polite_gandalf wrote on Feb 1
st, 2019 at 11:31am:
freediver wrote on Jan 31
st, 2019 at 12:24pm:
No nukes have been used in war since WWII.
Two episodes in history you may be interested in FD:
1. a computer malfunction incorrectly alerted the Russians to a US first strike nuclear attack - to which the Russian officers were obliged by standard protocol to order a retaliatory strike. This would normally have happened, but was thankfully averted by a quick-witted and entirely non-compliant Russian officer on duty at the time.
2. President Nixon one late night was drunk and reportedly ordered a nuclear strike against the Vietnamese - as is his absolute prerogative as President. White house staff present at the time were able to delay him long enough to wake up Secretary of State Kissinger and summon him to talk him out of it.
How long before another drunk president decides on a whim to exercise his right to press the button on any nation he pleases? Forgive me if I see this as a more pressing and greater concern than the far-off possibility that some low resourced tinpot dictator may develop a nuclear threat somewhere in the unforeseeable future.
We have been closer to an open nuclear exchange than most people have ever realised...
Quote:Able Archer 83 is the codename for a command post exercise carried out in November 1983 by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).[1][2] As with Able Archer exercises from previous years, the purpose of the exercise was to simulate a period of conflict escalation, culminating in the US military attaining simulated DEFCON 1 coordinated nuclear attack.[3] Coordinated from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) headquarters in Casteau, Belgium, it involved NATO forces throughout Western Europe, beginning on November 7, 1983, and lasting for five days.
The 1983 exercise introduced several new elements not seen in previous years, including a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silences, and the participation of heads of government. This increase in realism, combined with deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and the anticipated arrival of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe, led some members of the Soviet Politburo and military to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse of war, obscuring preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike.[3][4][5][6] In response, the Soviet Union readied their nuclear forces and placed air units in East Germany and Poland on alert.[7][8] The apparent threat of nuclear war ended with the conclusion of the exercise on November 11.[9][10][11]
Historians such as Thomas Blanton, Director of the National Security Archive, and Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College, have since argued that Able Archer 83 was one of the times when the world has come closest to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.[12][13] Other incidents that also brought the world close to such a war include the Soviet nuclear false alarm incident that occurred a month earlier and the Norwegian rocket incident of 1995.[14]
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