by the US, and the officers onboard refused to use them. The president doesn’t have a button that launches nukes, and I can’t see anybody following an order to, in absence of the US being overrun or hit with a nuke first.<p>Secondly, I can’t see it ever being a good tactical decision. The highest yield conventional bombs are on-par with the lowest yield nukes. If you want to launch a single massively destructive device, there’s already better options. If you want to target an underground facility, then weapons designed to target underground facilities are going to do a better job than just scaling up the yield anyhow. If you’re just looking for a massive effect on target, then a barrage of smaller weapons is going to do a better jobs of that anyway, and do so more reliably.<p>Finally, even if you find the perfect tactical use case, it could never make sense strategically. Using a nuke of any size will provoke the maximum response from any potential adversary, regardless of whether they have any stake in the conflict to begin with, and will deter any hope of support from our allies. This is plainly obvious to anybody.<p>All of this is nothing more than an implausible and baseless “what if”.