Undermining NATO?

Setting a moral view above realism and practicality?

Sanders backs Warren after Liz Cheney attacks 'no first use' nuclear policy

This issue was fought out during the Cold War, when the view emerged that a first use of nukes would be immoral and the US and NATO publicly and even ostentatiously refused any commitment to a "no first use" policy.

Both they and the Warsaw Pact nations knew the latter would quickly crush the former in a purely conventional war.

The only way NATO could effectively deter that was by leaving the door open to first use of nukes on the battlefield.

And so they did.

The issue was not, I must say, first use of strategic nuclear weapons against anybody, against any Warsaw Pact nation or, in particular, against the Soviet Union.

Lacking a first strike capability as everybody then was, a threat of that sort would be (a) a threat to commit suicide and hence (b) not very credible.

The NATO theory was that first use of tactical nukes on the battlefield would cause any Warsaw Pact invasion of the West to fail without so endangering the Soviet Union as to provoke them into use of strategic nukes against anyone on the NATO side and setting off a global thermonuclear war.

And that the Russians, knowing this, would not launch such an invasion.

Reagan's deployment of cruise missiles was also a necessary piece of the deterrence puzzle, given the unwillingness or inability of the NATO countries to match or surpass the conventional forces on the Soviet side.

Maybe all that has changed with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the partial dismemberment of the Soviet Union, leaving behind a considerably smaller and less powerful Russia with a much enlarged NATO crowded right up against its borders, but I don't know that it has.

Anyway, the current flap seems to be about a different issue, first use of strategic nuclear weapons, what people used to call a first strike.

And that seems odd.

Nation A was said to have a first strike capability against nation B just in case A could launch a strike that would prevent significant nuclear retaliation by B.

Back in the day, it was considered destabilizing and hence highly undesirable that either side, NATO or the Warsaw Pact, should have such a capability.

So far as I know, that is still the standard view and nobody actually has a first strike capability.

So I don't really see what this is about or how it fits into the strategic picture.

Bernie Sanders has defended his rival for the Democratic presidential 2020 nomination, Elizabeth Warren, after her policy against pre-emptive use of America’s nuclear weapons was attacked by the daughter of one of the architects of the Iraq war.

Warren reiterated her support for a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons during the second round of Democratic presidential debates this week.

“It makes the world safer,” the Massachusetts senator said during the debate. “The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively, and we need to say so to the entire world.”

Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, attacked Warren’s policy on Twitter, asking “which American cities and how many American citizens are you willing to sacrifice with your policy of forcing the US to absorb a nuclear attack before we can strike back?”

Cheney's attack was inconsequent enough, but Sanders' rejoinder was equal to it.

“Taking national security advice from a Cheney has already caused irreparable damage to our country,” Sanders wrote on Friday, in response to Cheney’s attack on Warren.

Cheney’s attack on Warren echoed the [equally mystifying- PV] response of one of Warren’s Democratic rivals during the debate, the Montana governor, Steve Bullock, who said he did not support a “no first use policy” because, “I don’t want to turn around and say, “Well, Detroit has to be gone before we would ever use that.”