It has a lovely nostalgic ring about it, like 'we had to destroy the village to save it'. Dr. Strangelove lives.
Quote:
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no one sane* will ever dare launch a nuclear attack against another country, for fear they will be obliterated themselves
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NitroNutter has it in a nutshell - if you have more than two proper nuclear powers/groupings then deterrent is useless*, as country C can nuke country A if they can find a good way of getting country B blamed for it (Pakistan nukes India and blames China? As Indian PM, how sure do you have to be before you launch back? Play eeny-meeny-miney-mo?).
The original quote is from NATO commanders, and should be worrying for everybody, since it's pretty commonly accepted that if you're in a position where you have to use nuclear weapons you've already lost. Imagine the head of the Iranian Republican Guard or some mirrored sunglasses secretly pro-Taliban Pakistani General saying it. Or Putin, but I suspect he doesn't need to bother announcing it.
There are only two NATO nuclear powers, anyway, us and the US. The French aren't in NATO, so what they're saying is that Britain should have a first use doctrine on nuclear weapons. This doesn't make me feel safer.
* Or if, say, your enemy is a loosely connected disparate pan-national group like al-Qaeda. You don't use a flamethrower to clean behind the cooker.