[ken]

The nuclear weapon question isn't really covered, which is an interesting case because they're also strategically useless to a Modern army -- and the U.S. government knows it [1]. Yet disarmament basically froze 10 years ago.

In the language and framework of this article, I understand why countries with Static armies might feel the need to develop them, but I don't understand why Modern armies which are happy to dispose of chemical weapons aren't equally happy to dispose of nuclear weapons.

Do American and Russian generals think that nuclear weapons will become useful at some point in the future? Do countries like France believe this? The French president hinted that they kept submarines with nuclear weapons configured for terrorist attacks, but the deadliest terror attack in history was carried out with box cutters, so it's hard to imagine how nuclear weapons would help. Nuclear weapons could be useful (if horrific) against a Static opponent, but not a Guerrilla one.

[1]: https://thinkprogress.org/colin-powell-nuclear-weapons-are-u...

[jcranmer]

Nuclear weapons have long (since the late 50s at least) had a peculiar calculus that amounts to the prisoner's dilemma: whether or not your adversary has nuclear weapons, there is more value for you to have them, so you end up in a situation where everyone feels justified to have them, even if it's the worst situation overall.

This has created a few paradoxical situations. One of them is that their strategic value lies primarily not in their use (which will not achieve any result) but rather the threat of use, which may be sufficient to dissuade leaders from committing to a war (arguably, this happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis--both Kennedy and Khrushchev blanched at the prospect of starting a nuclear war). Another interesting side effect is that this means that the development of counter technologies produces staunch opposition: nuclear war has to be seen as unwinnable for its deterrent value to be effective.

Part of the motivation for nuclear weapons as a strategic (rather than deterrent) option comes from the lineage of people who see strategic bombing as an fast, cheap, easy way to win a war. For a century now, adherents have predicted that once you started bombing a few cities indiscriminately, you'd easily win a war. And people continue to argue this despite the rather thin evidence for this proposition, and mountains of evidence in opposition.

[ufmace]

IMO because they make better strategic than tactical weapons.

I don't see much value in that article - it's basically just Colin Powell quoted as saying that he doesn't think nuclear weapons are useful and that they should be eliminated. But he's just one person, at one time, and he doesn't say anything about how. That's far, far away from a broad agreement among the entire US military and government. It's more like political propaganda than a reasoned analysis.

An actual modern military force in the field should be significantly less vulnerable. You'd have to be quite close to the detonation to damage armored vehicles and troops in good cover. Actually targeting it well is likely to be hard too. It would be nasty to soft vehicles and buildings and anybody outside of cover, but 5 minutes warning could cut that down pretty well.

But they would be quite effective indeed against more strategic targets, from military bases and logistic areas all the way back to factories and cities.

[philwelch]

Nuclear weapons provide a deterrent. They can be useful if they are actually used (ex., Hiroshima) but since 1945 the primary benefit has been deterrence.