this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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"Limited nuclear war" (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 2 days ago by Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml
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I recently read this article from John Bellamy foster where he mentions that the US strategists think they can engage in "limited nuclear war", that is, use nuclear weapons on "tactical" targets and keep nuclear war at a "low" level.

Supposedly, the idea is that the US moves up from low level targets to more important targets, and that at each stage, the Chinese will not escalate because escalation would be top costly for the Chinese (since the Chinese only have ICBMs, their only option of escalation is MAD).

Aparantly, this strategy has also become part of official US doctrine.

My first thought on this is that this strategy is completely insane, because China will not allow it to be played out. If 1 nuke goes off all of them go off.

My second thought on this is that I have no idea what the actual Chinese nuclear policy is, other than their statement to never use nukes in a first strike capacity. Does anybody know of any sources that go into detail on this?

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[โ€“] Comprehensive49@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

You have to consider the population density in China. One nuke aimed at an 'important target' could pretty easily kill a few million Chinese as collateral.

This would obviously give China all rights to launch a counterattack.

Unfortunately one Chinese nuke cannot do the same to Americans because Americans just don't live densely enough, which means for a sufficient response China probably needs to launch 5+ nukes per one American nuke.

Of course, the Americans will just launch four or five nukes in response, which will kill ~20-30 million more Chinese. At which point, everyone will be nuking each other.

TLDR There is no such thing as limited nuclear war because any limited strike on China will probably kill enough people to justify a massive counterattack, at which point full nuclear war will have begun.

I made a previous writeup on China's current position in a nuclear exchange with the US: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5407827/4903187

[โ€“] stink@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think you forgor to link ๐Ÿ’€