General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump's Acting National Security Adviser Said Nuclear War With USSR Was Winnable
Questioning mutual assured destruction, Charles Kupperman called nuclear conflict in large part a physics problem.
President Donald Trumps acting national security adviser, former Reagan administration official Charles Kupperman, made an extraordinary and controversial claim in the early 1980s: nuclear conflict with the USSR was winnable and that nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.
Kuppermans suggestion that the U.S. could triumph in a nuclear war went against dominant theories of mutually assured destruction and ignored the long-term destabilizing effects that such hostilities would have on the planets health and global politics.
Kupperman, appointed to his new post on Tuesday after Trump fired his John Bolton from the job, argued it was possible to win a nuclear war in the classical sense, and that the notion of total destruction stemming from such a superpower conflict was inaccurate. He said that in a scenario in which 20 million people died in the U.S. as opposed to 150 million, the nation could then emerge as the stronger side and prevail in its objectives.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/charles-kupperman-nuclear-war-trump-nsa_n_5d7b9809e4b03b5fc88212fd
Turbineguy
(37,319 posts)a mine shaft gap!
rampartc
(5,403 posts)20 million casualties in a war (3 or 4 big cities) might be survivable, but winning?
20 million casualties might occur in an exchange with, oh, n korea or iran, but Russia or the ussr? maybe a few thousand or a million Alaskans and Navajo and a scattering of back woodsmen and preppers will not rebuild civilization from post apocalyptic destruction.
There are no limit to the depths ...
Cosmocat
(14,563 posts)Than bolton ...
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)DFW
(54,349 posts)OK, so we lose the entire populations of Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky. Does that still sound so good?
Maybe I shouldn't ask. Take the entire populations of those states, add on the entire populations of Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming, and borrow another 525,000 people from Oklahoma and you have an idea of how many Americans are still without any health care coverage. Keep in mind: THAT statistic doesn't seem to bother Republicans in the slightest.