The US is doing everything in its power to undermine MAD and nuclear deterrence in general. This doesn't surprise me given how many more nuclear weapons the US has to China that they think they can and should use some in a conventional war. The logic being they afford to, it kills enemies that would weaken their conventional forces, and enemy use of the same would undermine their limited stockpile while US use wouldn't matter to their deterrent. Still deeply alarming.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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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:
I think you forgor to link 💀
You don't need to use tactical nuclear weapons to respond.
You simply strike chemical facilities, nuclear facilities and critical industry full of toxic materials. Why drop a big-bomb when you can poison the enemy's land for generations? I genuinely think with how rural and sprawled America is; China's response to tactical nukes would simply be striking nuclear facilities with non-nuclear ICBMs or depending on the severity/number of tactical strikes it could just straight up escalate.
That's a good point. People tend to forget that non-nuclear payloads can still be used to take out strategic targets. Like, in a war over Taiwan, China could deny the west critical minerals and parts (Literally already happening and the western panties are in a twist). They could blockade western trade routes. They could launch devastating cyber attacks and even create mass panic.
They've already shut down US pipelines before, and they're already inside US cellular networks.
A war wouldn't just be nukes flying around, critical infrastructure would also be heavily targeted, and the US has not been maintaining their assets at all. There are power plants that have been running for nearly 100 years at this point.
We can have a little nuclear war, as a treat
As a threat.
The american urge to unleash nuclear armageddon
History is fucking rhyming rn, Ike literally had this exact same thought. Please let us go back to the pentomic structure.