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Old 10-07-2009, 04:48 PM
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Webstral Webstral is offline
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Originally Posted by Mohoender View Post
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What you say make sense but it would be equally true for US, however (No I'm not anti-yank but governments continuously prove that they are not fair play independently of the side they are supposed to be on, and US already proved in past history that it is no exception).

I think that it's not the point in T2K because if you go that far, you don't end up with Twilight 2000 but with the movie "Wargame". Could be interesting to play but that would be an entirely different game.
I'm not sure I understand what is equally true for the US. That we would nuke a country aligned with our enemies regardless of whether that country could fire back? You can bet the farm on it. How does that unhappy fact prove or disprove the Soviet nuking of Australia?

I don't at all agree that there is some sort of firm boundary between a Twilight: 2000 exchange and a "Wargame" exchange and that we must find ourselves in one camp or another. The v1 chronology all but states that the level of nuclear exchange is based on what the Soviets feel they can get away with. They blow China to kingdom come because China can't effectively counterattack. The Soviets are more calculating with their nuclear use against the West because the West is capable of counterattacking. Fear of MAD counterbalances the impulse to use enough nukes to destroy the enemy's ability to pose any threat.

Note that Canada gets hit much harder than the US, given relative populations, etc. Canada can't fire back. Clearly, the USSR has decided that the US will retaliate for attacks on Canada to a lesser degree than for attacks on CONUS. If a single MIRV-capable SLBM takes out Sydney, Melbourne, and the appropriate military facilities, the US might not even retaliate. If the US does retaliate, then the appropriate targets would be in a Soviet satellite: the PDRK, Bulgaria, etc. Maybe Indonesia or Vietnam would suffer a couple of US strikes in exchange for a couple of strikes on Australia. At any rate, it's all part of the math. Only Westerners think in terms of absolute firebreaks. According to official doctrine, the Soviets calculate the relative merits of each strike and its most likely counterstrike.

Webstral
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