This doctrine allows unlimited pre-emptive nuclear strikes to achieve decisive victory over the enemy, and avoid attrition-style prolonged nuclear war
Would military command really have achieved a decisive victory by glazing the surface of their own country and burying what’s left underground for the foreseeable future? Clearly a failure of strategic thinking by our erstwhile competitors.
The Soviet bet was that the collective West is more wealthy and hedonistic than Soviets, and has more to lose in the global hot war, and therefore would be less willing to climb up the escalation ladder, thus giving the escalation dominance to the Soviets, as long as technical means of delivering the decisive strike are available (ICBM, IRBM, SLBM, ALBM, MIRV, Perimeter, etc).
examples are numerous:
1. Cuban missile crisis. It was JFK who blinked first in the Caribbean crisis and called Khrushev to deescalate and agreed to remove missiles from Turkey
2. Ukraine war. It was Jake Sullivan that turned off the tap on military shipments to Ukraine, when Russia communicated that they will be using tactical nukes in Kherson
It is an edge, a way to exploit an arbitrage on the difference in a will to sacrifice and die between two nations.
When you play heads up poker, and your opponent is not willing to risk his pot, you bully him with your betting strategy and extract value ("big stack bully" strategy)
>> "and relying on the rest of the world to act like statesmen and leaders"
perhaps these "statesmen and leaders" should show more responsibility before unleashing non-stop wars around the world and plunging nations into endless wars, organizing genocides, and faking "muhh weapons of mass destruction" evidence for foreign invasions and occupations
It actually fails in all scenarios. If the West perceived the Soviets as rational— which they did— they would not at all expect the Russians to trigger MAD. In an acute conflict there is no stopping point, both will continue to escalate expecting the other to back down. This happened repeatedly in the “non-stop wars” you reference resulting in conventional proxy conflict, not more, partly because the Soviets did act rationally and not according to your strategy . Conversely, if the Soviets convinced the West they truly were committed to mutual annihilation lest the West surrender incrementally, or worse, convinced the West the Soviets could not be prudent stewards of such weapons by willie-nillie glazing this city or that, this would have also triggered an unconstrained response and unlimited escalation spiral.
Had the Soviets really gambled and gone all-in with your hyper-rational, inhuman bluff, it’s most likely that we would not be here to have this discussion.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-2
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-135_anti-ballistic_missile_s...
Moscow was the most overkilled places on the planet - doesn't matter if you were in a bunker - all that would do is delay your death a bit.
How exactly is the focus of the Americans any different? The VIPs[1] will be whisked away into bunkers, you and me will be vaporized.
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[1] Who have utterly and irredeemably failed in their most important job - of preventing a nuclear war. In a just world, not a single one of them should be allowed to survive such a failure.
We don't live in a just world, though, the captain will run for the VIP life raft at the first glint of sea ice.
American VIPs want to survive because they are rich and want to enjoy their wealth, they don't want to die.
Soviet VIPs were not wealthy and their goal of survival was purely decisive military win and achievement of political goals.
Othering and ascribing alien ambitions to the enemy only fools yourself.
Why do you think their goals differed from those of someone like, say, Kissinger? Or any of the other people who have spent the past century and a half grooming and growing the empire?
who blinked first during Ukraine-Russia war? It was Jake Sullivan who redirected military gear from Urkaine to Israel and drip-fed the ammunition shipments, when Russia showed they are ready to use tactical nukes if necessary and formally updated their nuclear doctrine
The actual timeline was that Kennedy blockades Cuba, Soviet vessels turn around rather than start a shooting war, Khruschev makes a secret proposal to de-escalate, Kennedy agrees to it, both side declare victory, Soviet bombers are removed from Cuba, the blockade is lifted, the US removes missiles from Turkey.
That you see all this, and your takeaway is that "Kennedy blinked first because unlike Ivan, he isn't a power-hungry monster" belies an unnuanced, zero-sum, exceptionalist view of the world.
As for Israel and Ukraine, I think all that demonstrated was that the US cared more about kowtowing to Israel, than it did about having a proxy war with Russia. Weirdly enough, though, to this day, weapons and cash (that is immediately spent on weapons) continue to pour into Ukraine. Someone should probably notify Canada and the EU about that new Russian red line, they clearly haven't gotten the memo.
1. Blockade was not full, two American warships, the USS Essex and the USS Gearing, were ready to intercept tanker Bucharest, which could have led to war. Instead, Kennedy ordered to let the Bucharest through the quarantine
2. U-2 plane was shot down and Maj. Rudolf Anderson has died
as for "weapons and cash continue to pour" - it does not conflict with the Russian strategy, you might be surprised, but it is perfectly fine for Russians, that the US's allies are expending their resources on overpriced US military gear, that is dependent on Chinese rare earth exports
If Kennedy was a yellowbelly, what was a 'strong man' supposed to do in his place? End civilization over it?
Your hyperfocus on 'winning' every confrontation, no matter the value, and no matter the risk - is destructive and incredibly dangerous.
> U-2 plane was shot down and Maj. Rudolf Anderson has died
Could you remind us what that U-2 plane was doing, and where it was while doing it?
You can't honestly hold the Soviet bloc to blame for shooting down an enemy aircraft over its own territory... Or view Kennedy as weak because he didn't escalate over a clear act of self-defense.
They had every right to shoot him down, and everybody knew it.