this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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I did read the article.
IMO any politician advocating for anything less than permanent global nuclear disarmament needs to have spitballs lobbed at them perpetually without debate.
While the Biden administration is not putting a date on when it will happen, they are not ruling out that they are willing (and more importantly able) to nuke the planet if something offends them.
I acknowledge that this is not some bombshell piece of news because it is "normal", i.e. the US military plans for various invasions and scenarios that they supposedly don't intend to act on. But this kind of anti-social behavior is not only allowed, but publicly funded as if it's supposed to benefit everyone. I'm calling it out precisely because it is normal.
My point is the fact that if you believe in nuclear nonproliferation, voting for either candidate won't move the needle on the issue.
Ok so if intelligence reports claim there's a risk of a coordinated attack from foreign countries that have nuclear weapons, what do you think the US should do to defend itself?
The US is the only nuclear armed country with a history of actually using it. I'm a LOT more scared of the US doing the coordinated attack on someone than I am of the thought of any of the other nuclear armed countries striking first.
Also implying I trust literally anything the US intelligence machine ever says ever.
Boring answer: Not fucking use nuclear weapons, that's for sure. Diplomacy should be enough.
Honest answer: I literally don't care about the US government's "right" to "defend" itself literally at all. As far as the innocent people who actually live here, we will respond in the only way that our government has planned for us in any disaster scenario: get sacrificed to maintain continuity of government and capitalist power.
The US defending itself is always so funny to me. Against who? Canada? Mexico?
The US can adequately defend itself with just the National Guard and the civilian population’s own gun stash. It’s the only country in the world that has more guns than people, about twice as many as the runner-up country. It doesn’t even need its army, navy, air force, or marine corp, not to mention its space farce.
This question is sort of valid. Any country assessing threats is going to build contingency plans. That's literally the job of the military. The idea that Biden needs to make a special request to order the military to literally do its job is a little weird. The fact that it was released to the process is also really fucking weird. The press, who obviously knows that this is what the military does, publishing this as a news story is also really fucking weird.
The USA is going to absolutely do contingency planning for what happens if there's a coordinated nuclear strike, but the answer is obvious. The USA has 600+ global military bases outside its territory in 80 countries. What it's going to do is activate its MAD protocols that it's been developing, reviewing, and revising for the past 70 years.
There is literally no chance of a coordinated military strike on the US because the number of targets is too large for any coalition to reasonably target without triggering MAD.
The real threat to the USA is what's happening in Africa - being thrown out and sent packing. This is the only way to defeat the USA. Coordinated economic and political activity to enable one more country at a time to actually push the USA out. This will happen first in bases without nuclear capabilities, because, ya know, MAD. But it will set the template for how it could be done to a nuclear base.
Eventually it will happen to a nuclear base. When that happens, THEN the USA can get worried about it's MAD strategy.
But Biden ordering something like this and then the administration hamfistedly releasing it to the press is just nuclear sabre rattling