Are there non-nuclear provocations that justify nuclear retaliation?

Question

What kinds of provocations could justify a nuclear attack?

Answer 1

Absolutely!

Chemical or biological attacks on major Western cities comes to mind. If a biological attack on Paris killed 5 million people, should we sit and think about it?

As far as WWII is concerned, the war had to be ended, and Japan had to surrender. The decision was taken to drop the bombs rather than risk an invasion of Japan will a million or more US casualties.

War is a very nasty business. This is one of the mistakes we are making now. In war, lots of people must be killed in order for the leaders (bin Laden, for example) to decide that it is time to stop murdering women and children.

If we make war to clean, then there is no motivation to stop it.

Answer 2

US policy is that if we are attacked with weapons of mass destruction - we will respond with our own weapons of mass destruction. So if somebody tries to hit us with a biological attack - then we will answer with nukes.

Now one plausible scenario for a US nuclear strike would be a known biological warfare facility where we believe that the organisms will be released in an attack if not stopped - here a nuclear weapon is the only thing that will ensure that none of those germs survive.

Another plausible scenario would be a US 'counterforce' strike on China if they threaten to attack US cities with nuclear weapons. (However, this is likely to involve US ICBMs armed with conventional warheads - not nukes.)

And BTW - as to all of those 'cold war' nukes that were in Korea and Germany, they were scrapped years ago.

Answer 3

Sure. You think U.S. would let North Korea's million man army overrun approximately 35, 000 U.S. troops on the DMZ of Korean Peninsula?

Theater tactical nuclear weapons would be arriving within less than 15 minutes; fired from submarines equipped for just such a mission.

Why do people think the U.S. isn't prepared for every possible threat to our National Security. You aren't going to find any newspaper articles about it; but do you think U.S. Government are such punks we wouldn't use whatever we have, when needed

Answer 4

At one time ( not sure anymore) the US policy was that a chemical or biological attack justified a nuclear counter-strike. This policy was adopted because we do not possess equivalent means of retaliation. I.E. Chemical or biological weapons. Not sure anymore though.

Answer 5

It's already in the defensive strategy of our troops in Germany (during the Cold War) and was a part our S. Korean defenseive strategy. The idea was to use tactical nukes in order to negate the number superiority of Soviet and North Korean forces. Bush has removed the nukes from S. Korea and i suppose the ones in Germany are still in place.

Answer 6

The US dropped two atomic bombs on the civilian populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Japan did not have atomic weapons and posed no realistic threat to the US mainland (they had no functioning navy at that point).

The US needs no particular reason to use nuclear weapons based on past history.

Answer 7

I believe that nothing could justify a nuclear attack.After Hiroshima and Nagasaky,during the WW2, i think those weapons should never be used again.

Answer 8

airstrikes attempting to disable nuclear missile silos