Well, in reality Americans understood that Stalin would never agree to such plan, so it means war. They did not have enough nukes for guaranteed victory (few cities were acceptable losses for USSR), did not have any reliable information about Soviet nuclear research, and knew how badly war with Russia can end.
Remember the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo. At the time, the U.S. didn’t need nuclear weapons to inflict mass damage by air on cities. And since the Soviets would not have been able to have a concentrated mass tank force (since it would have been nuked) our tank forces would have been unstoppable.
The US took a long time to establish the air superiority necessary to execute those firebombings; and tactical nuclear weapons would have been available in very low numbers and difficult to deploy effectively [anything you nuke, your own forces can’t pass; not even because of radiation but because of infrastructure destruction] (and certainly the Soviets could have adapted; they outnumbered Allied forces substantially in Europe).
But forget all that; how is a bloody, brutal war immediately after WWII to subjugate the Soviets preferable to the Cold War as it happened? Would it have reduced x-risk in the long term? I doubt that; how long could the US have monopolized nuclear weapons, especially if it immediately used them as threats that would terrify and antagonize every other nation in the world?
But forget all that; how is a bloody, brutal war immediately after WWII to subjugate the Soviets preferable to the Cold War as it happened?
Let’s assume the many worlds hypothesis is correct and consider all of the branches of the multiverse that share our 1946. In how many of them did the cold war turn hot? For what percentage would it have been better to make the threat?
Also, a world in which just the United States has atomic weapons would have many additional benefits such as probably higher world economic growth rates because of lower defense spending.
Once we get into talking about alternate histories, our ability to have an evidence-based discussion pretty much goes out the window.
I’ll say the following:
1) The cold war as we know it did come “close” in some sense to going hot; that’s bad, that’s x-risk in action
2) All things considered, the last 70 years as they actually happened went a hell of a lot better than the 70 years before, just on a political and military basis alone (so disregarding technology).
3) Ultimatums meant to monopolize the atomic bomb make sense if the goal is enacting a US-led One-World-Government, even if you believe WWIII would have broken out after ultimatums somehow fail to lead to peace
4) I DO believe WWIII would have broken out
5) I believe an attempted One-World-Government or other extreme attempt at global hegemony by the US would have been a disaster even without a USA-USSR WWIII.
Let’s assume the many worlds hypothesis is correct and consider all of the branches of the multiverse that share our 1946. In how many of them did the cold war turn hot? For what percentage would it have been better to make the threat?
Given that a massive amount of quantum-scale randomness would have to go systematically in a different direction for it to have any noticeable macro-scale effect, and that even then most macro-scale effects would be barely even noticeable, isn’t the default answer to questions like this always “in the overwhelming majority of branches, history never noticeably diverged from ours”?
Wouldn’t quantum effects have some influence on who gets cancer from background radiation, and wouldn’t the impact of this ripple in a chaotic way throughout the world so that, say, Petrov isn’t the one on duty on 9/26/1983?
Human minds are a lot more stable than they feel—a decision that feels “close; 60/40” would still fall on the 60% side >>60% of the time—but chaos will quickly bubble up through other channels.
Compared to destruction done by German forces, American strategic bombing would have been just an annoyance. Also, USA would be unable to achieve air superiority, and their bombers would suffer heavy losses.
Using nukes against even heavily concentrated tanks (~50 tanks per kilometer of frontline, as in major tank battles) is just a waste of nukes. In a clash between Soviet and American tank forces Americans would have been curbstomped.
No, at the very least we would have been able to attack Soviet cities from bases in China and Japan that the >Germans couldn’t hit.
No, main Soviet industrial centers were far beyond the range of any bombers, from Europe or from China. Also, bombing a city does far less to reduce military production than capturing it (look at figures for Germany 1944-1945).
I’m not sure about this since the goal would be to create a hole for your tanks to exploit so you could encircle >the enemy.
So you suggest using American nukes ( dozen in 1946), dropping them on Soviet tanks, from strategic bombers that hardly can hit a target smaller that city, to gain a modest tactical advantage (bringing two battalions of tank destroyers will have the same effect )? Using such brilliant plans USA would have surely lost WWIII.
I’m far from an expert on tank battles, but my impression is that what you really want to do is encircle the enemy tanks to cut them off from supplies. Being able to punch a small hole in enemy defenses would be extremely helpful. My impression was also that strategic bombers had difficulty hitting targets because of interference from anti air defenses and enemy aircraft, and this wouldn’t have been a problem when attacking targets in the field under conditions under which the U.S. had air superiority.
Encirclement operation works on much bigger scale, “small hole” here is tens of kilometers wide, through a defence line that is also tens of kilometers in depth. Using nukes against tanks makes no sense unless numbers of nukes and tanks are comparable.
Poor accuracy of strategic bombing was because of high altitude. On low altitude these bombers are very easy targets for anti-aircraft artillery (Soviet divisions had lots of it), and dropping nuke is a suicide mission.
Well, in reality Americans understood that Stalin would never agree to such plan, so it means war. They did not have enough nukes for guaranteed victory (few cities were acceptable losses for USSR), did not have any reliable information about Soviet nuclear research, and knew how badly war with Russia can end.
Remember the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo. At the time, the U.S. didn’t need nuclear weapons to inflict mass damage by air on cities. And since the Soviets would not have been able to have a concentrated mass tank force (since it would have been nuked) our tank forces would have been unstoppable.
The US took a long time to establish the air superiority necessary to execute those firebombings; and tactical nuclear weapons would have been available in very low numbers and difficult to deploy effectively [anything you nuke, your own forces can’t pass; not even because of radiation but because of infrastructure destruction] (and certainly the Soviets could have adapted; they outnumbered Allied forces substantially in Europe).
But forget all that; how is a bloody, brutal war immediately after WWII to subjugate the Soviets preferable to the Cold War as it happened? Would it have reduced x-risk in the long term? I doubt that; how long could the US have monopolized nuclear weapons, especially if it immediately used them as threats that would terrify and antagonize every other nation in the world?
Let’s assume the many worlds hypothesis is correct and consider all of the branches of the multiverse that share our 1946. In how many of them did the cold war turn hot? For what percentage would it have been better to make the threat?
Also, a world in which just the United States has atomic weapons would have many additional benefits such as probably higher world economic growth rates because of lower defense spending.
Once we get into talking about alternate histories, our ability to have an evidence-based discussion pretty much goes out the window.
I’ll say the following: 1) The cold war as we know it did come “close” in some sense to going hot; that’s bad, that’s x-risk in action 2) All things considered, the last 70 years as they actually happened went a hell of a lot better than the 70 years before, just on a political and military basis alone (so disregarding technology). 3) Ultimatums meant to monopolize the atomic bomb make sense if the goal is enacting a US-led One-World-Government, even if you believe WWIII would have broken out after ultimatums somehow fail to lead to peace 4) I DO believe WWIII would have broken out 5) I believe an attempted One-World-Government or other extreme attempt at global hegemony by the US would have been a disaster even without a USA-USSR WWIII.
Given that a massive amount of quantum-scale randomness would have to go systematically in a different direction for it to have any noticeable macro-scale effect, and that even then most macro-scale effects would be barely even noticeable, isn’t the default answer to questions like this always “in the overwhelming majority of branches, history never noticeably diverged from ours”?
Wouldn’t quantum effects have some influence on who gets cancer from background radiation, and wouldn’t the impact of this ripple in a chaotic way throughout the world so that, say, Petrov isn’t the one on duty on 9/26/1983?
Absolutely.
Human minds are a lot more stable than they feel—a decision that feels “close; 60/40” would still fall on the 60% side >>60% of the time—but chaos will quickly bubble up through other channels.
Compared to destruction done by German forces, American strategic bombing would have been just an annoyance. Also, USA would be unable to achieve air superiority, and their bombers would suffer heavy losses.
Using nukes against even heavily concentrated tanks (~50 tanks per kilometer of frontline, as in major tank battles) is just a waste of nukes. In a clash between Soviet and American tank forces Americans would have been curbstomped.
No, at the very least we would have been able to attack Soviet cities from bases in China and Japan that the Germans couldn’t hit.
I’m not sure about this since the goal would be to create a hole for your tanks to exploit so you could encircle the enemy.
No, main Soviet industrial centers were far beyond the range of any bombers, from Europe or from China. Also, bombing a city does far less to reduce military production than capturing it (look at figures for Germany 1944-1945).
So you suggest using American nukes ( dozen in 1946), dropping them on Soviet tanks, from strategic bombers that hardly can hit a target smaller that city, to gain a modest tactical advantage (bringing two battalions of tank destroyers will have the same effect )? Using such brilliant plans USA would have surely lost WWIII.
I’m far from an expert on tank battles, but my impression is that what you really want to do is encircle the enemy tanks to cut them off from supplies. Being able to punch a small hole in enemy defenses would be extremely helpful. My impression was also that strategic bombers had difficulty hitting targets because of interference from anti air defenses and enemy aircraft, and this wouldn’t have been a problem when attacking targets in the field under conditions under which the U.S. had air superiority.
Encirclement operation works on much bigger scale, “small hole” here is tens of kilometers wide, through a defence line that is also tens of kilometers in depth. Using nukes against tanks makes no sense unless numbers of nukes and tanks are comparable.
Poor accuracy of strategic bombing was because of high altitude. On low altitude these bombers are very easy targets for anti-aircraft artillery (Soviet divisions had lots of it), and dropping nuke is a suicide mission.